Patrocinio del
Comune di Roma
Dipartimento XIV
The Global Prehistory Consortium at EURO INNOVANET
 Milady Tărtăria and the riddle of dating Tărtăria tablets
by Marco Merlini
3. A challenge to some of the myths on those mythical artefacts

d) Milady Tărtăria was not cremated during a human sacrifice

As we have already mentioned the bones are not burnt therefore nobody was cremated during a sacrificial ritual. The Vlassa hypotheses on a human sacrifice is based on unstable archaeological ground but is less eccentric than many scholars think. The human sacrifice was occasionally practiced in the Transylvanian Neolithic to ask for the protection of superhuman forces.

Some scholars challenged the Vlassa interpretation of a ritual sacrifice and suggested that the Tărtăria human being was probably a priest, a shaman, a spirit-medium or a high dignitary [22] who had died in a fire and was buried with ritual articles he valued while alive. Other scholars speculated that he was the supreme priest and he had been burnt as he finished his serving time, according to the Sumerian tradition, as a sacrifice in the honour of the great God Saue.

Anyway, the bones are not charred, also the other two traditional hypotheses fail: an accidental death by fire or a cultic sacrifice of the corpse by fire.

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