4500 Years Ago, Humans Remembered Dead Family With Bones Used As Musical Instruments

Human civilization has really come a long way. When particularly learning of the different ages humanity transitioned from, they adopted and let go several routines and cultures, turning us into a civilized, social animal that we are today.?

And now researchers have made some astonishing discoveries with respect to human traditions in the bronze age.

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A team of researchers from the University of Bristol (study published in journal Antiquity) has discovered that people from the Bronze Age would have a tradition of safely storing human remains as relics for generations after the particular person’s death.?

They used radiocarbon dating and CT scans on Bronze Age discoveries that were discovered across the UK, from approximately 4,500 years ago. These items included human bones that were belonging to someone else, buried with people years after their death -- kept as things to remember people by.?

Researchers found a musical instrument of sorts made from a femur which was buried with someone else’s body, possibly as a ‘grave good’.

Prehistoric Man, Bronze Age Smelting by Science Source. Fine Art America Website.

According to lead author Dr Thomas Booth, “They treated and interacted with the dead in ways which are inconceivably macabre to us today. After radiocarbon dating Bronze Age human remains alongside other materials, we found many of the partial remains had been buried a significant time after the person had died, suggesting a tradition of retaining and curating human remains. People seem to have curated the remains of people who had lived within living or cultural memory.”

He feels that these relics were essentially tributes to people who they found important or had a stronger bond/relationship with. This was not limited to family, but also to people in the same field, a friend or even an enemy.?

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Researchers feel that the idea to have an actual part of the dead person with them is to tell stories about the people they found important in their lives, and pass them on to future generations.

Professor Joanna Bruck, principal investigator on the project feels that discovery of such relics only goes to show that people don’t see death as traumatic and horrifically as we do today, “Although fragments of human bone were included as grave goods with the dead, they were also kept in the homes of the living. This suggests that Bronze Age people did not view human remains with the sense of horror or disgust that we might feel today.”