12,000 year old witch remains found

[Saya]

Archaeologists in Israel have unearthed an ancient grave of an elderly woman believed to have been a magical healer 12,000 years ago.

The grave was found in a burial ground for at least 28 people in a small cave in the lower Galilee region of present-day Israel.

It dates back to the Natufian people who were the first society to adopt a sedentary lifestyle.

At the time of burial, more than 10 large stones were placed directly on the head, pelvis, and arms of the woman whose body was laid on its side. The legs were spread apart and folded inward at the knee.

The special treatment of the body and use of stones to keep it in a certain position suggests the woman held a unique position in the community.

It is likely she was viewed as a magical healer or witch doctor, archaeologists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem said.

'It seems that the woman in the Natufian burial was perceived as being in a close relationship with these animal spirits,' the team wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The Israeli team led by Leore Grosman found the human bones in a small cave in the lower Galilee region of present-day Israel. The grave also contained 50 tortoise shells, and body parts from animals including a wild boar, eagle, cow, leopard and marten.

'The burial of the woman...is unlike any burial found in the Natufian or the preceding Palaeolithic periods,' Grosman's team wrote.

'We argue that this burial is consistent with expectations for a shaman's grave.

'Tortoises, cow tails, eagle wings, and fur-bearing animals continue to play important symbolic and shamanistic roles in the spiritual arena of human cultures worldwide today.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...ch-doctor.html

Scientists did not comment as to whether she weighed the same as a duck.

[MollyMac]

The rocks kept her from floating, love.

[PortraitOfSanity]

Originally Posted by MollyMac

The rocks kept her from floating, love.

"What do we burn apart from witches?"

"More witches!"




Sorry.....

[HellforgedX]

12,000 year old witch remains found

...and no matter what we do, we still cannot lose her! She just keeps remaining found! Damn!

[Tam Li Hua]

Oh cool!

I used to want to be an archaeologist or a paleontologist, but then I got distracted.....

[Man In Room 5]

I wanted to be an archaeologist too as a child....then I learned that you don't get to keep the stuff you find.

[PortraitOfSanity]

I was talking to the archaeology professor at my school about Indiana Jones. He was telling me how he was dissapointed at first that he didn't get shot at by Nazis, and that the Jones movies were a load of rubbish. Then he went to Israel and got shot at by the IDF.

[JCC]

Originally Posted by Tam Li Hua

Oh cool!

For a Christian who's mentioned wanting to join the church, you're not one for reading the Bible, are you?

[PortraitOfSanity]

Yea don't forget that these practices were associated with the Devil by the Medieval Church.

[Saya]

Originally Posted by PortraitOfSanity

Yea don't forget that these practices were associated with the Devil by the Medieval Church.

They still are associated with the devil by the modern church.

[Opteron_Man]

Originally Posted by Man In Room 5

I wanted to be an archaeologist too as a child....then I learned that you don't get to keep the stuff you find.

Me too! I love taking a paintbruss and dusting off old antique things!
I wish I had a monicle!

[Alain]

Originally Posted by Opteron_Man

Me too! I love taking a paintbruss and dusting off old antique things!
I wish I had a monicle!

1. We don't generally dust antiques, that's a job for antique dealers and curators.
We tend to dust off bones, nails, and scrub collections of shards of glass with damp toothbrushes. Paintbrushes, like shaving brushes, tend to shed bristles and when damp clump together. Toothbrushes are far more useful.

2. I have not yet met anyone who wears a monocle. We prefer sunglasses.

But I am curious as to where you got the idea of monocles being associated with archaeology. I have spent some time delighting in inaccuracies in films, and have no idea where that iconography comes from. I don't mean to be snarky, I just hate it when historians, archaeologists, and secondhand furniture salespeople get confused together in the public mind

[Saya]

You're an archaeologist? +5 million cool points

[Man In Room 5]

Cool. We have a real archaeologist here? What do you specialize in?

I've wanted to be an archaeologist since I was a kid but I suppose I never wanted to be one bad enough to actually go to college for it. In 1900 most of my town was destroyed by fire. The debris was dumped into mounds and when I was a kid my uncle owned a house whose yard backed upon 1 of those mounds. You could dig into it and find things like old medicine bottles, coins, or whatever wasn't destroyed by fire. I had an antique bottle collection based on what I found there and what I found at another dumping spot that dated to around the 1940s maybe. It was the nearest I ever got to being an archaeologist and still keep what I find.

I have a friend who has a degree in history or archeology or something (not sure) who lives near London and specializes in the Pre-Roman Iron Age Celts. He's invited me to London to check out sites there but I have yet to go and probably never will.

[onyxprop]

Crock of shit that story in first post. No offense to person who brought the issue up.

But back then people were afraid of the dead returning as vampires and used methods to keep the deceased stay-put! One was piling rocks on the corpse, breaking limbs, removing the heart, the head, decapitation, and other weird-ass rituals. This sounds like one of them. And witches were no exception because they had powers ppl were afraid of.

[Despanan]

Originally Posted by Alain

1. We don't generally dust antiques, that's a job for antique dealers and curators.
We tend to dust off bones, nails, and scrub collections of shards of glass with damp toothbrushes. Paintbrushes, like shaving brushes, tend to shed bristles and when damp clump together. Toothbrushes are far more useful.

2. I have not yet met anyone who wears a monocle. We prefer sunglasses.

But I am curious as to where you got the idea of monocles being associated with archaeology. I have spent some time delighting in inaccuracies in films, and have no idea where that iconography comes from. I don't mean to be snarky, I just hate it when historians, archaeologists, and secondhand furniture salespeople get confused together in the public mind

I know there was another reason I liked you.

Now where is your whip, and how often do you battle Nazis?

[Alain]

Originally Posted by Despanan

I know there was another reason I liked you.

Now where is your whip, and how often do you battle Nazis?

To answer general questions:

Infant burials is my topic of choice. I'm pretty well read in classical literature, and I'm doing my current thesis on Romano-British babies, but I'm quite heavily into cultural heritage management and indigenous Australian stuff.

I battle Ze Germans once a week, as I meet some for dinners on Fridays, amongst other friends. We battle over ice-cream rights.

I don't currently own a whip, but I am getting one for christmas. Thankfully I already have a hat, and a ball of string.

Here endeth the OT archaeology love!