Ditch full of 7,000-year-old headless human skeletons discovered in Slovakia, baffling archaeologists

A composite image of aerial photos of excavated graves with an illustration of the individual skeletons.

At the entrance to a Stone Age neighborhood in Slovakia, archaeologists have uncovered a ditch full of headless human skeletons.

While the bones reveal cut marks that signal decapitation, researchers think the practice was not a violent mass killing but rather part of a complex burial ritual more than 7,000 years ago. In other words, the individuals were likely beheaded postmortem.