66 ancient skeletons were discovered in a cave located on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, researchers said Monday.
The remains are believed to be more than 3,000 years old, said Truman Simanjuntak, with Jakarta’s National Research and Development Center for Archaeology, according to LiveScience.com. “Sixty-six is very strange,” he admitted.
Simanjuntak said neither he or his colleagues found have ever found this many skeletons.
The cave, which is called Tiger Cave, contains dog, chicken, and pig remains.
Simanjuntak said the cave also contains evidence of rock art.
“There are still occupation traces deeper and deeper in the cave, where we have not excavated yet,” he said. “So it means the cave is very promising.”
On Monday, it was reported that skeletons were found holding hands in the former cemetery of a Dominican monastery in Romania.
Researchers believe two skeletons date back to the Middle Ages.
“We can see that the man had suffered a severe injury that left him with a broken hip from which he probably died,” said Adrian Rusu, from the Cluj-Napoca Institute of Archaeology and History of Art, according to The Express. ”Because of the fact that the young woman obviously died at the same time and was presumably healthy we are speculating that she possibly died of a broken heart at the loss of her partner.”
He added that it “is a mystery--and rare for such burials at that time.”
