Kristina Killgrove is an archaeologist with specialties in ancient human skeletons and science communication. Her academic research has appeared in numerous scientific journals, while her news stories and essays have been published in venues such as Forbes, Mental Floss and Smithsonian.
Around 1,000 years ago, pagans living near the Baltic Sea imported horses from their newly Christian northern neighbors and then subjected the animals to gruesome public sacrifice, a new study finds.
A previous assumption within Baltic archaeology, according to the study, was that stallions were specifically selected for public sacrifice and that this ritual — which often involved decapitation, flaying, quartering the horses or burying them alive — was enacted at the funerals of elite male warriors in Balt culture. To test this, the team analyzed the DNA of the horses and found that roughly 66% were stallions and 34% were mares.
By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over."Results confirm that there is no possibility that the horses originated in the territory of the Baltic tribes and that the region of the highest likelihood for these horses is the Fennoscandian Peninsula, specifically east-central Sweden or southern Finland," the researchers wrote.
"In either case," the researchers wrote,"our results prove that horses were crossing the Baltic Sea on ships, a level of mobility not previously recognized archaeologically."
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