Hands are actually pretty easy to injure, and modern medicine is the reason most of us get to keep them all our lives. I've known enough farmers and construction workers who are missing digits to assume a significant number are likely to be from injury in agricultural or hunting contexts. Frostbite would be another easy source of injury depending on climate.
While I could see a possible religious practice coming out of reverence for injured hands contributing too, this seems like the age old archeology practice of assuming anything is intentionally done for religious reasons if they don't have a neat and tidy singular explanation.
I think it is a relatively new phenomena where it isn’t a regular thing to lose a portion of a digit.
Also in a similar level of inquiry these researchers are engaging in: the guy who lost a finger wrestling a coyote is also likely to be the one to tell that story.
“Oh no middle finger guy? Yeah I know that story. It was coming right at him.”
I used to work at a zoo and a lot of the older keepers had a finger or part missing to some animal or another back when health and safety was less, used to be common in factories too, Tony Iommi lost bits in a factory and has spoken about how it wasn't that unusual.
To be fair when it comes to this kind of research comparison with modern hunter gatherer societies is the closest thing you can find to evidence, some things never enter the archaeological record.
Perhaps we'll never find conclusive evidence pointing to any one of the theories on these missing-finger handprints.
Right. With no written documentation or known modern descendants of the culture, it’s all speculation. I don’t know why they’d leap to conclude it was intentional religious sacrifice vs. accidents or amputations following injury.
I passed on the opportunity to go down there to study the pyramids back in my college days. I was a few years into anthropology studies and really would have loved to go, but came up with too many excuses not to go… My Spanish wasn’t good enough. I didn’t want to fall behind on classes and push back my graduation. Fucking idiot that I was passed on an opportunity some people only dream of.
One of my Mexican friends was just saying how worried she is to go back down to visit her family and boyfriend.
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