'It's really a horror.' Bones from across Europe suggest Stone Age ritual killings.

The article focuses on the discovery and interpretation of Neolithic burials in Europe exhibiting signs of ritual strangulation, known as incaprettamento, a method historically used by the Italian Mafia to kill victims by binding and asphyxiation. Forensic anthropologist Eric Crubézy and colleagues identified 20 similar cases across 15 sites dated between 5500 and 3500 B.C.E., suggesting a widespread ritual practice among early European farming communities. These sites, including Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux in France, featured communal gatherings, fertility-related artifacts, and silolike structures, indicating complex ceremonial contexts. While some experts support the idea of shared ritualistic behaviors, others caution that the evidence—primarily the positioning of skeletons—cannot definitively prove violent death or a unified cosmology. The practice appears to have ended around 3500 B.C.E. with the rise of megalithic monument building in Western Europe.