Evidence of Stone Age Zombies Found Beneath Ancient Settlement in Syria

EVERYBODY PANIC!!!!  Ok, got it out of my system, thanks.  But seriously, there really could have been Zombies back in the Stone Age.  Scientists have unearthed human skeletons that had their faces smashed in and separated from their body.  The remains were found under an ancient settlement in Syria.What makes this even more eery is that the bodies were already decomposing when the living went back and exhumed the bodies, then smashed in the faces and removed the heads.  Why would they do this after they were already buried?  Or was it a way to combat zombies?  Hmmm...  It's an interesting article from the Mother Nature Network.  Check it out the excerpt:

According to Juan José Ibañez of the Spanish National Research Council in Barcelona, the finding could suggest that these Stone Age "skull-smashers" believed the living were under some kind of threat from the dead. Perhaps they believed that the only way of protecting themselves was to smash in the corpses' faces, detach their heads and rebury them apart from their bodies.

 

But here's the creepy thing: many of the 10,000-year-old skulls appear to have been separated from their spines long after their bodies had already begun to decompose. Why would this skull-smashing ritual be performed so long after individuals had died? Did they only pose a threat to the living long after their original burial and death?