COPENHAGEN, DENMARK—Skeletal remains of more than 70 people have been unearthed at the 9,000-year-old site of Shkārat Msaied, located in southern Jordan, by a team from the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies. The people who lived at Shkārat Msaied had been hunter-gatherers and were in the process of becoming farmers. “The body parts have been sorted and buried in collective graves, where we find the specific categories of bones together,” researcher Moritz Kinzel told The Copenhagen Post. This year, the team found three burial sites that contained the remains of at least ten children and two adults. The bones of goats, sheep, birds, and foxes, which may have been part of a funeral ritual, were found with the human remains. Most of the bones had been placed in trunks and buried inside homes. “It is interesting there are an unusually large number of children buried, ranging from small babies to adolescents. There seems to have been a strong tendency to bury children inside the houses,” he added. To read more, go to "Neolithic Community Centers."
