By analyzing the fossil of a 430,000-year-old skull, Spanish researchers discovered that the origin of death was intentional. It is the oldest known murder to date.
The oldest murder in the world was not discovered by CSI Miami, Manhattan or even those in Las Vegas, but by Iberian researchers. The latter found, after analyzes, that a skull fossil found at the bottom of a cave, in northern Spain, bore revealing signs of fatal blows. The results of this survey were published in the American journal Plus One, on May 27th.
The murder weapon: a blunt object
The victim, Homo heidelbergensis, of the primitive Neanderthal line (living between -700,000 to -200,000 years), was therefore found in the Sima de los Huesos, the “Cave of Bones”, on the prehistoric site of ‘Atapuerca (northern Spain), among twenty-eight other human remains. Attacked by one of his fellows, the victim succumbed to his injuries.
The attacker, provided, according to the researchers, with a blunt object, would have struck his victim violently twice above the left eye, fracturing in two places his skull and causing his death. “Cranium 17” is the victim, is composed of 52 bone fragments, with a facial skeleton and complete dentition.
“We looked at the bones under a microscope and used computed tomography,” says Juan Luis Arsuaga, professor of paleontology at Complutense University in Madrid and the main author of the work. According to him the victim is a young adult, whose gender is still unknown.
A face-to-face meeting
Using forensic techniques employed by the police, researchers found that the wounds were almost two centimeters wide. A virtual reconstruction of the fractures proved that the damage would have been caused by the same object.
“Based on the similarities in shape and size of the wounds, we believe that the result of repeated beatings with the same object and inflicted by another person, was surely a face-to-face encounter,” says Nohemi Sala, researcher at Complutense University of Madrid. She also claims that the murder weapon was probably a wooden spear with a stone or double-sided stone tip.
For scientists, “the presence of several blows implies that there was an intention to kill”. Nohemi Sala explains that it is unfortunately “impossible to interpret the motivation for the assassination. Even Sherlock Holmes cannot help us ”. This discovery is, for the research team, proof that violence is part of human culture. Not sure that the culprit can, one day, be held accountable to justice.
.
