- LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Archeologists digging at a newly-uncovered American
Indian burial site near Los Angeles have found the skeletal remains of
at least 50 people, many who died violently, a newspaper reported. The
people, all thought to be under the age of 25, were buried some 200 years
ago and discovered in Torrance, California, a suburb of Los Angeles, on
Sept. 3 by construction crews, the Torrance Daily Breeze said in Thursday's
editions.
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- Experts told the Breeze that many of
the dead were buried hastily, and some suffered broken necks, cracked ribs,
severed hands and missing teeth. One man's head was separated from his
body and burned.
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- "Most of the stuff here, I've never
seen anything like it," Frank McDowell, lead archeologist on the dig,
told the Breeze. McDowell said he and other experts were trying to solve
the mystery of how the people died or why they were killed, but had found
no evidence that they had been attacked by Europeans. At the apparent time
of the burial, California was under Spanish colonial rule.
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- He said some of the unusual findings
included a girl buried with a wand carved from a deer bone, a skull with
its jaw pierced by a long white shell and the absence of any fishing hooks
or grinding tools known to be used by Native American Indians.
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- "All of the archeologists that I
bring on this project say, 'Oh, my God, This is not like any other project
anyone has worked on,"' McDowell told the paper.
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- http://nt.excite.com/news/r/981211/11/odd-bones
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