page_title: Talheim Death Pit
section_title: Reasons for violence
hierarchical_section_title: Talheim Death Pit / Reasons for violence
caption_attribution_description: English: Indo-European expansion 4000–1000 BC, according to the Kurgan hypothesis. Even within the Kurgan hypothesis, there is considerable uncertainty, mainly depending on assumptions about the w:Tocharians, the w:Corded ware culture and the w:Beaker culture. The central purple area is supposed to show early w:Yamna culture (4000–3500 BC); the dark red area could show expansion to about 2500 BC, and the lighter red area expansion to about 1000 BC.
context_page_description: The Talheim Death Pit, discovered in 1983, was a mass grave found in a Linear Pottery Culture settlement, also known as a Linearbandkeramik culture. It dates back to about 5000 BC. The pit takes its name from its site in Talheim, Germany. The pit contained the remains of 34 bodies, and evidence points towards the first signs of organized violence in Early Neolithic Europe.
context_section_description: Investigation of the Neolithic skeletons found in the Talheim death pit suggests that prehistoric men from neighboring tribes were prepared to fight and kill each other in order to capture and secure women. Researchers discovered that there were women among the immigrant skeletons, but within the local group of skeletons there were only men and children. They concluded that the absence of women among the local skeletons meant that they were regarded as somehow special, thus they were spared execution and captured instead. The capture of women may have indeed been the primary motive for the fierce conflict between the men.
  Other speculations as to the reasons for violence between settlements include vengeance, conflicts over land, resources, poaching, demonstration of superiority, and kidnapping slaves. Some of these theories related to the lack of resources are supported by the discovery that various LBK fortifications bordering indigenously inhabited areas appear to have not been in use for very long.
caption: Map diagramming the expansion of Kurgan Culture across Europe. The migrations started in approximately 4000 BC.
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