Burial

About four years after a mysterious 400-year-old grave was discovered near the village of Pien in northern Poland, researchers are publishing the first systematic study on the young woman found inside, nicknamed 'Zosia'. The grave featured unusual measures: a padlock on her toe and a sickle over her neck, intended to prevent her from rising from the dead.

Workers at a brick factory found 34,000-year-old skeletons, but it took scientists decades to realize that a hunter-gatherer society was capable of such a ritual. With tens of thousands of hand-carved ivory beads, genetic deformities, and DNA tests that baffled researchers, the discovery at Sunghir is rewriting everything we thought about humanity.