Evidence of a prehistoric massacre has been found at a 7,000-year-old mass grave site in central Germany containing the brutally treated remains of what appears to be Europe’s first farmers.

The shattered skeletal remains of some 26 men, women, and children were uncovered at the Schöneck-Kilianstädten Stone Age gravesite near Frankfurt.

According to archaeologists working at the seven meter-long, V-shaped pit, the remains showed evidence of blunt force injuries to the head, arrow wounds, and broken shins.

"We cannot say for sure if people were alive or dead when their legs were smashed, because the bones would look the same if the bodies were mutilated after death. But overall it makes a bit more sense for it to be torture, of making a statement." said Christian Meyer, one of the authors of the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday.

The occupants and the perpetrators were probably both from agricultural communities whose pottery decoration style has led to them being called the Linear Pottery culture or Linearbandkeramik (LBK) in German.

The findings from the site support previous theories, introduced after the earlier discovery of two other LBK gravesites in Talheim in Germany and Asparn/Schletz in Austria that the LBK communities may have eventually turned on each other.

The authors of the study suggest that “the new evidence ... in conjunction with previous results, indicates that massacres of entire communities were not isolated occurrences but rather were frequent features of the last phases of the LBK."

"Two other sites have previously been found showing this violence, and all three sites cluster at the end of this LBK culture, so I think there must have been some profound change occurring… Clearly something must have happened to provoke lethal conflict to break out between settled farming communities.”

Meyer noted that the new findings have made more discernible the pattern of widespread violence in Early Neolithic times, saying, "It's about finding patterns. One mass grave was spectacular, but it was just a single grave. But when several such sites are found from the same period, then a pattern emerges."

The LBK were a farming people who arrived in central Europe about 5,500 BC and lasted for around 600 years and are thought to have lived in what is now Hungary and then spread along the Danube River. 

Meyer added that the true reason behind the killing will probably never be found, but theories can be put forward based on information in hand about the culture and the conditions they lived in.

"The LBK population had expanded considerably, and this increases the potential for conflict," he said. "Also, the LBK were farmers, they settled. So unlike hunter gatherers, who could move away to avoid conflict, these people couldn't just escape. Add to this the fact that there may have been a period of drought that constrained resources, causing conflicts to erupt."