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The discovery of a chilling human sacrificial ritual dating back roughly 3,500 years has led archaeologists to challenge previously understood trajectories that defined how modern societies formed.
Ancient discoveries often confront previously agreed-upon understandings, offering new enlightening evidence that shifts perception in a typically dramatic fashion.
We've seen this with new finds in areas like Pompeii, where certain skeletal remains provide further context to how people died, alongside other finds that even hypothesize the advent of a new species of humans with unique features.
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Something similar has now occurred after the unveiling of remains that appear to be ritualistic human sacrifices involving teenage girls. As reported by Live Science, these were found at the site of Başur Höyük, which is in southeastern Turkey.
The site itself is estimated to have been formed between 3100 and 2800 B.C., and is filled with burial tombs that are typically accompanied by expensive and valuable artefacts or 'death artefacts'.
Previous studies surrounding these tombs indicate that they were most likely 'royal' tombs with 'retainer sacrifice', as it was understood that royal individuals would be buried with their attendants due to their high place in society, yet a new discovery challenges this notion.
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Published in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal, DNA analysis on skeletons not only indicates that all of the surrounding ritualistic deaths were adolescents (with most of them female), but they were also not biologically related.
David Wengrow, a professor of comparative archaeology at UCL, explained in relation to this discovery: "So we are dealing with adolescents brought together, or coming together voluntarily, from biologically unrelated groups to carry out a very extreme form of ritual."
What this then appears to unveil then is that novel political arrangements were likely used in this particular instance, instead of the previously understood royal dynamics.
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Instead of being dominated by status through birthright, these new political dynamics were often sorted hierarchically through age, with elders rising in ascendancy within groups of people through their gained wisdom.
Younger individuals and adolescents, however, were likely valued for their hunting skills or physical capabilities, and this collection of bodies within the exact same age set could suggest that they were either initiates into an ancient cult or participants in a violent competition.
"Much more likely, what we see in the cemetery is a subset of a larger group, other members of which survived the ritual process and went on to full adulthood," Wengrow revealed when speaking to Live Science.
What researchers have hypothesized from this is that instead of following a linear societal evolution from royal to egalitarian leaderships, they instead routinely switched between them, with this switch often occurring on a "seasonal basis."