Infamous mass grave of young women in ancient city of Cahokia also holds men....

[Rowdyboy]

http://westerndigs.org/infamous-mass-grave-of-young-women-in-ancient-city-of-cahokia-also-holds-men-study/

The scene, discovered by archaeologists in Illinois more than 40 years ago, depicts one of the most extravagant acts of violence ever documented in ancient America: A thousand-year-old pit found under a tall earthen mound, lined from corner to corner with skeletons — 53 in all — neatly arranged two bodies deep, each layer separated by woven fiber mats.

The victims all appeared to be women, mostly in their late teens or early 20s. Evidence suggested they were strangled, or perhaps cut at the throat, at the edge of their shared mass grave, and then interred, meters away from an ornate burial of two men thought to be clan elders, political leaders, spiritual guides, or all three.

But the women were not alone. At the other of end the mound were three more mass graves, containing another 65 skeletons between them, also apparently of females. By the time the entire mound had been excavated, two dozen burial pits had emerged, cradling some 270 human remains, each betraying signs of various degrees of violence — from having their jaws broken to being buried alive.

Now little more than a series of grassy hillocks outside St. Louis, Cahokia was once the metropole of a civilization whose trade routes and religious influence stretched from the Great Lakes to the Deep South, and whose culture shaped the ways of the Plains and Southern Indians.

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