A University of NSW scientist says that a series of pre-historic mass graves found in coastal areas of the Pacific and northern Scotland could be linked to tsunamis.
Professor James Goff at UNSW Sydney's PANGEA Research Centre is a co-author of a new paper analysing several mass graves dating back to as old as 5000 years ago to as recent as 500 years in the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu in the Pacific, as well as in Orkney and Shetland in Scotland.
"Proving that a site is related to a past tsunami could lead to a fundamental rewrite of how we interpret coastal human settlement in prehistory," Goff said in a statement.
"We already know that tsunamis have occurred in all the areas that we explored in this study, and the ages for mass burials match those of the geological evidence for past events," Goff added.
The study published on Wednesday in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory reinforces the hypothesis that these burial sites are related to tsunamis, contrary to an earlier theory linking them to wars or epidemics, he said.
Goff said that in Solomon Islands the burial method and the age of the people buried is consistent with the practice related to tsunami - people were buried in atypical positions and were uncharacteristically young.
Recent tsunamis, which affected countries like Japan and Indonesia, show that these events can be devastating and overwhelming in terms of the number of casualties because of which common burial practices might not have been followed.
The researchers, however, said that not all mass grave sites are related to tsunamis although in the context of prehistoric coastlines it is an important factor.
The author of the study, Genevieve Cain from the University of Oxford, hopes to study the presence of diatoms, small marine micro-organisms, which people who die of drowning in the sea inhale.
"These diatoms travel through the bloodstream and are deposited and preserved within the bone marrow of larger bones. If we can find marine diatoms, this may indicate that the body is that of a tsunami victim," said Cain in the statement.
