A human sacrifice ritual site dating back around 5,000 years has been unearthed in Turkey, where scientists say the remains of mostly teenage girls were discovered. The discovery was made nearly a decade ago in Başur Höyük, but experts were unsure about the meaning of the rituals. Now, a new paper sheds light on two important aspects of the remains found - the age and sex of those sacrificed.

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This region of Turkey was once a part of ancient Mesopotamia. Several stone tombs were discovered here a few years back and the skeletons were studied to learn about the ritual and the culture of the society.

David Wengrow, a professor of comparative archaeology at University College London, who studied the skeletons, told Live Science, "The fact that they are mostly adolescents is fascinating and surprising."

Two 12-year-old children were identified previously

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A previous study of the remains confirmed the burial of two 12-year-old children. Eight bodies of those violently killed surrounded them, suggesting the rise of an early state that included "royal" tombs with "retainer sacrifice."

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Their latest study on the skeletons has found that adolescence was an important life stage in this society. Published on March 17 in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal, ancient DNA analysis was carried out on nine skeletons. They found that those buried were not related to one another, and most of them were female.

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"So we are dealing with adolescents brought together, or coming together voluntarily, from biologically unrelated groups to carry out a very extreme form of ritual," Wengrow said. 

Victims of cult or competition?

However, researchers are still not sure what the rituals mean. Earlier belief was that young royals were buried with their attendants who were sacrificed. This was based on the belief that early Bronze Age societies had evolved into large-scale states with a king.

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But this does not seem to be the case now and the societies were purportedly more flexible. The political system was sometimes hierarchical, or king-based rule and also more egalitarian at times.

If this society was also flexible, then, the study authors say,  the burials may be better explained as a complex and potentially age-related funeral tradition. "Much more likely, what we see in the cemetery is a subset of a larger group, other members of which survived the ritual process and went on to full adulthood," Wengrow said. 

They say that "age sets" and gender play a role in egalitarian societies where leaders are chosen based on skills and not based on inheritance. The Bronze Age burials of adolescents in Turkey indicate an ancient cult was likely at play with victims of inter-group competition or violence, the researchers note in their study.