Stone Age Orkney Islanders Dismembered Deceased Relatives and Defleshed their Bones

Millennia ago on the island of Orkney off the north coast of Scotland, prehistoric people removed the flesh from the bones of dead members of their community, chopped up the bodies and buried them jumbled together.

Defleshing of human bones has been observed in the archaeological record in various places around the world, including Turkey, the Philippines, Bolivia and Italy, all reported by Ancient Origins (see below).

A sensational headline on a story in the Daily Mail states, “Ancient Orkney islanders ripped flesh from dead relatives, chopped up their bodies and mixed them in mass graves in grisly ritual.”

Earlier archaeological studies had noted that the bones of dead Orkney islanders had been mixed at two sites. Those bones were not intact, complete skeletons. Earlier studies concluded the bodies were burned or buried to strip the flesh off the bones and then certain bones were transferred to a tomb. Evidence of similar behavior has been found in southern England, the Daily Mail states.

Dr. Rebecca Crozier of the University of the Philippines published a study in May in the pay-to-access Journal of Archaeological Science saying the bones she examined, from about 6,000 years ago, showed mourners transferred full bodies to tombs. There, people chopped up the bodies and scraped flesh from their bones. Dr. Crozier is an archaeologist who specializes in mortuary analysis, forensic archaeology and osteology or the study of bones.

The Orkney Islands have 72 known cairns or stone memorials that contained human bones that scientists have studied in the past. The cairns were made as long ago as 4000 BC.