Archaeologists have discovered the skeletal remains of a man buried 1,400 years ago near a headless horse in an ancient cemetery in the southern German town of Knitlingen.
According to the Daily Mail, archaeologists from the Stuttgart Regional Council Preservation Office and ArchaeoBW indicated that the man, who was buried in an era when the Merovingian dynasty ruled during the fifth to eighth centuries in what is now France and Central Europe, was likely a knight who served the kings of the dynasty. ruling at that time.
“He stood in a chain of command with the Merovingian kings, which meant that he was obligated to take part in the king’s campaigns,” said the archaeologist in charge of research at the archaeological site Folke Damanger.
“As a member of the local elite, he was probably the head of a farming family consisting of his family and servants,” Damanger added, noting at the same time that “the man was not a farmer in the strict sense of the word.”
According to experts, the reason for the horse’s beheading is not clear, but they believe that this treatment was most likely part of the man’s burial ceremony, “the horse may have been placed near its owner as a fatal commodity for the afterlife and not a sacrifice,” according to Damanger.
Scientists also found the remains of other people buried in the same cemetery, where they found, along with rich funerary pieces, the remains of a woman with a golden pin, and some men with weapons such as swords, spears, shields and arrowheads.
Damanger said: “The team is in the process of excavating and restoring the body of the mysterious man, and future anthropological work will be done on the man’s bones and teeth to determine his health, why he died and how old he was at the time.”

Mysterious headless horse skeleton found buried in medieval graveyard | https://t.co/aAEkO5AZOb#Humans pic.twitter.com/2mp1P5alv3

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