4,000 years ago in the northern steppes of Eurasia, in the shadow of the Ural Mountains, a tiny settlement stood on a natural terrace overlooking the Samara River. In the late twentieth century, a group of archaeologists excavated the remains of two or three structures that once stood here, surrounded by green fields where sheep and cattle grazed. But the researchers quickly discovered this was no ordinary settlement. Unusual burials and the charred remains of almost fifty dogs suggested this place was a ritual center for at least 100 years.

Hartwick College anthropologist David Anthony and his colleagues have excavated for several years at the site, called Krasnosamarskoe, and have wondered since that time what kind of rituals would have left this particular set of remains behind. Anthony and his Hartwick College colleague Dorcas Brown offer some ideas in a paper published recently in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology.

The people who lived at Krasnosamarskoe were part of an Indo-European cultural group called Srubnaya, with Bronze Age technology. The Srubnaya lived in settlements year-round, but were not farmers. They kept animals, hunted for wild game, and gathered plants to eat opportunistically. Like many Indo-European peoples, they did not have what modern people would call an organized religion. But as Krasnosamarskoe demonstrates, they certainly had beliefs that were highly spiritual and symbolic. And they engaged in ritualistic practices over many generations.

Graves upon graves

Perhaps the first unusual feature of Krasnosamarskoe is that the people who lived here chose to build on top of an abandoned settlement that was about 1,000 years gone when the Srubnaya moved in. That previous settlement left behind three large kurgans, or burial mounds. Excavating one of these kurgans revealed a couple of 5,000-year-old skeletons from the first group, surrounded by 4,000-year-old remains from the Srubnaya. The people of Krasnosamarskoe obviously knew these were ancient grave mounds when they moved in, and chose to keep using them.

After exhaustively cataloguing dozens of burials in and around the kurgans, Anthony and his colleagues discovered a few patterns. First of all, most of the Srubnaya remains were of children. One showed signs of a degenerative disease, but the others appear to have died of illnesses that didn't leave clear marks on their skeletons. None showed any signs of violent death or abuse. It seems likely that people brought their sick children to this place, perhaps seeking ritual medicine. The archaeologists also found pollen from a medicinal plant, Seseli, in one of the structures. Seseli is a mild sedative and muscle relaxant that could have been used to calm the suffering children. Those who did not survive were laid to rest in the ancient cemetery.

There were also the remains of five adults, two men and two women plus the leg bones of a third person. Perhaps these were two generations of people who ran the settlement, Anthony and Brown suggest. The men both had matching skeletal injuries that showed extreme wear and tear in their lower backs, knees, and ankles. Most likely, these injuries were from doing a lot of physical labor, possibly from a very young age. Though the lower back injury wasn't particularly unusual, the knee and ankle injuries were very rare and suggested "twisting," as if the men were engaging in unusual physical activities associated with rituals.

The dog sacrifices

The most obvious sign of ritual activity at Krasnosamarskoe was a pit full of bones from about 50 different dogs. Located inside one of the settlement structures, the pit had been filled with carefully butchered, chopped, and cooked dog bones. There were many signs that these dogs had been killed in rituals rather than for food. Perhaps most importantly, the Srubnaya people did not eat dogs as a regular part of their diets. In fact, dogs would have likely been beloved hunting companions.

Anthony and Brown write in their paper that rituals are often associated with an inversion or alteration of typical eating practices. The dogs were always killed in winter, then carefully chopped into small pieces, their skulls sliced in the same specific places. Knife marks and charring on the bones suggest they were filleted and cooked. It appears this ritual happened regularly, perhaps annually in winter, for at least two generations.

To figure out what kind of ritual this might have been, Anthony and Brown looked to what we know of Indo-European culture, whose distinctive symbolic practices were common across south Asia and Europe during the Bronze Age. Dogs are sometimes associated with death in these cultures, and there are representations in various Indo-European cultures of puppies drawing diseases out of people. Perhaps the dogs were sacrificed to save the lives of the sick children whose bodies they found buried next to the kurgans?

That could have been the answer, except for the fact that most of the sacrificed dogs were fairly old. This was their first hint that these dogs might have been sacrificed as part of a rite of passage ritual for boys becoming warriors. Write the authors:

The shock attached to such an act in a culture that did not eat dogs was increased by the intentional selection of older dogs for more than 80% of the victims: familiar, well-treated, human-like companions and therefore perhaps stand-ins for human victims; rather than young dogs, more suitable if starvation explained the behavior. Old, familiar dogs, possibly even their own dogs, might have represented an emotionally significant first death for boys learning to become killers of men.
Indo-European culture is full of stories about men becoming wolves or dogs—literally or symbolically—in order to become fighters. In ancient Greece, men sometimes donned wolf pelts in warrior rituals. Anthony and Brown conclude that the remains were from warrior transformation rituals. At Krasnosamarskoe, boys killed and ate their dogs in order to symbolically merge with them, taking on their fierceness in battle. This would also explain why many of the dogs in the pit came from far away. Boys must have come with their dogs from settlements throughout the region for this winter ritual of manhood.

Looked at from this perspective, the Srubnaya sacrifices were to honor dogs by absorbing their spirits. It would have been a ritual where boys learned to be killers, but also to respect their adversaries and feel their loss.

Werewolves among men

Other scholars have suggested that this kind of Indo-European ritual is connected to the werewolf myths that still haunt South Asia and Europe. Over the thousands of years since the events at Krasnosamarskoe, stories of men becoming dogs have evolved. The role of warrior transformed dramatically after the rise of city-states. Warriors were no longer the familiar men of the village; instead, they were soldiers, agents of a bureaucratic state. Perhaps that's why a coming-of-age ritual among villagers became a terrifying story of people whose violent, wolflike impulses are uncontrollable and dangerous.

At the Krasnosamarskoe site, we have a chance to consider ritual life before modern religion, and warrior identity before modern politics. What's remarkable is how complex the symbolism is already. The people participating in these rituals already had a sense of deep history, which is why they located their ritual center next to 1000-year-old kurgans. Their rituals were elaborate, with layers of meaning.

4,000 years ago in the northern steppes of eastern Europe, men were learning that being a warrior meant sacrifice. Boys had to kill beloved friends, and murder a part of themselves to become the dogs of war. Hidden in the violence of this ancient ritual was a profound message of sorrow and loss that can still strike a chord today.

As bizarre as the story is already, it gets even weirder. Newhouse also claimed that not only was The Hound of Mons very real, but that it had been the result of twisted German military experiments trying to make biological weapons. According to Newhouse, a German scientist by the name of Dr. Gottlieb Hochmuller had undertaken a ghastly experiment with the aim of inserting the mind of a deranged maniac into a hound. Newhouse said in an article from the August, 1919 edition of the Oklahoman:

The death of Dr. Gottlieb Hochmuller in the recent Spartacan riots in Berlin has brought to light facts concerning the fiendish application of this German scientist’s skill that have astounded Europe. For the hound of Mons was not an accident, a phantom, or an hallucination–it was the deliberate result of one of the strangest and most repulsive scientific experiments the world has ever known.”
Newhouse’s account alleges that Hochmuller had searched mental asylums far and wide for a suitable subject who had gone insane from his hatred of England. The report claims that upon finding the perfect candidate, the German doctor then had his brain removed and surgically implanted into the body of a large Siberian wolfhound. The giant beast with the brain of a madman was trained and then taken to the battlefield and released into no man’s land to do its violent work. Accounts have variously claimed that the hound had been altered to be larger than before, that its capacity for hatred had been chemically enhanced, or that its hide had been made to be impervious to bullets. Newhouse claimed that papers had been found upon Dr. Hochmuller’s death that fully outlined the whole experiment as well as the doctor’s wishes to unleash the beast on allied troops, and fully proved that the experiments were real. It is not explained whether the doctor had anticipated the maniacal hound turning against its own side or why the walking weapon might have suddenly stopped its rampage.

 Easy E wrote:
The Hound of Mons! I had never heard that one before.

That sounds like great fodder for some In Her Majesty's Name, Wierd World War I, or even Konflict 47 type stuff.

 Desubot wrote:
50 dogo sacrifices?

i dont think fraz will be pleased.

BobtheInquisitor wrote:First thing that comes to mind:
http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-140

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
First thing that comes to mind:
http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-140

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
First thing that comes to mind:
http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-140

 Iron_Captain wrote:
As an archaeology student, I fail to see anything strange or mysterious in here, I must say. It perfectly fits into patterns we find all across Europe.
Also, like half of that article is what we like to call Archaeo-fantasy, aka making theories that go beyond what can be supported by your data. The werewolf thing is a bit of an extreme example of that, the coming-of-age ritual idea is a less extreme example.
Of course, it is these kind of theories that help to make archaeology interesting, even if they can't be proven. Otherwise it would just all be dry science..

 Easy E wrote:
The Hound of Mons! I had never heard that one before.

That sounds like great fodder for some In Her Majesty's Name, Wierd World War I, or even Konflict 47 type stuff.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
The Hound of Mons! I had never heard that one before.

That sounds like great fodder for some In Her Majesty's Name, Wierd World War I, or even Konflict 47 type stuff.

In trying to find more information on it, I did find out about the Angels of Mons which is just as interesting...