What archaeologists discovered at Tel Azekah, located in the Shephelah (the Judean lowlands), was so grisly, so horrifying, that a professor on the team said he needed several years to muster up the courage to return and document the find.

“It took me some years to be brave enough to investigate this discovery,” said Prof. Oded Lipschits of Tel Aviv University.

What they found was a mass grave filled with the tiny bones of human infants. Of the 68 to 89 individuals buried there, 90 percent were under age five and 70 percent under age two. The age of the bones, confirmed both by radiocarbon dating and the type of pottery found at the site, dates back to the Persian era 2,500 years ago, when the site was a Judean town.

The bones were found in an ancient water reservoir at a site linked to David’s battle with Goliath. The dig started in 2013, but the bones were not examined until 2020, with the details now revealed in a scientific study.

“We excavated very carefully and very slowly, we collected every piece of bone and every item, we documented every centimeter of the area, but we didn’t really understand what we found,” Lipschits said.

This is the first such find, which explains the mystery of the lack of remains of children from the time period. Researchers ruled out violence as a cause of death, as well as child sacrifice. The former would have left marks on the bones, and the latter involved elaborate burial rituals, which are absent here. They also ruled out an epidemic as the cause, since the burials occurred over the span of a century or so.

The most likely explanation is that children were not given individual graves due to the high childhood mortality rate at the time: well over 50 percent.

“Four or five children out of seven died before they turned four,” Lipschits said.

DNA testing of the bones is now underway, which the archaeologists hope will confirm their origins.