article_snippet: Stone Age farmers in Puglia Italy cut the flesh from the bones of Stone Age farmers in Italy dead before burying their dead, a new study has found.
article_snippet: Researchers at the University of Cambridge have discovered cut marks on 7,000 year old human remains buried in a cave in Puglia, south eastern Puglia Italy.
article_snippet: These cuts and scrapes, made with stone tools, suggest the skeletons had the skeletons flesh carefully removed in rituals before being placed in Scaloria Cave.
article_snippet: Many bones, such as this fibula, found in Scaloria Cave showed fine cut marks made with stone tools .
article_snippet: Dr John Robb, a reader in European prehistory at the University of CambridgeCambridge, and his team say it might have been a way of returning the bones to Dr John Robb, a reader in European prehistory at the University of Cambridge, and his team stone like origins.
article_snippet: The remains were initially unearthed in 2013 and have now been analysed using radiocarbon dating.
article_snippet: The results of the analysis showed the bones belonged to a man and a woman, both aged between 20 and 25, dating back almost 5,800 years.
article_snippet: Farmers from villages up to 12 miles away are thought to have brought Farmers from villages up to 12 miles away dead to the Scaloria Cave in the Peloponnese region of Greece.
article_snippet: Writing in the journal Antiquity, Dr Robb and Dr Robb colleagues said: 'Neolithic people at the Scaloria Cave engaged in a varied range of funerary practices including primary burial, skull removal and redeposition, and defleshing and secondary deposition. '
article_snippet: In 1978 the fragmented remains of between 22 and 31 individuals were discovered in The upper chamber, around half of which were children.
article_snippet: In one case one child aged between five and seven years old that dated to 5463-5221 BC had been buried complete
article_snippet: Instead Dr Robb and his colleagues believe the remains were brought from the farming settlements surrounding Scaloria where any remaining flesh was removed, the skeletons they found, particularly around major joints or tendon attachments were dis-articulated and then strewn on the cave floor.
article_snippet: the skeletons they found, particularly around major joints or tendon attachments say some of the remains may have been previously buried before being brought to the cave.
article_snippet: Here at Scaloria people deposited bones from elsewhere and whole bodies, and Scaloria people seem to have cleaned bones within less than a year after death, when some soft tissues were still on some soft tissues. '
highlights_snippet: Bones of up to 31 Neolithic farmers found in Scaloria Cave, in Puglia Italy .
  
highlights_snippet: Archaeologists found delicate cut marks from stone tools on Bones of up to 31 Neolithic farmers .
  
highlights_snippet: Archaeologists believe Bones of up to 31 Neolithic farmers had been stripped of flesh as part of a burial ritual .
  
highlights_snippet: Bones of up to 31 Neolithic farmers may have been scattered in Scaloria Cave to 'return Bones of up to 31 Neolithic farmers to stone' 