Just Plain Acrobats - or a Wild West Show???

Wild Bill Hickok and Buffalo Bill Cody - Wild West Shows! I think we've all seen re-enactments of those 19th century acrobats that jump on and off horses and do all kinds of wondrous things while galloping full-tilt on the back of a horse! So, when I read this story about "hu'b", I thought to myself - Wild Bill Hickok and Buffalo Bill Cody and those "riders of the Wild West" that did all of those mind-boggling acrobats on and off horses. Flash-back 4300 years ago... From Science News.org Acrobat's last tumble By Bruce Bower June 6th, 2008 Web edition Text Size A 4,300-year-old building in Syria reveals an unusual human sacrifice Sometimes it’s just good fortune to find a headless acrobat’s skeleton sprawled on the floor near the remains of two other people, several mules and an array of valuable metal objects. That, at least, is the opinion of archaeologists who have identified just such a scene, apparently the result of a ritual sacrifice, at an ancient city in northeastern Syria. This discovery offers a unique view of the social world nearly 4,300 years ago at Nagar, a city that belonged to Mesopotamia’s Akkadian Empire, say Joan Oates of the University of Cambridge in England and her colleagues. Nagar’s remnants lie within layers of mud-brick construction known collectively as Tell Brak (SN: 2/9/08, p. 90). The earliest layers date to more than 6,000 years ago. Evidence suggests that this Nagar sacrifice immediately followed a brief abandonment of the site because of some sort of natural disaster. Residents appeased their gods by surrendering valued individuals, animals and objects in a building formerly used for breeding and trading mules that pulled kings’ chariots and war wagons. Following the sacrifice, the structure was closed to further activity. Acrobats apparently ranked high enough in Nagar’s social sphere to serve as sacrificial offerings, the researchers report in the June Antiquity. Cuneiform texts from Ebla, a nearby site from the same time period, refer to individuals from Nagar known as húb. Scholars have variously defined húb as a term for acrobats, jugglers or horsemen. An analysis of the most complete human skeleton found in the Nagar structure supports a translation of húb as acrobats, Oates says. The specimen’s leg, foot and toe bones display signs of enlarged muscles and energetic activity associated with acrobatics, her team finds. In further support of that hypothesis, cylinder seals found earlier at Nagar depict processions of spiky-haired acrobats bending over backwards. Ebla documents contain separate terms for dancers and singers, whom Oates regards as unlikely sources of the Nagar skeleton. “The húb at Nagar were well-known, maybe even famous entertainers, so perhaps their fame was a reason for choosing one of them to sacrifice,” Oates says. Rest of article.