Tholos de Montelirio: The mysterious loss of life of the priestesses dyed pink that dressed 270,000 marine shells | Science | EUROtoday

There is nothing the identical within the archaeological registry: greater than twenty human stays in a round burial, all girls, through which those that occupy the central place are surrounded by 1000’s and 1000’s of small white accounts that needed to be a part of their clothes . It is the location of the Tholos de Montelirio, close to Seville. After years of labor, cleansing them one after the other, and in a job simply printed in Science Advancesarchaeologists have encrypted in additional than 270,000 the items of these tunics, skirts or fajines. They have additionally decided that they made them with 800 kilograms of a number of species of mollusks. A earlier examine had already present in his bones the best mercury concentrations recorded in scientific literature. Both components, the best accumulation of sea shells in a grave and the very excessive presence of steel make Montelirio an distinctive place through which girls who needed to have a particular significance had been buried about 4,800 years in the past.

“Impossible to tell them, they are more than a quarter of a million. What we have done is an estimate, ”says archaeologist Leonardo García Sanjuán, from the University of Seville, about these perforated accounts. To attain that determine, they took a pattern of 1,000 already washed and weighed. With a rule of three they reached the calculation of 270,769 white accounts. “The next grave that is known with this type of accounts, with the next largest collection, is one that is in a United States site. It is the largest ceremonial complex that is known in northern Mexico. There is a tomb of a character that has been interpreted as socially relevant and had 30,000 accounts. From there, what is known is tombs with 5,000, 2,000 or 1,000 accounts, ”says García Sanjuán.

Although there are ivory or some stones accounts, 99% comes from a number of species of scallops and berobits. Through a collection of experiments to breed how they did them, scientists have estimated that some 800 kilograms of those bivalves had been wanted. “The youth today are known for being the symbol of the Camino de Santiago, but in ancient times, they were the symbol of Aphrodite/Venus. It is clear that in the pre -Christian world the Vieira, its shell, is a symbol of femininity, is a symbol of some goddesses that are basically those of fertility, ”recollects the archaeologist.

It is one other of the information that make this place so particular. The burial is shaped by two cameras and a protracted 40 -meter hall. Remains of 26 people have been discovered within the dolmen. The majority (20) had been within the massive digital camera and 17 had been girls. Of the opposite three it has not been potential to find out its gender. It is round a bunch of them, positioned in a specific approach, the place the drilling accounts had been. One, which needed to be coated with a sea shell gown from the neck to the legs, had The summer time solstice A high-quality solar ray crossed the whole hall till reaching these girls. “It is very special, because there are no men, there are no elders, there are no old women and there are no children. This grave is not a snapshot or a frame of society. Here we have a select social group, very special, ”maintains García Sanjuán.

Radiocarbon courting provides curiosity to the discovering. All girls died in a comparatively quick interval. The course of by which carbon-14 declines by radiation (till it turns into a secure component, nitrogen-14) begins simply on the time of loss of life. The downside for the students of the previous is that the clock will not be very exact, advancing or delaying a couple of years, on this case about 25. So those that wore these accounts tunics might die in a single occasion or all through a number of years . The shells, which have additionally been dated, don’t can help you select between one or an alternative choice. But to affirm that they had been collected a short while earlier than the women died.

The archaeologist of the University of Durham (United Kingdom) and co-author of the investigation, Marta Díaz-Guardamino, recollects that there isn’t a certainty of the second when the shells had been collected: “The dates by radiocarbon what they are doing is datar, death of the Bivalvo ”. With this proviso, he emphasizes that mollusks “offer a temporary range in which all these things could have happened, the death of the bivalvo, collection and manufacturing.” That interval may be from one or two to 200. So for Díaz-Guardamino, it can’t be affirmed that, nor might girls be with girls, the gathering and clothes occurred in a novel occasion. But they can’t rule it out both.

Something related occurs with García Sanjuán’s speculation that these girls wore their marine accounts costumes throughout ceremonies. It might have been simply the other, that they had been their shroud, solely used to bury them. “Yes, we observe wear in some of the accounts, but it does not seem to use, but rather erosive, caused by the substances with which he has been in contact,” says archaeologist Díaz-Guardamino.

Mercury within the bones

To full the thriller of Montelirio, in 2023 one other work confirmed that these buried there had very excessive concentrations of mercury of their bones. Considered right this moment a really harmful poisonous by the World Health Organization (WHO), this liquid steel has been used immediately or not directly for millennia. In nature it’s introduced as mercury sulphide in minerals comparable to cinnabar. From this rock you get a pigment already used within the first cities, comparable to çatalhöyük about 10,000 years in the past and subsequently referred to as Pompeyan pink for being answerable for the Bermellón colour of the partitions of the Roman villas. Mercury was additionally important in mining by facilitating the separation of gold and silver from different metals. It was even used till the nineteenth century (it’s nonetheless collected in Chinese pharmacopoeia) as drugs, the primary weapon in opposition to illnesses comparable to syphilis being for hundreds of years.

All the ladies of Montelirio had mercury of their bones. The common worth within the femur was as much as 95 micrograms per gram of bone. But in 17 of them, the degrees are round 500. The archaeologist of the University of Seville, Raquel Montero, is an skilled in using the cinnabrio and mercury all through historical past. Co -author of labor that decided steel ranges in burial bones, says such concentrations are very excessive, however it isn’t simple to make comparisons. “There is no threshold set by WHO and it is not easy to study it in bones,” says Montero. So the ladies of the 1000’s of accounts had poisonous mercury ranges of their physique.

“But we don’t know how it reached his bones,” Montero admits. In the location there was Cinnabrio scattered, explains the archaeologist: “On the ground, on the bodies, the walls were painted red, but we do not know if the skin was painted.” His colleague García Sanjuán needs to assume that they had been painted pink and wearing sea shells “in ceremonies that should be impressive for those who watched them.” In truth, the Valencina advanced, the place burial is positioned, was a ceremonial assembly place. Along these traces, the authors of the examine keep in mind that, in low doses, mercury causes altered states of consciousness comparable to some ritual medicine. There can be one other risk: that they had been sacrificed, poisoned with the cinnabar and bunned with the shells. There are a number of extra research that might reply the remaining questions.