It’s a given that, in numbers terms, the 20th century was the most violent in world history, with civil wars, purges and two world wars killing as many as 200 million people. But on a per-capita basis, Washington State University archaeologist Tim Kohler has documented a particularly bloody period more than eight centuries ago on what is now American soil. Between 1140 and 1180, in the central Mesa Verde of southwest Colorado, four relatively peaceful centuries of pueblo living devolved into several decades of violence. Writing in the journal American Antiquity, Kohler and his colleagues at WSU and the University of Colorado Boulder document how nearly nine out of 10 sets of human remains from that period have trauma from blows to either their heads or parts of their arms. “If we’re identifying that much trauma, many were dying a violent death,” said Kohler, whose study was funded by the National Science Foundation.
WSU researchers see violent era in ancient Southwest
