More than 2,000 fossils of humans who lived about 400,000 years ago in Atapuerca, northeast of Burgos, have been removed from the Sima de los Huesos. The paleoanthropologists have literally done detective work to collect all the bone fragments until they have reassembled the skulls of 20 people: adult men and women, young people and children. The team has just analyzed in more detail the injuries that these 20 skulls present using techniques very similar to those that a coroner would use. The results –just published— reveal a history of violence.
The study has focused on 17 skulls already known since excavation began in the chasm in 1976 and three new ones that have been recently recomposed. Those responsible for the excavations believe that the corpses of the chasm were of pre-Neanderthals, ancestors of the Neanderthals who later lived in Europe for tens of thousands of years and were the closest human species to ours. The skull injuries raise unanswerable questions.
Most likely, all the corpses were thrown into this pit, from which it was impossible to get out. Most of the analyzed remains show one or several wounds on the skull, all very similar. They are dents in the bone at the top of the head, which is covered when one wears a cap. Older people, young people and children present these blows, sometimes up to 10. The analysis of the scars shows that they survived these traumas, since the bone healed.
“The human skull is like a sandwich: it has a first hard layer, a somewhat less dense intermediate layer called diploe, and a third hard layer,” explains Nohemi Sala, a researcher at the National Research Center on Human Evolution de Burgos and first author of the study. In many cases, the lesions pass through the outer bone and reach the intermediate lamina. “These blows had to be very strong; they were probably made with blunt objects like stones or sticks,” she notes. There is a brutal fact: children have the same or more injuries than older people.
Most of the humans in the chasm also have lethal head injuries: blows so blunt that they pierced the skull and reached the brain. These wounds did not heal and probably caused death. Six of the nine pre-Neanderthals with these wounds have an almost identical pattern: a circular hole on the left side of the neck. It is likely that they were all killed in the same way and then thrown into the hole.
Skull number 5—nicknamed Miguelon in homage to the cyclist Induráin—presents “a compendium” of all the violence and harshness that has been found in the abyss, recognizes Juan Luis Arsuaga, co-director of the excavations and co-author of the new study. “His face was completely deformed by a trauma that probably caused a suppurating abscess with a fistula, something extremely painful,” says the paleoanthropologist. In addition, he has a life-threatening injury to the top of his skull. But the most striking are the deep markings that he has on the back of his head. The team believes they are traces of the claws of a bear that preyed on Miguelón. “Either the bear killed him or those marks occurred just after,” Arsuaga adventures. There was no way out of the chasm, so if there was a bear it would be because he had fallen into it, possibly attracted by the stench of carcasses.
Atapuerca scientists acknowledge that all these findings leave more questions than answers: Who killed these people and how? Were the killers from the same tribe or a rival? Who threw their bodies into the chasm?
Sala, Arsuaga and the rest of the team think that these are episodes of violence between groups. Two tribes of pre-neanderthals meet and kill each other. Afterward, the survivors throw their own into the chasm. “They always did this right here, in this chasm,” Sala reflects. Was it some kind of burial? It is impossible to know, but there is a lurid nuance that supports this theory: there is no trace of cannibalism in the bodies, a common practice in other groups of archaic humans, including the Homo ancestor who lived in Atapuerca 1.2 million years ago.
Specific acts of violence between groups are known in other archaic human species, such as Neanderthals possibly skewered by an arrow and, in later times, the first evidence of open warfare between Homo sapiens more than 10,000 years ago. But the chasm is unparalleled, admits Arsuaga. No other site in the world has so many fossils of so many individuals with marks of violence. “There is nothing like the chasm and we still have half to excavate,” explains the paleoanthropologist.
Non-fatal head injuries are also enigmatic. The team does not believe that they are accidental, for example bumps on the head when entering the caves. “At this time, humans had not discovered fire and they did not usually go very far into caves,” Arsuaga reasons.
The skeletons of Neanderthals who lived thousands of years later in Europe show a multitude of broken bones and injuries. Paleoanthropologist Erik Trinkaus compared the prevalence and type of breaks with those of modern humans and concluded that the most similar were those of rodeo riders: many arm fractures as a result of falls from an animal they were trying to hunt or a charge of a wild bull. But in the abyss there are no arm fractures, explains Arsuaga. “These lesions are always in the part of the skull above the chamois, I don’t know of anything like it in the entire fossil record or in current humans, including hunter-gatherers,” he highlights. “What are these data telling us about humans? That we are a social species and live in groups. The groups are territorial and exclusionary. We are very supportive in our community, but we can be very hostile to people from another”, he concludes.
Antonio Rosas, paleoanthropologist at the CSIC expert in Neanderthals and author of one of the founding studies on the pre-Neanderthals of Atapuerca, believes: “We can invent whatever we want to interpret the data, but it is impossible to know what really happened. As a result of knowing this study we were thinking about how these injuries could have been produced. A first analysis tells us that it would be very difficult to give this type of blows both from the front and from behind. We do not know if stones, sharp objects or maces were used. We are missing the reconstruction of the crime and knowing the exact gesture that gave death to these humans”, he points out. This “world of violence”, as he himself calls it, is it normal among humans of all times? It is very difficult to know because Atapuerca has so many remains that statistical data can be obtained, something that does not happen in many other sites. What is clear is that the traces of violence are much greater among Homo sapiens later. “In this we are the champions”, concludes Rosas.
You can follow MATTER on Facebook, Twitter and Instagramor sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.
Exclusive content for subscribers
read without limits
#Twenty #cracked #skulls #reveal #history #violence #murders #Atapuerca