Ritual Sacrifice Site in Britain?

Ritual Sacrifice Site in Britain?

[Music] look at that behind me a somewhat fullon and ravaged Bronze Age burial can out here in the middle of nowhere and isn’t it funny that so much of what we know about our prehistoric ancestors comes from where they buried their dead this one here is on the edge of Great Asby Scar in West Mand and it’s an unrecorded excavation we can only assume 18th or 19th century but there’s no record of what came out of this Bronze Age burial can and it’s impossible to visit places like this and see anything other than a real respect for the dead in prehistoric society but what about human sacrifice human sacrifice in prehistory in Britain [Music] this program video contains descriptions of prehistoric sacrifice viewer caution is advised perhaps we should have done that warning before we showed them my burning face that is what we are looking for this week evidence of human sacrifice specifically in Britain in the Neolithic [Music] as you can probably tell we are up against it as usual it’s very windy in this video we’re going to attempt to visit a truly stunning Neolithic long can in a desolate and remote location and discuss and consider whether there is evidence there that in Britain in the Neolithic humans were ritually sacrificed but it is not just Britain we’re also traveling to the Ran Valley to consider evidence for mafia style brutal mafia style killings in the Neolithic incidentally it seems that you lot want to believe in the idea of stone age sacrifice in a recent survey in our membership institute 67% who took part said they believed that humans sacrificed other humans 5,000 years ago [Music] under normal circumstances looking at a beautiful buttercup meadow like that one behind me I find it impossible to countenance the idea that anybody in Britain ever sacrificed another human being however I have given up vaping this week and to be brutally honest with you I could quite happily sacrifice somebody today yeah I’m imagining it now every librarian has its theory what is human sacrifice every librarian has its theory name that tune in five so what is human sacrifice in a previous video on the subject I got my mind into a state of confusion i couldn’t stand the confusion in my mind i was looking at the idea of human sacrifice in Britain in the Iron Age Pete Marsh in the marsh bog bodies that type of thing and it got me to thinking that there really is a distinction isn’t there between the concept of killing in a ritualized fashion a perfectly healthy and useful member of the community to appease gods versus the idea of killing a bad person an enemy a criminal something like that in a ritualized fashion now even in Caesar’s highly politicized account of the wicker man time for a Brit Ecklund overlay there in Gaul he acknowledges that this process involved the execution of criminals there is a throwaway sort of demonizing line that they sometimes threw some innocents in if there weren’t enough baddies around to fill the cage moving on to the stone age then then the experts you know the beards a lot of them do seem to be pretty sure that ritualized sacrifice of human beings was a part of Neolithic culture Neolithic society effectively sort of two it falls into two types now we’re called number one the retainer sacrifice this is the idea that an an important chief an important leader has died and that members of his family wives children servants slaves were sacrificed as part of that burial process to accompany him on his journey into or her on their journey into the afterlife and then the second type of sacrifice is what we might call agrarian or fertility based sacrifice so that’s where there is this view that because this is a farming community these are the first farmers they needed to sacrifice somebody to appease the gods to make sure that they got the rain that they got the sun that they needed it is this idea please don’t make my voice vinyl please for this bit thank you it is this idea of killing a completely innocent member of the community to appease the gigantic sky wizard up in the clouds that both intrigues and appalls me in equal measure right so next we are off to West Morland to see if we could find any evidence of ritual sacrifice in the stone age here in Britain praise picnicking in the British countryside a site of human sacrifice in Britain right let’s go and try and find this long ken then I’ve parked the car up there by a cattle grid i can see the howgill fells over that way now I was led to believe that if I look across there I should be able to see the long ken quite prominently but I can’t but I think if we follow this fence line if I follow this fence line here I should be okay and I just wanted to say um just reassure you basically I don’t want to sacrifice any of you lot obviously well maybe one or two of you but most of you are safe whilst it’s very tempting to stick down by that fence in this sort of terrain I have learned you want to get up a little bit because of the bogs and all the like the other interesting thing about this site we’re going to have a look at as well as the history horror files sacrifice bit is is it even a long can uh there’s a question mark for over that for me anyway but uh we got to get there onwards and there will be a little bit of bag inconsistency has just happened there because it is so windy here today i’m having to use my camera bag to hold the tripod down i don’t know if I’m going to be able to get the drone up when we get there which will be a bit of a shame if we can’t but uh we used to manage without it didn’t we [Music] i think I could possibly see it over there in the distance it’s not quite as prominent as I had hoped and rather worryingly it looks like there’s some cows there now I know a lotment Fox says that we’ve got nothing to worry about but uh they scare the heebiejeebies out of me if I’m honest definitely cows I would say looking at the footprints they don’t have footprints do they hoove prints is that what you’d say anyhow the place we are making out for is called Rayet Pike and it’s on the edge of Great Asby in West Morland or Cumbria for those that prefer the modern abomination on these sorts of things seems to have two spellings i’ll put those on the screen for you i think the correct local pronunciation is Rayet Pike although I have also heard people calling it Retit Pike but that’s where we’re heading to if these wretched cows or lettuce what I’m doing is I’m just staying below this little ridge i’ve seen the cows are over there i’m hoping they are on some limestone outcrops over there rather than our can which I think I’ve still got some way to get to obviously if you do try this at home yourselves I accept no responsibility for what happens uh I don’t have any insurance or anything like that so you’d ruin me if you tried to make a claim big sinkhole there the dangers of antiquarianism i don’t know if you can see him up there there’s a cow there’s the can keep down very low now i’m nearly there are you allowed to scare off farm animals with drones i can’t remember the rules on that might have to give that a go shh they’re over there can is there i think what I’m going to do is I’m going to get the drone up below this ridge see if I can get some shots it is a bit windy but uh we’ll give it a go [Music] heat [Music] heat [Music] [Applause] heat [Applause] hey heat hey heat [Music] [Applause] [Music] i am hoping that you just watched a drone sequence it is really windy so I don’t know how well that’s going to turn out i might have to Google Earth scam it but if you did see anything you may have noticed something that made your heart skip a beat and you possibly thought you were looking at a kiss unbelievably and this is obviously a scheduled ancient monument it is a grouse butt somebody has built a grouse butt out of the Neolithic stones that make up this once magnificent can absolutely atrocious now as tragic as that is to see I’m hoping it will afford me some protection in the event of those cows who haven’t been frightened off by the drone they’re just lurking over there but I can perhaps sort of barricade myself in this grouse butt if things get nasty anyhow to explain the damage here it was in 1877 that a cannon Greenwell and a chap called Rollston excavated this place and the mess that you’re looking at today is down to them now you’ll sometimes see experts referring to this place as a bipartite long can bipartite sounds like some sort of peace accord or something like that doesn’t it but I think for me there is this question about if this even is a long can it’s actually comprised of two ovals and if you look at this fantastic sketch from 1690 by Michelle that was a bloke I presume you’ll see that uh back then before it was trashed it comprised two quite distinct uh mounds effectively so we perhaps don’t always need to think of the Neolithic as being long sometimes it can be round or oval now this is very interesting i guess I’m around about 3/4 of a mile now to the west of Raceet Pike Long Ken and I’ve stopped by the side of the road because I looking across i just happened to notice that you could see it perfectly framed between these two raised mounds there i’ve got the camera on maximum zoom it’s going to look pretty lousy and pixelated I imagine but um hopefully you can see it there it’s wonderful how it sits between the two it also seems to be lined up quite nicely with the summit of I think that will be wild boar fell over in the distance behind it but it has got me thinking about this point I raised earlier is this even a long can we always think the Neolithic burials have to be long cans don’t we we don’t see the Neolithic as being uh round circular as we got in the Bronze Age but I think looking at this it’s the bridge there’s a bridge isn’t there between the two very clearly now but is that bridge the result of the good old cannon just lobbing the contents out of each of these mounds into the gap in between the two if you look at Michelle’s picture from 1690 the mounds are quite distinct aren’t they there is some sort of stone or something in between the two suggesting there was some form of bridging going on at that time but I think it’s really interesting this I think this what we have here is two Neolithic burials that were separate and were round or oval and then later on they’ve got joined maybe they were joined during the Neolithic or maybe that process of them joining together happened a whole lot later on would you like to know another way you could tell that a 5,000y old tomb has been disturbed look if I bend down here can you see we have stinging nettles right in the center of the tomb right I’m going to try and leave here brave these cows so I’m now leaving the larger can the eastern can and we’re going to go out and have a look at the one to the west which is smaller and I’ll tell you about what the wrecking cannon found here there it is that’s the western can the smaller can which looks very oval i think in Michelle’s 1690 picture what they found in there and this is perhaps why we are here with the history horror files they found the bones of children in that one it is heartbreaking isn’t it to see these cans in this condition i mean these uh 19th century antiquarians and archaeologists were absolutely terrible they just came and grabbed what they want wanted from the site and then just left it like this it’s uh bleeding awful isn’t it anyhow it is what it is as Honest Places Danny from Honest Places would say but we do know that there were children as a result of that excavation children buried in that one and there were adult bones in the eastern K burnt adult bones now this bipartite can has been likened to the great mounds right out on the east coast of Yorkshire you can only get these in Scotland and Northern England but there was another discovery that Canon Greenwell made and that was a line effectively like a spine of posts along the top of the two joined mounds post holes for timber posts with charcoal in the bottom charcoal then so are we looking at an example potentially here of a retainer sacrifice in the Neolithic are we looking here at a family grave where some important leader of the earliest farmers was buried and they burnt along the top his servants other members of his family they even threw some kids in for good measure or possibly you know it’s something about fertility here they are sacrificing for fertility you know remember this open landscape that we’re looking at here today would have still been pretty heavily wooded most likely at the time this mighty can was thrown up well I guess that at least 67% of you are going to believe that there was Neolithic sacrifice here all these implications the problem with this idea of course as you would expect there are problems with this idea a few post holes with charcoal in them does not necessarily all tie in with the interment of people in these cans the human burnt bones at this end could very well have been cremated elsewhere the children’s bones could very well be secondary burials later usage of the site there is another problem with the burning sacrifice idea here at the eastern end there’s the can somewhere along here according to Karen Greenwell’s poor excavation notes they found a trench a transverse trench with sign of timber posts in it as well so yes we’ve got some timber posts across the spine but there seems to have been some sort of timber palisade fence type thing around it you know morttery enclosure springs to mind i’m adaptable and I like my new role a sacrifice behind the scenes so my husband asked me to make an Neolithic doll as one does when they get to his age and he wanted me to put a face on it um so I made this out of bits of paper screwed up a pair of old tights and I’ve put a face on it his face he’s going to love it could have been a dangerous life stone age sacrifice in Europe mafia style no expense spared this week to tell our story i’m in the Ran Valley look at the size of the grapes there who am I kidding have you got any idea how much an amateur YouTube antiquarian earns surely I can just have one drag no anyhow let me tell you it’s not the national living minimum wage or whatever it’s called across a huge geographical region extending from Poland to the Iberian Peninsula there are 20 known instances from 15 sites of seemingly tortured human sacrifices in 1984 Eric Kruezi excavated a 5,600y old site at Solhatu but it was 40 years later while reading accounts of incap a cruel means of dispatch practiced by the mafia that he made a connection he discovered two pits in a building and in one a normal looking burial but concealed to one side under an overhang two further skeletons weighed down with broken grinding stones and in the inap position a hideously cruel practice of tying legs to the victim’s neck so they effectively slowly esphyxiated themselves and at a location on a solstice alignment with signs of feasting too oh and they were women and the graves were in the form of typical Neolithic grain silos eric’s reinterpretation led to a re-evaluation of other sites and thus we have the 20 instances but these are over a huge geographical region and they’re spanning 2,000 years does 20 instances really provide evidence of widpread human sacrifice in the Neolithic in Europe as some experts will have you think i don’t think so there is a bit more evidence than these awkwardly positioned skeletons we’re in the Mesolic now rock art from a cave in Italy now if you look at this you’ll see what appears to be a sacrificed deer we’ve got nine standing humans some with terrifying beaklike masks and some with terrifying arousals that’s how some mucky-minded experts have interpreted it i can’t see that then there’s these two look at that does that look like to you it does a bit doesn’t it and just to confirm no Luke Skywalkers were harmed in the making of this program video it was a bit odd wasn’t it how I opened up to you earlier about the fact I’ve given up vaping quite a personal sort of revelation uh to put on a program video like this but um I was thinking people like that Kaye does that quite a lot doesn’t she she tells us all about her various ailments and the like and she is much more successful than me so maybe I should do that a bit more often well whatever happened here and despite the state that the place is in it is an incredible site and I do recommend that you brave the chaos and come and have a look uh but don’t blame me if you get trampled to death obviously I just wanted to address the subject of my wearing apparel this week although I’ve been moaning about the wind it’s baking hot today as well really really close and humid particularly here in the shelter of the cab i wanted to wear my tweed shorts that was my first thought today but for once I have listened to some of you lot and that is not something I do very often at all but the last time I wore tweed shorts in terrain like this I had so many comments expressing concern that I was exposing myself to danger with tick bites and the various horrible things that can happen to one uh if you get such a bite that I thought I better not and thus I’m wearing full tweed trousers today but I have to conclude it is # too hot for tweed interesting stuff now of course there are plenty of other examples in Britain of strange things from the Neolithic headless bodies bodyless heads that sort of thing there was even an earlobe found under a megalithic stone uh somewhere angquy I think if you know of any cases please do let me know it really is an intriguing subject thanks very much for watching now if you excuse me I’m just going to ring the misses she’s been organizing some state-of-the-arts uh uh effects for us this week i just want to make sure that that’s gone okay oh hi darling yeah just wanted to check how did the effects go yeah yeah it’s gone fine [Music]

In an investigation spanning Great Asby Scar, Westmorland, to the Rhone valley in France, we’re on the trail of evidence suggesting human sacrifice took place in the Stone Age.

Did the first farmers in the UK and Europe sacrifice people as part of the process of sending a leader to the afterlife? Or, was it about securing enough sun and enough rain to sustain the Neolithic way of life?

Starting off at Bronze Age barrow, it’s then off across the moors to visit Rayseat Pike Long Cairn – sometimes Raiset Pike – to consider ritual burnings. And then we’re off to Saint Paul Trois Chateaux, where we look into the hideous practice of incaprettamento – beloved of the Mafia – but was it also favoured in prehistory?

Main source for the latter:
https://www.science.org/content/article/it-s-really-horror-bones-across-europe-suggest-stone-age-ritual-killings

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Credits (Where due)
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Main “Broadcaster”: Darren Spratt
Script Consultant: Jim Murray
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00:00 Introduction
02:23 Titles
02:40 Giving up Vaping
03:05 What is Human Sacrifice?
05:42 A Site of Human Sacrifice in Britain
17:06 The Problems with this Idea
18:02 A Sacrifice Behind the Scenes
18:24 Stone Age Sacrifice in Europe. Mafia Style
22:23 Outro

#incaprettamento #humansacrifice #stoneage
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