Victims of Violence

This is the reconstructed burial of two adult men who were buried together in a shallow grave between 13,000 and 11,000 years ago in a small cemetery at Jebel Sahaba, Sudan. Both died of inflicted wounds, and the remains of the actual weapons that killed them are displayed on the red disks. These men were not the only victims of violence to be buried here. Chips and flakes of chert, the remnants of arrows or other weapons, were found mixed with and in some cases still embedded in the bones of 24 other individuals, while cut marks were found on the bones of others. In total, at least 45% of the 61 people in this cemetery met a violent end. Their burials are generally considered to preserve the earliest evidence for intercommunal violence in the archaeological record. No one was spared. Men, women and children all fell victim to what appears to be brutal conflict.

Of the two victims on display, a total of 19 weapon fragments were found with the bones of Burial 21 (on the right) by the original excavators including two still lodge in his pelvis, giving evidence of at least 10 arrow strikes, while cut marks on his legs suggest several more. His companion in the grave bears evidence of at least 4 arrows. Healed injuries observed on some of the bones indicate that conflict was not only brutal but also seems to have been fairly frequent.

The reasons for all of this violence most likely it comes down to climate. The ice age glaciers covering much of Europe made the climate in the Nile Valley cold and arid. The River Nile was the only source of life, but it was erratic and often low and sluggish. Resources must have been scarce. Competition for food may have led to conflict as more groups of hunters and gatherers clustered around the best fishing and hunting grounds and were unable or unwilling to move away.

As a designated grave yard, evidently used on several occasions, the burial ground at Jebel Sahaba is one of the earliest formal cemeteries in the world. It therefore seems likely that the hunters and gatherers buried here considered this place a home worth dying for.