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22.11.2018

Interesting facts

Sąspowska Valley discovers his secret

In the mouth of a child buried about 200 years ago in the Tunel Wielki cave, archaeologists have discovered the skull of a finch; another was next to the child's cheek.


A bird's skull was found in the mouth of a child buried in a cave


In the mouth of a child buried about 200 years ago in the Tunel Cave, great archaeologists have discovered the skull of a finch; another was next to the child's cheek. This is the only modern human skeleton discovered so far, found in a cave in the Kraków-Częstochowa Upland, the discoverers believe.

The findings were made several dozen years ago, but it has never been published and analyzed.

"About a 10-year-old child was buried very shallowly under the surface in one of the two chambers of the cave" - ​​Dr. Małgorzata Kot from the Institute of Archeology, University of Warsaw tells PAP. Researchers have taken samples from the child's remains for radiocarbon studies that allow their age to be determined. It turned out that the child was buried in the second half. XVIII century or at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth century,

Archaeologists most surprised that the child was buried with the bird's skull (finches) in his mouth. The second, the same skull was next to the child's cheek.

"This burial is a big surprise for us, and this practice is not known among the ethnologists we have asked for, so why is it a mystery for us why a child was buried in a cave in a way, not in a cemetery in a nearby village?" Dr. Kot.

Dr. Małgorzata Kot is conducting a large-scale project, the aim of which is to analyze monuments and bones discovered by archaeologists several decades ago during excavations in caves located in Sąspowska Valley - one of the valleys of the Kraków-Częstochowa Upland. Most of the finds immediately after the excavations went to the cartons, and then to the magazines. During the analysis of materials from these forgotten boxes, there was an unexpected discovery about the unusual burial of a child.

"When we opened another of the dusty cartons from the old research, small children's bones appeared to our eyes, and their discoverer, Professor Waldemar Chmielewski, never published this detail in detail, he only uploaded his photograph in a book from the 1980s - says Dr. Kot.

The latest anthropological research shows that the child was probably undernourished. Researchers plan to perform specialized analyzes, including DNA and isotopes, which will help in gathering more information about the deceased. At this stage, it is not even possible to say what gender the child was.

"Unfortunately, we do not have the skull of a deceased child in the University of Warsaw's warehouse - it went to anthropologists in Wrocław right after the excavation was completed 50 years ago." Today, the place of its storage is unknown "- Dr. Kot complaays. The researcher, however, hopes that she will be able to find her - she would have a cardinal significance for further research - marks the archaeologist.

Interestingly, the publications on the skulls of finches discovered at the deceased child were published by researchers from the Institute of Systematics and Animal Evolution of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Krakow. They were, however, completely unaware that they had been found at the burial. "We went back to these skulls, but the re-analysis did not show anything that could explain at least why the heads of the chaffinch accompanied the child." There are no traces of eg cuts on the skulls. We only know that they were the remains of adult birds "- said Dr. Kot.

In the same cave chamber Tunel Great excavations recently also led a team of dr. Michał Wojenki from the Jagiellonian University. He discovered numerous human remains, but dated over 4,500 years. "This cave chamber was a place where people in various periods of history came back to lay their dead," says Dr. Kot.

In the Sąspowska Valley, which is only 5 km long, there are several dozens of caves. In many of them, archaeologists have found traces of human activity from the Paleolithic to the Middle Ages. Among the oldest traces are tools used by Neanderthals. In the prehistory, people were also buried in them. However, this custom ended with the end of antiquity.

Dr Kot regrets that the caves in the Kraków-Częstochowa Upland were very badly damaged, especially in the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. At that time, on the massive scale, muds were extracted from them (sediments located at the bottom of the cave). They were used as a fertilizer. In the interwar period, scientists signaled to the authorities that valuable and valuable monuments are being exported and destroyed along with the land. That is why, finally, the industrial exploitation of caves was forbidden. "Unfortunately, we know how many valuable monuments and bones that could tell us about the past of a man, it was lost" - concludes Dr. Kot.

Source: www.naukawpolsce.pap.pl PAP - Science in Poland, Szymon Zdziebłowski

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