Archaeologists find evidence of 9,000-year-old rituals on 'witchcraft' island

A spooky Swedish island has revealed evidence of 9,000-year-old cave rituals to a team of archaeologists who are studying the isle's surprisingly active Mesolithic history, LiveScience reports. Blå Jungfrun, which lies off the east coast of Sweden, has been believed for countless centuries to be a site where witches gather every Easter to worship the devil; additional stories claim that taking a rock from the island curses the thief to a lifetime of bad luck. The island's appearance fits the part: Blå Jungfrun's "huge boulders and steep cliffs provide a dramatic landscape, and for centuries the uninhabited island has been associated with supernatural powers," one team of archaeologists said.

Might the island's prehistoric history of fantastic rituals be the root of such stories? Archaeologists now believe that ancient peoples would travel to the island to practice rituals within at least two of Blå Jungfrun's caves. One such cave contains a huge hollow, hammered into a wall with a fireplace at its base. Ludvig Papmehl-Dufay, an archaeologist with Kalmar County Museum, suspects the fireplace was used in the ritual of carving the hollow; Mesolithic audiences may have squeezed into the cave during the hammering and could have peered down into the lower room, which acted like a stage or theater and likely created quite the show.

The cave also had evidence of a hammerstone, used for grinding various materials, and a small rock shelter full of stone tools and 9,000-year-old seal bones. Scientists plan to continue their studies through the spring, with their sights set on a layer of material, including quartz, beneath one of the caves that may have aided ancient people in the construction of tools.

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