Murder or War - stone age mystery
Sima de los Hoesos - A cave site in Atapuerca, Northern Spain, was the home to at least 28 bodies for over 400,000 years. In 2015 a group of articles show cased a skull from 430,000 years ago that displays what appears to be evidence of a deliberate attack.
“Relying on modern forensic techniques, such as contour and trajectory analysis of the traumas, Dr Sala and her colleagues from the United States and Spain showed that both fractures were likely produced by two separate impacts by the same object, with slightly different trajectories around the time of the individual’s death.”
A stray line in a second article caught my attention. “Mortality distribution is dominated by individuals who died between the ages of 11 and 20 years, with fewer older adults and only one individual under the age of 10.” 28 people and no remains that appear to be older than 20. Why no one older? Did something happen to the tribe?
Another, more recent article, adds a different color to the picture. “eight crania also display some typical perimortem traumas.” "Interpersonal violence as a cause for the perimortem fractures can be confirmed for one of the skulls, Cranium 17 and also probable for Cranium 5 and Cranium 11.”
At least three skulls show signs of violence, and possibly five more. Was it a murder and retaliation or were they attacked by another tribe? Were they all dead when they were dropped down the shaft or were they prisoners? We will never know the answers to those questions.
Whether it was isolated events or war, the evidence shows that Man has been inflicting harm to his brother since time immemorial.
Cain and Able redux.