16.2.2013 He had a ritual double grave in his garden

He was working with a neighbour in his garden in Kunovice in the Uhersko Hradiště region when they discovered the bone. Experts subsequently searched the site and unearthed a ritual double grave about 3,500 years old. The remains belonged to a young man and a young woman.

Archaeologists found the unique grave eight years ago in a private garden in Kunovice. Experts say it's 3,500 thousand years old. The skeletons were discovered by the owner of the site and a neighbour while they were doing landscaping. Later, archaeologists discovered it was a ritual double grave.

The results of the research were presented four years ago at an exhibition in the Slovak Museum. The head of the local archaeological department, Tomáš Chrástek, said at the time that on the basis of anthropological determination they found that the remains belonged to an adolescent or young man in his 20s and most likely a young woman in her 25s.

The pair are believed to have been victims of a ritual murder linked to a so-called sun cult. It is a type of religious behaviour in which the sun or deities embodying it are worshipped. "Animal sacrifices were placed around the skeletons and fragments of ceramic vessels were piled up. On the basis of the ceramic material, we can assign the find to the Věteřov culture of the Bronze Age, so its age is about 3 500 years," Chrástek explained.

The owner of the garden, Tomáš Čabla, who found the skeletons, also spoke to the media about the find. He admitted that he had no idea that whoever makes an archaeological find is obliged to report it. "The fact that we were not pressed for time and could let the archaeologists examine the find played a role. We knew the site would be covered in snow all winter anyway, so we approached it that way. We were still joking about whether we had found Methodius," Čabla joked in an interview with Czech Radio.

Chabla first noticed the colour change in the dirt and wondered if a fresh corpse had been buried in his garden. His neighbour was working on the plot with him, but came across a bone. At that point, they began to wonder what they had found. So Chabla took the bone to the pathologist. He was tempted to find out what was actually in his garden. He had also worked on archaeological digs in his youth.

According to archaeologists, nothing like this has ever been found in Moravia. Traces of similar rituals have only been found at the Cezava site near Blučina in the Brno region. But the Kunovice find is unique for two reasons - its age and the way the bodies are buried.

Sources:
www.kr-zlinsky.cz, Czech Radio, www.ct24.cz