The Talheim Massacre
As well as being modern in their artistic skills, our prehistoric ancestors were modern in another respect as well - their capacity for criminal violence.
Excavations in 1883 of a Neolithic settlement at Talheim uncovered a pit containing the jumbled remains of 34 people ranging in age from two years old to 60. Horrifyingly, 18 of the skulls bore large holes in either the back or top of the head, evidence that they had been killed by blows from something like a stone axe, possibly as they attempted to flee from their attackers.
An exhibition at the Stadlische Museum in Heilbronn is devoted to the investigation of this pre-historic massacre. Further excavations at the site in 1984 enabled the archaeologists to reconstruct part of the crime scene and this forms the first part of the exhibition, a tangle of bones showing how the bodies were just tumbled into the pit.
The exhibition then treats each of the people with the respect they so conspicuously were not accorded in death. Each body is described and illustrated, giving details of size, age, sex and what can be reconstructed of the individual's life history from his or her skeleton.
For example, one of the bodies, that of a young woman, reveals that she suffered a hip deformity, possibly due to an infection or an accident, and could not have walked without a stick. Yet her pelvic bones reveal that she had given birth to at least one child.
In addition the final section of the exhibition has reconstructions of many of the bodies using the now familiar techniques of modelling flesh and skin over the skull. In this case, however, the models have one horrifying addition: gaping, blood-drenched wounds to match the holes in the skulls!
Unfortunately the archaeologists, despite their use of the most modern investigative techniques, are unable to say with certainty who was responsible for this slaughter. A biography I recently read of the Arctic explorer Samuel Hearne ("Ancient Mariner" by Ken McGoogan) may hold a clue.
Hearne was an employee of the Hudson's Bay Company and undertook an arduous trek across northern Canada, from the fort on Hudson's Bay to the shore of the Arctic Ocean. He was guided by Cree Indians who supplied the Company with furs and was witness to almost incredible cruelty, by the men towards their women and by all towards any who were not members of their immediate clan, but above all towards their hereditary enemies, the Eskimos.
When the group reached the mouth of the Coppermines River, they discovered a party of Eskimos fishing for salmon and immediately fell on them, taking them by surprise and killing with the utmost barbarity every one they could catch - about twenty men, women and children.
Some protest against the influence of Christian missionaries, claiming that primitive people are "much happier" with their own culture. Whether such a claim can be made in any particular case may be debated, but there is no doubt that there are many cases where it is completely false. Although Christians have often fallen short of the ideals they profess, in the majority of cases Christian missionaries have brought respect for life, a higher status for women and the blessings of peace.
It is quite likely that the Talheim massacre was some such killing of an "outsider" group by warriors from another tribe or clan, with this difference: whereas the Coppermine victims remained unburied and their bones could be seen for many years afterwards, the Talheim victims were buried, perhaps by survivors or perhaps even by their conquerors who wished to use the settlement they had conquered for their own purposes.
The Tatort Talheim exhibition continues in the Heilbronn museum until January 27, 2008, after which it moves to the Neanderthal Museum at Dusseldorf until June 22.
© Kendall K. Down 2009
