The violence inherent in human beings, accompanies man since the beginning of time. Now, the Study of a skull of 430,000 years does just confirmed that by the time the man was already capable of murder.
The study, published today in the PLoS ONE , analyzes the fatal head injuries suffered by one of the individuals found in site of the Sima of the Bones , the Sierra de Atapuerca (Burgos, Central Spain), a place that continues to yield new data that gradually build up the huge puzzle of human evolution .
The skull question was recovered with the remains of 27 other individuals in excavations conducted between 1990 and 2010.
The sediments of the geological layer and the morphological features of these individuals allowed to determine that they all belonged to the same group and had a length of 430 thousand years.
The remains, found in a hidden pit of the Cave Mayor de Atapuerca , were buried together, a fact that for decades has generated one of the major debates of the prehistoric world.
For the Atapuerca team members, this accumulation of corpses could be considered the first sign of burial or funeral ceremony, while for other paleontologists, could simply be due to the action carnivores and scavengers (which stored their prey) or the geological action of mudflows and water (the site of Atapuerca is a network of limestone caves hollowed by water).
Studies in recent years they have enabled discard the last two hypotheses
There are only two options to explain this accumulation of corpses. that individuals fell accidentally from the vertical shaft that leads to the Cueva Mayor (13 meter drop) or they were deliberately deposited, as a funeral ceremony.
The study released today, based on analysis of fractures of the skull 17, closed the debate and confirms that this person was killed and accumulated intentionally.
The researchers reached this conclusion after analyzing the skull with current forensic techniques.
“First we did a study to rule that the signals had been made by carnivores, after analyzing geological data and finally, we analyze the type of bone fracture. With these data we hypotheses to rule out, “he told Efe the main author of the study, Nohemi room, UCM-ISCIII researcher at the Center of Evolution and Human Behavior and team member Juan Luis Arsuaga.
” Only there were two possible causes: accidental loss and intentional accumulation, “concludes
The researchers studied 17 skulls to determine at what point had been made fractures, postmortem (after death) or. Perimortem (near death time).
The skull 17 has two holes in the frontal bone, “just above the left eye socket. The study outline, size and shape of fractures allowed to determine which were made for the same purpose, and they were made when there was soft tissue, that is, or was alive or had died, “says Sala.
The current forensic techniques have established that “the individual received two independent shock produced by the same object, which rules the fall. Nobody falls down a slope and hit twice in the same place and with the same object “.
In addition, the amount of data, the type of injury and the location where they are” fall within patterns used by the coroner to determine that there was a face to face meeting or conflict, “says the researcher.
” The study proves for the first time, a murder that took place almost half a million years. Probably the oldest confirmed violent act in history, “says Sala.
In the work participated Joint Center researchers Evolution and Human Behavior and other research centers in Spain New York Paris, Beijing and.
EFE
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