Did beheadings occur in America long ago? 9,000-year-old skull may be the key to finding out

Researchers believe the remains were likely worshipped

A 9,000-year-old skull is the key piece of evidence indicating ceremonial beheadings took place in the Americas much earlier than what the researchers believed.

HOLLYWOOD, CA  (Catholic Online) -Experts believed ritual decapitations in the New World were around 2,500 B.C., when some Andean civilizations decapitated their enemies and wore the heads as trophies. However, Dr. Andre Strauss, of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anythropology, led a team of researchers who found a severed skull in 2007. The skull was found alongside severed hands which had been deliberately arranged at a burial site found at the Lapa do Santo rock shelter in east-central Brazil. They thought the pieces were not in any way related to the Andean trophy-taking tradition.

The authors of the paper -which was published in PLOS One- stated that neither the hands nor the skull showed signs of being worn as the Andeans were wont to do. Isotope analysis also revealed that the remains once belonged to a member of the local Lapa de Sato group. How the remains were arranged imply that the owner of the skull was involved in the tradition of ancestor skull worship, rather than being a trophy kill. 

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The grave where the remains were discovered didn't have any goods or detailed, elaborate architecture but researchers believed the way in which the hands were laid over the skull was an indication of some kind of custom or ritual adornment. 

The authors wrote, "[In the absence of burial wealth] Lapa do Santo's inhabitants seemed to use the human body to express their cosmological principles regarding death."
According to Science Magazine, the cults that held the ritual decapitation existed as early as 11,000 years ago in Middle East. Researchers believe that the remains were likely worshipped during that period. 

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