Thursday, May 28, 2015

A Victim of Violence, 430,000 Years Old

Here is the oldest human yet to be convincingly identified as the victim of violence from other humans. Those two wounds above the eye were caused by blows from a pickax or some similar implement, wielded by another person; that there are two implies intention. (A person might fall on a sharp rock, but probably not two sharp rocks one after the other.) The skull comes from a Spanish cave where it was intentionally buried around 430,000 years ago.

2 comments:

G. Verloren said...

What about falling once onto a single sharp rock with two protuding points in close proximity to each other?

John said...

Apparently the wounds are sequential, not simultaneous.