Scientists have made a grisly discovery at what was once a lagoon in Kenya: The remains of 27 people, including eight women and six children, who were violently killed some 10,000 years ago.

One of the victims was a pregnant woman who appeared to have been bound.

Another was a man who took an arrow to the head and apparently survived, only to die from a crushing blow to the right side of his head. The obsidian arrow was still there, embedded in his skull.

Two other men had stone projectiles wedged in the skull and thorax.

The Cambridge University researchers who uncovered the scene said it wasn't a burial site. In fact, the bodies preserved in lagoon sediment hadn't been buried at all.

What they found in Nataruk, near Lake Turkana, was the site of a massacre, the oldest ever uncovered , according to a study published this week in the journal Nature.