5000-Year-Old Grave Reveals Family of 15 Killed by Blows to Head

Photograph of the 15 skeletons and grave goods buried at Koszyce site. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

In a mysterious case of mass murder, 15 bodies were found buried in a grave in Poland in 2011. Through genetic evidence, an international team of researchers has discovered that they were all related to each other and perished as a family.

“We do not know who was responsible for this massacre,” archaeo-geneticist Hannes Schroeder from the University of Copenhagen said in a press release on May 10.