Fossil Skull Indicates Evidence Of Lethal Interpersonal Violence Among Early Hominins

PLOS ONE?(May 27th, 2015), An early hominin skull?was discovered in Spain’s Sima de los Huesos cave indicating what some have called the first recorded murder. ?The skull,?dating back to at least 430,000 years, is most likely an early hominin known as Homo heidelbergensis, a species of which it is considered that neanderthals, denisovans, and modern humans descend.

The skull displays two prominent injuries of about the same size on the left frontal side of the cranium.

Image of Early Hominin with skull damage indicating blunt force trauma
Image Courtesy PLOS ONE, May 27th, 2015.

How do researchers?know how this person died?

There is some confusion among casual readers on how it’s even possible that researchers can know how this hominin died. Some, view?their results as wild speculation. (Possibly the fault?of science journalists misinterpreting the study).?Indeed, though there are some assumptions made, a?trained forensic osteologist uses far less guesswork than one may assume.?Let’s look at the evidence:

1.) If the skull injury wasn’t fatal, there would have been healing seen in the skull. In fact, bone, with some difficulty, can heal. These are clean breaks with no healing. This indicates a quick death.

2.) The associated fractures match patterns of blunt force trauma.

3.) Two?injuries in the same location at different angles. (This was a repeated blow with positional?movement.)

4.) The angle of injury is consistent with a right-handed, face-to-face blow.

5.) The size and shape of the lesions indicate a standardized tool used to cause this damage.

6.) The fracture type shows that this was a living individual before the injury and that the fractures did not occur after this person died. (Imagine using a hammer to crack a dry potato chip versus a moist one and you see the point.)

What Can We Conclude?

Was this a murder, self-defense, a warring act, a duel? The direct evidence isn’t conclusive.

What can be extracted from the evidence is that this hominin was killed by another hominin. For what reason, in what capacity, and with what exact tool, isn’t known?with certainty. This is indeed the?first fossil evidence of lethal interpersonal violence among Middle?Pleistocene hominins.

Sadly, killing each other, is quite literally, in our genes.

 

Reggie holds a B.S. in Human Development and a M.Ed. in Science Communication. He is wrapping up an M.S. in Biology from Clemson University, and is also a Doctoral student in Educational Psychology with California Coast University. He has been an informal science and critical thinking educator since 1998 spearheading one of the largest podcasting sites dedicated to free inquiry and science. He retired from podcasting and currently works as a biology educator in Orlando, FL. He is a vegan (most of the time) and his hobbies are: genealogy, singing, anime, watching science-oriented documentaries, and science fact-checking. Feel free to add Reggie on LinkedIn where he periodically writes articles on critical thinking, evolution, and other sciences: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reginaldfinley