Truemors
JERUSALEM: Archaelogist believed a 12,000 year-old skeleton found in a grave containing 50 tortoise shells, a leopard pelvis, a cow tail and part of an eagle wing is the remains of a witch doctor.The skeleton, found at an excavation near the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel, is believed to be the world's oldest known grave of a shaman. The findings is believed to be that of a deformed woman around 45 years old from Natufian culture, which at that time ranged from Syria to the Sinai peninsula.
Mina Weinstein-Evron, an Israeli archaelogist specializing in Natufian culture who did not take part of the dig, said the find was a breakthrough. "If it's a witch, if it's a shaman, this would be the first proof ever of such a kind of behaviour within this hunter-gathering group," she said.
"From the standpoint of the status of the grave and its contents, no Natufian burial like this one has ever been found," lead archaeologist Leore Grosman said.
"This indicates the woman had a distinct societal position."
The Hilazon Tachtit site—9 miles (14 kilometers) inland from Israel's Mediterranean coastline—is associated with the Natufian culture, which flourished in the eastern Mediterranean between 11,500 and 15,000 years ago.
Hundreds of Natufian graves have been excavated in Israel, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. But only the one uncovered by Grosman contains a woman believed to have been a shaman.
The term "shaman" originated in Siberia, but these magic-invoking priest-doctors are common in cultures around the globe.
The 1.5-meter-tall (nearly 5-foot-tall), 45-year-old woman was relatively old for her time. After her death, she was placed in a mud-plastered and rock-lined pit in a cave and was buried beneath a large stone slab.
The findings were recently published in the United States, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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