British archaeologists have discovered a skeleton in a Roman cemetery in Northamptonshire county with a flat stone in the tongue area, the Guardian reports.
The man was buried face down, which may indicate the fear that his contemporaries felt before him. Perhaps in this way they tried to prevent the dead from rising again.
The burial was discovered in the town of Stanvik by the river Nin back in 1991, but the remains have been studied only now. Scientists dated the burial to the 3rd - 4th centuries. AD According to British researchers, such a burial is unusual in Britain.
Experts suggest that the man was about 30 at the time of death. According to one version, a person could suffer from a mental disorder; during a seizure, he could damage his tongue. According to the second assumption, the man was punished in this way. So in the Germanic tribes there was a practice of cutting off the tongue of those who spread false accusations against other people. Whether such a practice existed in Roman Britain is unknown, but it can be assumed that deprivation of the language as a punishment could have been used in this territory. Scientists will need to do more bone research to find out the truth. If a man's tongue is cut off, there is a high probability that he could have got an infection, traces of which can be found on the bones.