If it happened today, it would be a brutal murder; 4000 years ago, it was a ritual killing.
The discovery of the body of an Aboriginal man from that time who was attacked, set alight and abandoned on a coastal dune is the first archaeological evidence in Australia for death by spearing. The body was found beneath a Sydney bus shelter by a team led by archaeologist Josephine McDonald of the Australian National University in Canberra.
The man seems to have been wounded by at least three spears and an axe, and from the front as well as behind. This,…
