The violence inherent in human beings, accompanies man since the beginning of time. Now, the study of a skull of 430 000 years has confirmed that at that time the man was already capable of murder.
The study in the journal PLoS ONE, analyzed injury Skull death suffered by one of the individuals found at the site of the Sima of the Bones, in the Sierra de Atapuerca (Burgos, Spain center), a place that continues to yield new data that gradually build up the immense puzzle of human evolution.
The skull in question was recovered with the remains of 27 other individuals in excavations between 1990 and 2010. The sediments of the geological layer and traits morphological of these individuals allowed to determine that they all belonged to the same group and had a length of 430 000 years.
The remains, found in a hidden pit Cave Mayor de Atapuerca, They were buried together, a fact that for decades has generated one of the greatest debates of world prehistory. For 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 of 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 have ruled the last two hypothesis. There are only two options to explain this accumulation of corpses that individuals accidentally falling through the vertical shaft that leads to the Cueva Mayor (13 meters high) or they were deliberately deposited, as a funeral ceremony. The study, published today, based on analysis of fractures of the skull 17, closed the debate and confirms that this individual was murdered 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, analyze the type of fracture bones.
With these data could to discard hypotheses, “he told EFE the main author of the study, Nohemi room, UCM-ISCIII researcher Evolution and Human Behavior Center. “There were only two possible causes: accidental loss and intentional accumulation,” he concludes. The researchers studied 17 skulls to determine at what point had been made fractures, postmortem (after death) or Perimortem (near death time).
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, ie, 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 on the same site and with the same object “.
In addition, the amount of data, the type of injury and the place where are “fall into the 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. At work involved researchers of the Joint Center Evolution and Human Behavior and other research centers in Spain, Paris, Beijing and New York.
EFE
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