Archaeologists excavating in Jaffa have made further discoveries beneath the streets of this ancient Greek settlement, but this time, they’ve discovered a baby’s skeleton buried in a jar!

Back to the Mother’s Womb or Mother Earth?

Jaffa is an ancient town in southern Tel Aviv, and archaeological work has determined it was one of the oldest ports in the world, with origins dating back to 4,000 years ago. Researchers recently presented several artifacts representing the city’s Greek roots, but now they’ve discovered a 3,800-year-old baby skeleton in a jar.

Professor Yossi Arbel, an archaeologist from the Israel Antiquities Authority, says no matter how shocking this discovery sounds, “such infant burials are not so uncommon.”

However, the doctor says it remains a mystery why the infants were buried in this curious way. Arbel told Live Science that an obvious interpretation is that the children’s bodies were meant to protect their loved ones may have attempted to return them from the environment.

But the jar was shaped “like a womb,” so the researcher thinks the deceased’s family might have attempted to return the child to the “bosom of Mother Earth” or symbolically, “back into protection of his mother,” said Arbel.

An Explanation Why the Baby’s Skeleton was Found in a Jar

The discovery of the baby skeleton in a jar was detailed in the 100th issue of the journal Archaeology, which comes only a week after the latest publication detailing Jaffa’s continuous occupation for four millennia.

Over the last decade, a wide range of artifacts have informed researchers of the town’s Hellenistic Greek origins through to the Crusader and Ottoman periods. Excavators have so far discovered 30 coins, at least two horseshoes, pottery, 95 glass vessel fragments, 232 seashells, land snails, and three mother-of-pearl buttons.

Speaking of the baby skeleton in the jar, Dr. Arbel says people in Israel buried their children like this in different time periods – extending from the Bronze Age all the way to only a century ago.

Known formally as “Jar burials,” according to Dr. Alfredo Mederos Martín, who was not involved in the new study, this style of burying children was practiced all over the ancient world as early as 4500 BC. Dr. Martín says the different methods of performing this burial practice change from place to place and this reflects changing concepts of the death event.