| 2015 | Lethal interpersonal violence in the Middle Pleistocene |
| 2015 | Investigating the case of the earliest known murder victim |
- Evidence of interpersonal violence has been documented previously in Pleistocene members of the genus Homo, but only very rarely has this been posited as the possible manner of death. Here we report the earliest evidence of lethal interpersonal violence in the hominin fossil record. Cranium 17 recovered from the Sima de los Huesos Middle Pleistocene site shows two clear perimortem depression fractures on the frontal bone, interpreted as being produced by two episodes of localized blunt force trauma. The type of injuries, their location, the strong similarity of the fractures in shape and size, and the different orientations and implied trajectories of the two fractures suggest they were produced with the same object in face-to-face interpersonal conflict. Given that either of the two traumatic events was likely lethal, the presence of multiple blows implies an intention to kill. This finding shows that the lethal interpersonal violence is an ancient human behavior and has important implications for the accumulation of bodies at the site, supporting an anthropic origin.
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Violence is often said to be a fundamental part of human nature. Now there’s evidence to support that claim. In a cave in northern Spain, archeological detectives discovered the remains of a 430,000-year-old skull bearing what appears to be lethal, deliberately inflicted blunt force trauma. If the scientists’ interpretation of the wound is accurate, the skull represents the earliest known murder.To piece this dark story together, an international team of researchers had to assemble the evidence—literally. The ancient hominin skull, called Cranium 17, was discovered broken into 52 pieces, buried under layers of clay in a deep pit within a cavern in the Atapuerca Mountains. The specific site in question, Sima de los Huesos (“Pit of Bones”), was discovered in 1984 and contains the remains of at least 28 early Neanderthal individuals from the Middle Pleistocene, a period ranging from about 781,000 to 126,000 years ago.
