In the Ebro Valley, near Laguardia in Alava (Spanish Basque Country), a rocky fissure has concealed the memory of a brutal episode for more than five millennia. The site of San Juan ante Portam Latinam (SJAPL), discovered in 1985 during agricultural work, yielded the commingled remains of 338 individuals, piled into a rock shelterRock shelterA shallow cavity at the foot of a cliff or under a rocky overhang, offering natural shelter; a favoured site of prehistoric habitation and rock art.→ with minimal funerary care. A study published in Scientific Reports1 crosses classical anthropological data with ancient genomics to reconstruct the circumstances of this massacre that occurred around 3,200 BCE, offering one of the most striking pictures of NeolithicNeolithicThe "New Stone Age": a period marked by farming, herding, settlement and pottery, from around 10,000 BC.→ violence in Europe.
SJAPL: an extraordinary collective burialBurialThe intentional deposition of a body, sometimes with offerings; a marker of symbolic behaviour.→
Since its discovery, SJAPL has attracted considerable scholarly attention. The 338 individuals -- men, women and children of all ages -- were deposited over a short period, estimated between a few days and a few weeks, in a rock shelter of modest dimensions. The absence of individualised grave goods and the disorganised nature of the deposits rule out an ordinary funerary cemetery; the density of the remains and the prevalence of violent trauma clearly suggest a mass grave.
Initial anthropological analyses identified perimortem trauma (at or near the time of death) in a significant proportion of individuals: flintFlintA hard, brittle siliceous rock, knapped by prehistoric people to produce blades, points and sharp tools.→ arrowheads embedded in bone, skull fractures consistent with blows from the front or rear, cut marks on cervical vertebrae. These indicators suggest a violent armed confrontation -- probably a raid or battle -- rather than an organised execution or ritual sacrifice.
The Scientific Reports study was conducted by Aline Andrades Valtueña and colleagues, combining classical physical anthropology (systematic re-examination of all perimortem trauma) with ancient genomics (sequencingSequencingReading the order of the bases (A, T, G, C) of a DNA molecule; high-throughput sequencing reads millions of fragments in parallel.→ of DNADNAThe molecule carrying genetic information, used to reconstruct kinship between species.→ from 22 individuals selected for bone preservation quality). The aim: to understand who these 338 people were, where they came from, whether they were related to one another, and what social dynamics illuminate this violent event.
Twenty-three percent bearing evidence of violence
Systematic examination of the 338 SJAPL individuals identified perimortem trauma in 78 of them, or 23.1% of the total. This remarkably high rate for an archaeological site of this period divides into several categories: blunt cranial trauma (club or stone blows), penetrating projectile trauma (flint arrowheads recovered in bone), and sharp-force trauma (blade marks on vertebrae and limbs). Victims included adults of both sexes and children, though adult males are proportionally more represented among the traumatised.
Analysis of arrowhead trajectories in the bones -- entry direction and anatomical zone hit -- is particularly instructive. Several individuals have arrows embedded in the back, shoulder blades or posterior lower limbs, consistent with flight or attempted flight at impact. Others show frontal impacts on the skull or thorax, suggesting direct confrontation. This heterogeneity of trauma is incompatible with the execution of bound or immobile persons; it evokes a battle or raid in which victims were attempting to defend themselves or flee.
The arrowheads recovered in bone and among the remains belong to the lithic style characteristic of the Los Millares culture (early Iberian ChalcolithicChalcolithicThe "Copper Age": a transition between the Neolithic and the Bronze Age, marked by the first copper objects (Ötzi's era).→), as well as regional Late Neolithic styles from the Ebro valley. This typological plurality suggests either that attackers and defenders belonged to different cultural traditions, or that weapons were acquired through exchange with multiple neighbouring groups.
Ancient DNAAncient DNAGenetic material preserved in old remains, often degraded, sequenced with cutting-edge techniques.→ reveals the demographic structure of the victims
Sequencing of DNA from 22 individuals provided valuable demographic and genealogical information. Sex chromosome analysis confirms the presence of men and women in proportions consistent with an ordinary (non-selective) population, arguing against scenarios of selective female capture or male warrior execution. Genetic diversity analyses show a genetically heterogeneous population, with no indication of extreme inbreeding or a highly isolated group.
Several pairs of individuals share first or second-degree genetic relationships (parent-child, siblings, cousins), indicating that entire families were affected by the event. This finding is consistent with a raid or attack against an entire community -- men, women, children, elderly -- rather than a confrontation between groups of warriors.
The genetic ancestry of SJAPL individuals fits the profile of the early Anatolian farmers who colonised Europe during the Neolithic, with variable contributions from local hunter-gatherer heritage (WHG, Western Hunter-GatherersHunter-gatherersA way of life based on hunting, fishing and gathering wild resources, without farming or herding; it dominated almost the whole of human history.→). This composition is consistent with the Late Neolithic populations of northern Spain and prehistoric Basque Country, without a signature of recent immigration from distant regions at the time of the massacre.
Neolithic violence: a European phenomenon
SJAPL is not an isolated case. In recent decades, several European sites have yielded comparable evidence of collective massacres at the end of the Neolithic and Chalcolithic. Talheim (Germany, around 5,000 BCE), Asparn-Schletz (Austria, same period), Crow Creek (South Dakota, for the North American analogy at 1325 CE) and Koszyce (Poland, around 2,880 BCE) are milestones in a growing corpus of prehistoric mass violence. These sites challenge the romantic image of a pre-state humanity living in harmony -- an image never fully supported by anthropological data, but which persisted in public presentations of prehistoryPrehistoryThe span of human history before the invention of writing, from the Palaeolithic to the Metal Ages, known mainly through material remains.→.
The causes of collective Neolithic violence remain debated. ClimateClimateThe long-term average atmospheric conditions of a region; its variations (glaciations, aridifications) shaped migrations, agriculture and the collapse of prehistoric societies.→ changes -- particularly drought episodes documented in the third millennium BCE in Europe -- may have created tensions over access to land, water and food resources, driving neighbouring communities to violent confrontations. The rapid spread of metal weapons (copper, then bronze) and improvements in projectile weapons (composite bows, knapped flint arrowheads) simultaneously increased the lethality of conflicts.
Palaeoclimatic data available for the Ebro Valley around 3,200 BCE indicate a period of moderate hydric stress, consistent with increased resource access tensions. In this context, SJAPL may represent the victims of a territorial conflict between neighbouring Neolithic communities, whose memory was interred with the bodies in the Laguardia rock shelter -- a testament to violence preserved by geological chance and archaeological curiosity.
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