Crime Scene Eulau - The Mystery of the 13 Skeletons

Good morning!  There is a good run of new documentaries being posted across a variety of YouTube Channels.  This time I am going to look at Crime Scene Eulau: The Mystery of the 13 Skeletons.  The run time for this documentary is 43:44.

There was a discovery made in a quarry at Eulau, not far from Naumburg, Germany.  The discovery was a Neolithic grave that contained the skeletons of three women, two men, and eight children.  These people were buried carefully in this grave.  What happened to these people?  Why were they buried in such a careful way?  What can their graves tell us about Neothlic burial practices?

To start looking for the grave sites one has to take to the air.  The sky reveals several circular areas in the ground.  The earth never forgets and so ancient settlement sights would show up in the ground.  What will the archeological team find when they arrive to sight?  The team sets to work digging the site.  Evidence is carefully preserved and what they find astonishes them.  There are thirteen graves of thirteen people.  Did they die from natural causes?  Did they fall victim to diseases?  Or were they victims of violence? 

What the archeologists find will cause them to take a different path.  Experts are assembled to take a look at the mystery.  They are looking at this as though a crime had happened.  The injuries are consistent with a violent struggle.  One skeleton has an arrowhead in the spine.  Children were beaten to death.  The men show defensive wounds.  Who were these people?  Who would have killed them?  In the past, this would have been a trouble to solve, however with the latest technology archeologists can tell the bones’ story.

The first step in solving this mystery, the bones are tested to date them, learn whom they belonged to, and learn more about the life they lived.  The bones are carefully cleaned and ground to determine the bone’s age.  The bones are dated to about 4000 years ago, about 2,500 years before the time of Christ.  This was a time of change; tribes were searching for new lands.  Locals were displaced and conflicts were commonplace.  Germany had rich salt deposits and good farmland.

The results on one group of bones are shocking: they belonged to one family.  It is the oldest evidence of a nuclear family.  Who would have buried this family?  Who killed this family?  Did they leave any survivors?  Who were the people who mourned the dead? 

The experts continue to examine the evidence.  Were these a victim of the conflict?  They establish a timeline of the attack: the woman was struck first and then there was hand-to-hand combat which would have killed the others.  They may have belonged to a group known as the corded people.  They got their name because they impressed cords onto pottery to create decorative patterns.  They also herded goats and sheep.  Written communication was unknown during this time.  Children’s safety was important.

However, murderous attacks were rare, or were they?  One by one the skeletons are uncovered and documented.  The women’s heads lie to the east, while the men’s are to the west.  Each tribe had its burial rituals.  There were a variety of grave goods found as well as meat offerings.  A battle axe was placed in the grave.  Who would have taken these people’s lives?  A criminal analysis was brought onto this team of experts to talk about his expertise in crimes.  He looked at the evidence and concludes that this would have been a massacre done by a different clan.

The thirteen dead are an odd mix, as there are no young men and warriors found in the tombs.  To learn as to why the bones and soil are carefully cut out of the ground and brought to the lab for analysis.  Who killed these people?  Why were they buried so quickly?  Why were there no warriors found?  Tune into the rest of this episode to find out more!

This was too good of a documentary to pass up.  This brings together technology and archeological analysis.  This would be a good episode to show to a history class as well as a science class.  The story was very compelling and gives a glimpse into another story from history.