Victors of 6,000-year-old battle celebrated by cutting off arms of the invaders
The winners of major battles throughout history have celebrated their victories with parades, parties and fireworks.
Today, car drivers are showered in champagne after their final lap and professional fighters are honored with a particularly large belt.
But thousands of years ago, when groups went to battle for the survival of their culture and people, victory practices were a bit more gruesome.
Analysis of 82 sets of human remains dating back to the Neolithic age found that when one group invaded another in northern France, the victors tortured and mutilated their invaders and used their body parts as trophies following their win, according to a study published Aug. 20 in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances.
Burial pits in the Upper Rhine Valley date to between 4295 and 4165 B.C. and were used for the “haphazard deposition of the remains of a number of individuals,” according to the study.
Some of the remains have evidence of “unhealed trauma” and “overkill,” meaning more physical force was used than was needed to kill the individual, as evidenced on their remains, researchers said.
Other remains didn’t have these marks or damage, so the research team set out to determine what made the two groups different.
The bones and teeth were analyzed for various elemental isotopes, like carbon and nitrogen, to tell researchers where those people lived, what they ate and what their typical “child-rearing practices” were in comparison to one another, according to the study.
Researchers found that the individuals with more damaged remains were not local to the area, but those with relatively untouched remains had grown up in this region, according to the study.
The disarticulated remains included many individuals who had their left arms and hands cut off, which were then tossed into the burial pits separately, according to the study.
The “lower limbs were [fractured] in order to prevent the victims from escaping, the entire body shows blunt force traumas and, what it is more, in some skeletons there are some marks — piercing holes — that may indicate that the bodies were placed on a structure for public exposure after being tortured and killed,” study author Teresa Fernández-Crespo told LiveScience.
Researchers said the “most likely scenario” is that foreign invaders came to this village for a raid in “a war of conquest,” according to the study.
These invaders lost, and their heads and upper limbs were taken as trophies by the victors, researchers said.
“An alternative explanation is that severed upper limbs were the results of mutilations intended to humiliate and physically impair enemies, such as those described in classical sources in the context of collective war-related sacrifices,” researchers said. “In this scenario, all victims would have been brought alive to the site as captives from different locations and then treated (or punished) differently for unknown reasons (e.g., their origins). Survivors of such mutilations (if any) may have been retained as slaves or even adopted, perhaps by families who lost many members during conflict.”
The taking of ritualistic body-part trophies may have also been part of a supernatural practice, according to the study. Many groups sought favor with ancestors or “gods” when going into battle, and the trophies may have acted as an offering for their chosen deity after the battle was won.
The site is located along the Rhine River, in northeastern France.
The research team includes Fernández-Crespo, Christophe Snoeck, Javier Ordoño, Philippe Lefranc, Bertrand Perrin, Fanny Chenal, Hélène Barrand-Emam, Rick J. Schulting and Gwenaëlle Goude.
This story was originally published August 21, 2025 at 9:44 AM with the headline "Victors of 6,000-year-old battle celebrated by cutting off arms of the invaders."
