The grave of the Bad Dürrenberg shaman is one of the oldest burials in central Germany (7,000 to 6,800 BC. c.)


An infant was buried with her. The analysis of the woman's skeleton revealed that her two uppermost cervical vertebrae were malformed and theat blood vessels in the lower skull area could have been spatially restricted. This malformation may have made her a special person. Anthropologists suspect that by holding her head in a certain position, she was able to clamp off a blood vessel. This possibly led to an involuntary eye movement, a so-called nystagmus. The overabundant inventory of grave goods alone testifies to a special social role of the deceased. Certain grave goods also played an important role in interpreting this burial as a shaman’s grave.

Researchers believes that the Bad Dürrenberg burial is proof that human spirituality became more specialized at this time, too, with specific people in the community delegated to interact with the spirit world, often with the help of trances or psychoactive substances. Combined with the earlier analysis of the woman’s grave, the team’s new finds and meticulous look at her bones painted a more complete picture of the shaman. They conjectured that, from an early age, she had been singled out as different from other members of her community. Even in death, her unusually rich grave marked her as exceptional. Earlier scholars, including Grünberg, had speculated that she was a shaman who served as an intermediary between her community and the spirit world

Construction of the RC Cathedral in Liverpool was interupted by WWII, and the original St. Peter's-inspired design was no longer financially possible. So, they built this soaring modernistic design on top of the medieval-style vaulted crypt. An architecturally interesting juxtaposition.