been researching bog burials and associated hoodoo for stalemate, ran across this article, desperately want to know not just WHY these people made this bizarro boneyard at the bottom of a lake, but HOW. did they swim down there and do their bone-arranging under water? was it a dry spell? did the lake dry up, was this a ritual to bring the water back? if it was, i guess it worked.
There are quite a few significant archeological sites that are only preserved because they were built in places that flooded. There is a mammoth run at the bottom of Lake Michigan that is wicked old, for example.
Not to erase merpeople culture or anything.
this particular site, though, was a lake at the time, according to the article. there’s brain matter preserved inside one of the skulls, indicating it was submerged in an anoxic environment before it could rot away.
if it wasn’t the bottom of a lake the day they put up the halloween decorations, it became a lake bottom within weeks, probably days.
so i’ve made up a little story to explain it: the people with the head injuries were survivors of a rockfall – that’s why the men were hit on the forehead and the women on the back of the head, because they were couples facing each other when suddenly rocks fell. they were pretty messed up, but people still cared about them. when they died, the rest of the village was so sad they wanted to give them a really good burial, but it seemed disrespectful to put them under a rock cairn, since it was a rockfall that ruined their lives. a fisherman offered the solution: bury them under the water, where no rocks can fall on them. so as each survivor died, he swam down and affixed their head to an underwater pole, safe from rocks.
the reason all the bear remains are on one side is because that’s the side of the lake the bear hunter’s house was on and it would’ve been disrespectful to row across the grave to put the annual offering to the dead on the other side.
that is my story, and it’s as good an explanation as any, i think. *takes a modest bow*
8,000-Year-Old Heads on Stakes Found in Mysterious Underwater Grave
funeral-biscuit 