Location is Tunel Wielki Cave in Poland. Fifty years ago, there was a strange discovery in a cave. A skeleton of a girl with bones of chaffinch birds placed around her, and with one inside her mouth. This type of burial was common in ancient times, but radiocarbon has dated the girl comes from the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries. It was discovered also that she suffered in life and was malnourished. According to the girl's DNA, she wasn't Polish but Fennoscandian. It might be that the girl travelled with families to the area at the same time Finnish troops journeyed there in support of the Swedish king Carl Gustav.
No one really knows why she was buried that way, except that certain people had beliefs that are about birds releasing the soul to the afterlife. Burying the dead inside caves is a primitive ritual that early hunter-gatherers used to do. Some believe that the girl's skeleton has been buried in a prehistoric fashion, and in a cave with no evidence of any ancient use.
The birds bones reveal they were not consumed by the child, but likely put there with a ritualistic purpose. These birds were likely already dead while they were displayed on the deceased child. Certain pagan funeral practices similar to this happened in countries such as Finland until the 19th Century. Finches have a lot of significance in Christianity too as birds of freedom. The ritual may also be rural Medieval. More mysterious is that, after the child's skull was sent off for research, it simply disappeared and hasn't been found!
For more reading at Ancient Origins: Bizarre burial Girl with bird
Have a good weekend.
She Wolf Night
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