ExtinctZoo - The Most Terrifying Discoveries Made By Archeologists

Episode Date: November 15, 2025

Love your neighbor is apparently a saying that didn’t get around in ancient times, as we humans did some pretty messed up things to our own kind back in the day.

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Statistically, there is only one true answer. And no, it's not mosquitoes. Rather, other humans. No animal causes ourselves as much pain as, well, ourselves. And every year, at least 475,000 people are killed by other humans. And mind you, this is not including war, car crashes, accidents, or the transmission of contagious diseases, which would then put the number in the many millions.

And so not only can no other animal compare to this by numbers, but also not by brutality, Because without going into too much detail, I'm sure most of you already know how brutal humans can be. However, for as bad things can seem today, in some ways, I much prefer the present over the past, as back in the day people could be quite out of control. And there is no better evidence for this than real-life discoveries which document ancient human violence, which was in some cases so grim that it honestly makes horror movies look like sunshine and roses. In a decent place to start, is about just the worst time you could have to speak.

bond as a human, the Neolithic, also known as the New Stone Age. It's hard to describe this period in one word, but whatever that word is, it's not a good one, and that largely was because of us, with violence and war being the name of the game back then. In fact, the violence was so bad that it might have resulted in a drastic drop in population that it was severe enough to cause an actual genetic bottleneck. And due to this, you might be unsurprised to hear that we know of literally hundreds of mass burials and sites of brutal violence that all trace back to this period.

Yet, like everything, there were levels to the drangeness, with some sites being more plain, you know, a simple blunt forest victim here and there, while others make you want to go, what the freakasaurus. And one of the most horrifying sites yet was a place known as Herksheim. This archaeological site sits in the southwest of Germany, and is frankly a place you wonder if it would be best if it was never discovered, as it contains the remains of a pretty grisly massacre even by prehistoric standards, and is actually the largest ancient massacre site we know of. with there being at least a thousand slain individuals that have been chucked into a series of pits that surrounded a then large settlement.

And based on a few of the more intact bodies found, it's been suggested that the dead have been offed by not one, but by a variety of different weapons. You know, got to switch it up sometimes. But with stone axes in particular being quite prevalent, causing smashed skulls, broken limbs, and just in general, a whole lot of trauma. And let's just say, absolutely no mercy was shown to the victims, as men, woman, children, and even newborn. were amongst the dead. And something else that was pretty unusual and grotesque about this place was that in the pits of the deceased, researchers wound up finding victims that belong not to just one group, but

multiple. And these groups, in some cases came from very different places, being from areas up to 310 kilometers or 500 miles away. And so this, along with the presence of the settlement, led to the horrifying notion that Herksheim wasn't some aftermath of a battlefield or just a raid on a village, but rather the center of a murderous cult, which rounded up captives from across great distances before then taking them here to be quote unquote silenced, or perhaps sacrificed. And that alone should be enough to show the dark side of humanity.

But the true nightmare involves what happened to these people after death, as the vast majority of skeletons were in abysmal states, being in pieces, charred, shattered, or cleaved, a sign that the killers have meticulously butchered, dismembered, and in some cases freaking spit roasted these poor people. But all this might have been done for a feast. As across the bones, researchers found numerous times of biting and gnawing, reflecting cannibalism on a scale never seen before, and some of the bones were even more gnawed than others, suggesting that in this cult, the killers also had their favorite parts of the body, so to speak.

And sadly, we don't really need our imagination to imagine what parts those were, as we are quite certain that one of the most prized parts turned out to be the noggin, i.e., the brain, as the majority of skulls were treated in the exact same manner, being that they had been struck along the sagittal line, splitting faces, mandibles, and skull caps, creating symmetrical halves, with a few also clearly having been skinned as well. How lovely. And after eating the flesh off the heads and extracting the brain contents for a good source of daily fat, this cult would then take the vault of the skull and transform them into

essentially skull cups, from which they would then drink, leading to another very pleasant idea that the victims were feasted upon while their killers drank from their literal skulls. Quite a horrifying thought, being eaten while someone uses your skull to quench their thirst. But with all this said, ultimately Herksheim was just one of numerous sites that demonstrated such behavior. But it definitely holds the crown when it comes to quantity and quality, so you could say. And you really won't find locations more brutal than this one. But you can definitely find acts that are almost as cruel and also very strange. Such as a discovery that was made in 2023, when a team stumbled upon a,

a collection of dismembered body parts. Specifically, a dozen of hands that were on earth within three separate pits. No bodies, just hands. Now, admittedly, it wasn't the first time specific bones were found in pits, but these ones were located in a rather odd place, where you wouldn't expect to find such a violent act. And where was that? Well, in front of a courtyard. And whose courtyard? Well, instead of a specific person, it belonged to a culture, in a sense, one that I'm sure you have all heard of, and at some point might have been very interested in. as it belonged to, ancient Egyptians. Yep, it seems like these guys had a knack for hacking people's hands off,

and then stuffing them into pits. Now, we were already aware of their affinity for this, based on certain hieroglyphs which have been discovered in the past, depicting people clearly collecting hands like some type of game achievement, but this find was the first case of researchers actually seeing the practice carried out in real life. Here's the thing, though. Severed hands are not exactly new.

We've seen them happen in prehistoric cases of violence before, you know, such as where a hand is lost in battle. Yet, this story is a bit stranger than simple violence, if you will. You see, the courtyard was situated right in front of a throne room, which belonged to the Hisco's dynasty, a rather well-known group that actually originated in the Levant, and ruled thousands of years ago, marking them as the first foreign rulers of Egypt, with this site explicitly being over 3,500 years old. And they are well known for having introduced a variety of cultures and new tech to the Egyptians, including, for example, chariots. And I guess taking hands was a part

of this too. But they weren't just taken for the sake of the sake of the the sake of taking. No, instead it seems like these severed hands were used as some sort of currency. And I don't know about you guys, but humans constructing a society removing hands is rewarded with gold or service isn't necessarily a place I'm trying to time travel to visit for too long, or really at all. And so what archaeologists think happened is that soldiers would sever hands off the living were already dead enemies of their rulers, before making them look nice and pretty and presenting them to the pharaoh or some noble, where in return they would have got in the bag. There's also the suggestion that severed hands were a bit of a cultural

currency too, wherein different rulers and people high up, which show off, are proving they had more sliced hands than the next guy or girl. And this all makes me wonder how many innocent people ultimately got their hands taken, simply because some soldier, or a person, wanted some extra gold, or perhaps that a pharaoh just wanted to show off. And so far, a dozen of hands have been on earth from this specific site, which, by the way, belonged exactly to one dozen individuals, who were above the ages of 21, but not elderly, and all but one were likely males, with the last hand possibly having belonged to a lone woman, which we know based off of finger-length ratios. Now, to be honest, I'm certainly not saying this is the most brutal find we have involving people.

Yet, I do think it really shows how strange humans are in a kind of bad way, where removing the body parts of your own species can be seen as a monetary, good, and cool thing. And this all makes me wonder, how did we even go from banging some rocks together to trading numerous body parts for gold? Well, I doubt I, more anyone can tell you all the precise steps involved, but I can't tell you about the oldest evidence we have for intentional violence between Homo sapiens, with the real Canaan Abel, if you will. A few years back within Romania, the team was excavating the Pistera-Clovena Cave of South Transylvania, where they then stumbled upon a multitude of different fossils and artifacts, specifically consisting of stone tools tracing to the ornation culture, along with several bones belonging to cave bears. And now, despite being found in Romania, in Transylvania, this was no vampire's lair, rather a person or persons, who had inhabited it for a while and had seemingly whacked a few animals here and there, which were brought back to be grubbed up. Yet, among the pile of material, the researchers noticed something, one very odd thing, which stuck out like a sore thumb, or should I say, a sore head, as it was actually a large piece of a skull, and it didn't belong to no cave bear, but rather a human. To be exact, it seemed to have belonged to an adult man, which had lived in the area about 33,000 years ago, during the Upper Paleolithic.

And something else they deduced quite obviously was that this was one banged-up skull, as the skull's right side had essentially been cracked like a freaking egg. However, the team wasn't really sure what this meant. They couldn't figure out if the damage had been accidental, like maybe it was a clumsy goober who tripped and hit his head, or if the damage came from something like a falling rock. And so this meant they would need to do some research, which entailed gathering what was essentially the Avengers, of science, uniting researchers from multiple countries and carrying out a slew of tests and scans on the skull, which all ended up revealing a disturbing truth. Very disturbing. And that is that nothing accidental had happened to this man. He had been straight up killed, intentionally, obviously.

Specifically, they were able to identify not one, but two near-identical massive fractures that ran along their right side of the skull. And guess what? The presence of these two fractures was huge news, as their identicalness meant that this man had been hit twice. And they were twice in quick succession. And not just that, but that each hit was done by the exact same object. In other words, there's no way this dude slipped. Additionally, while comparing the pathology from the skull to that of those seen in present day, they confirmed that the pattern and nature of the wounds only matched damage seen in violent attacks carried out with blunt force objects, in this case, a bat. And with this, the team had a confident idea on what had happened.

For whatever reason, 33,000 years ago, this man was mining his own beeswax, maybe, when all of a sudden he was struck twice by another individual, holding a bat-like weapon, with the first hit incapacitating him, with the second having ended him, likely via catastrophic brain damage. Additionally, this attack seems to have been quite personal too, as the location of the wound suggests that his killer was facing him head on while carrying out the deed. And for whatever it's worth, it also appears that the killer was left-handed, given that the fractures occurred on the right side of the skull. And when looking at the age of the remains, it is for now considered the oldest near-conclusive evidence

we have for intentional violence among humans and the first homicide. However, I will mention that this absolute does not mean that in the first 300,000 years we've existed, there were no other acts of murder or violence against fellow man. In fact, it's guaranteed not to have been. It's rather just the first one we are aware of. But there is actually a close competitor that occurred in Russia around the same time, and what is now known as... No one goes to Hank's first spreadsheets.

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massacre, and other times, not as much, thankfully. And actually, for a good duration of our existence, large-scale violence did seem to be rarer than frequent. With one hypothesis being that for a chunk of history, the population of humans was too low and too mobile for large conflicts to pop up often. Yet, as humans settled into areas more permanently, developed more complex societies and swelden numbers, the opportunity and reward for violence grew exponentially. And really, as of now, the oldest evidence for large-scale violence dates to around the same time the permanent settlements became a thing. And the location of this atrocity that I'm referring to was discovered within the Valley of the Nile, specifically the Sudanese section. And it really was a doozy for scientists,

As within this narrow valley lay the remains of at least 64 near intact skeletons and a bunch of fragmented bones, most of which were in poor condition. And when I say condition, I don't mean bad condition from weathering or the passing at time. Rather, these lot have been brutally killed, with every single person having some kind of major injury to their body. And unfortunately, the slain weren't just adults, as the deceased were a range of ages and gender, with the indiscriminative violence even being extended to young children. as two child specimens, dubbed JS-14 and JS-13, have been literally headshotted by numerous projectiles, with none of the wounds having healed, meaning they died then and there, likely alongside the rest of their family.

And the thing is, they weren't just headshotted, but rather literally riddled by projectiles, entire body over. So whoever shot them clearly had no mercy in their heart, and even along the legs of these children was their extensive damage, wherein various projectiles had impacted them and were strong enough to badly damage their femurs, causing large chunks of the femur to literally fly off. And in general, it seems like all the victims received similar overkill treatment. And in 21 individuals, they even found the remains of actual stone-edged points that pierced their bodies, which would have been unimaginably painful in life, lodging into their bones or slicing straight through flesh into organs and other vital structures. The shapes of the points indicated that the attack had been carried out with bows,

and spears, and at first was believed to have represented a pitched battle between two warring factions. However, after some analysis, including the varying ages and gender, a new conclusion was drawn that the Jabal Sahaba was the site of not one but multiple battles, and none against two armed groups, rather a series of raids and ambushes by not only unsuspecting groups, but unarmed groups. In this particular situation, scientists believed that the Nau Valley had been undergoing immense ecological changes, likely drying out, which thus led to the United States.

to a drop in resources and suddenly making it very quote-unquote advantageous for humans to start killing their fellow kind. And to me, this isn't the greatest reflection on our species, where in the event that things get tough, instead of cooperating and trying to come up with a solution, this solution is instead to murder everyone around you, including children. So let me go ahead and just say this to any aliens watching this. I don't condone this, and I'm sure we can do better, so don't wipe us out. Now, with this all said, while Homo sapiens have produced, the most disturbing fossil fights by level of violence, is definitely an issue not limited to our species. Rather, it's a problem for our overall genus, Homo.

And thus, even the species that are no longer with us have been responsible for their own horrific actor too. This list isn't short either. Yet, what I think takes the cake for the most arranged discovery regarding non-sapian humans has to be something called Atapurca. This forsaken location is situated in the Burgos province of Spain, and is by far the oldest case have talked about, dating all the way back to 850,000 years ago during the early Pleistocene. However, despite it being one location, it's really multiple sites within one massive area.

And through different excavation, nine different areas have been explored, each yielding vastly different finds from multiple periods. But one of the more memorable ones is the natural chimney of sorts that has accumulated the largest deposit of early hominins that we know of, with the inside of it containing over 5,500 skeletons. And get this, they're a large, the They didn't even all belong to the same humans, with some belonging to Homo Hidalbergens, others to Neanderthals, and some possibly to Donozovans, with the age also ranging greatly, with them being from 350,000 to 800,000 years old. And along with the diversity in species, this site also had variance in terms of what it

revealed about our past, as some of the deceased as certain health conditions, like cranesinostosis, while others were evidently killed by their fellow humans via blunt force trauma, and some simply seem to have died from old age. Now, what we aren't sure is if this chimney full of bones was a natural occurrence, like for example with water having swept over the area and thus carrying all these bones into this location or if it was some sort of burial practice. Yet regardless, this isn't what we are here for, as another area of Atopoerica, dubbed Chuncherra Dolina is in some ways more important and definitely more heinous.

Now this wasn't some narrow chimney, rather a massive cavern that first started to be excavated back in the early 1980s. Interestingly, there are multiple different, quote-unquote, levels to this place. Each one with a different sediment that represents a different time period. And thus far, there are 11 different levels which are dubbed T-Ds. Now, most of the T-Ds are actually rather tame. You know, you might find a tool on one level, some animal bones on the other, etc., etc. You get the picture.

However, TD6 was bat-poop crazy, as here the remains belonging to at least 11 different hominins have been found. 11 different hominins that were butchered. Not exactly new news, but here's the thing. More than 30% of the lot had clear signs of having been cannibalized, with bones showing cut marks akin to our hunters butcher animals, with observations also showing that they were scraped, meaning whoever ate them wanted to get every last nook and cranny of meat.

So quite upsetting, but I'm about up at one more time, because this wasn't a simple cannibalistic massacre, rather one aimed at a very specific type of person, children. Yes, among the dead, not a single adult human was found, Instead, all were either infants or at the oldest teenagers, with more than half clearly being under 10 years old, sickening. And if you didn't think it could get any worse, then I'm sorry, as the scientists ended up considering this nutritional cannibalism. In other words, the killers viewed these people as just wild animals

and flesh, hunting them like they would a deer. Additionally, it is believed that youngsters were targeted as opposed to adults because they would have been less capable of defending themselves. It would be an effective way for the hostile attackers to limit the growth capabilities, of other groups. Nasty business. The part that really gets me, though, is that an analysis on the area and its surroundings that compare the rate of human bones to other animal ones, suggested that during this region, 850,000 years ago, things were going just fine. There was no climate crisis, no disease going around, and in other words, these people didn't have to be cannibals. They just chose to. Not to mention that during the act, they even decapitated one of the

young specimens, likely while they were still alive. And for now, this is considered the oldest evidence by good margin of cannibalism in the homogenes, setting such a nice tone for the future, doesn't it? Plus, given its nature, it's the first case of cannibalism targeted at younger people as well. And while we know the rough age is the slain, the case remains unsolved in one very important area, the species, as there is disagreement on what homo these victims were. The candidates proposed so far have been Homo erectus, Homo Hydrogyzensis, or the Homo antecessor, three different species known to have lived in Europe at the time. And because there was many share its similarities between these different species and given just the poor condition

of the butchered bodies, it's been hard for scientists to sort out which ones they were explicitly. But this mystery is not the point of the story here, just that our genus is a bit messed up. And science actually kind of supports this as well, as a study in over a thousand different species, found that primates, which is what we are, have much higher rates of injure specific violence than most other mammals do. And in this circle where red means bad stuff, you can see that we are definitely on the naughty list. Although, I will say, that I was pretty surprised to find that the most bloody of all mammals are really mere cats, apparently, not humans. But that's perhaps another story, one that I might

talk about on my other channel, Living Zoo. So if you're not subscribed to that, go do that now. Humans, given our intelligence and, um, creativity, have the ability to be much more scary and sinister than mere cats. In other words, if I get caught by something trying to kill me, I really hope it's not a person, because we can come up with some pretty brutal ideas. And if you've watched any sort of true crime, you know this. But unfortunately, ancient humans also demonstrate this very well. And perhaps another place shows it like, Shearnik Kielenstetzen, doesn't exactly roll off the tongue well,

well, at least in my tongue. And nor did it on the eyes, as it was here that an unnecessarily brutal act was carried out. Fun fact, this location is actually not far from the major city of Frankfurt in Germany. But, in this case, dates back to 7,000 years ago, making it just one of the over 200 known sites worldwide of mass violence, hailing from the Neolithic. Once again, highlighting the viciousness of this age. And at first glance, it doesn't seem so special, as it was much smaller than, say, Hark's time.

Only consisting of one large V-shaped pit were in lay at least 12 different children, one teenager, and 13 adults, who had all either been whacked in the head or skewered with projectiles, which was unfortunately pretty standard for the time. However, what was really strange here, in not seen now, anywhere else was that half of the bodies had the same peculiar pathology, smashed tibious. In other words, they got their shin bones demolished. Pretty unusual. I mean, literally one of a kind. And it was only seen in some of the individuals. But remember, they already had lethal wounds, all of them. So what does this all mean? Well, according to the team that excavated the bones,

it points to a dark hallmark of humanity, mutilation and torture. All the breakage seems to have been carried out with the same weapons. But what was really striking is that the afflicted group of residents of a small Neolithic community. In other words, they weren't some warring adversaries, rather just people living their lives, who were then attacked by a party, which decided to not only raid them, but torture them by bashing in their legs, and kill them. Now, it's possible that the attack was done in order to take the resources of this community for the attackers group. Yet, that still makes the torturing part a big question, and shows perhaps early signs of sadism, which is, unfortunately, actually surprisingly common in humans, at least based on a few studies.

There's also the, perhaps, weirder but less horrifying idea that the shins were actually broken after death in order to prevent their ghosts from chasing the killers. Odd, but given how odd we are, believable. Yet the one thing that gets me is that like mentioned, not all the legs have been broken. Plus, even some of the kids had signs of this mutilation, meaning it would seem odd that they didn't make sure that all of the ghosts couldn't run after them. But whatever the case, didn't exactly restore my confidence in humanity. So I think I'm going to go take a walk in nature. Peace. Thanks for watching.

And until next time, on Extincts. How many discounts does USAA auto insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount. Safe driver discount. New vehicle discount. Storage discount. How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit usa.com slash auto discounts.

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