An international team, including researchers from the University of Toronto and the Catalan Institution of Research and Advanced Studies, report that a fragmentary human skull found in Spain provides the oldest evidence of interpersonal violence.
Published today in the journal PLOS ONE, the team studied a partial skullcap – the upper part of a human cranium – unearthed from a site known as the Sima de los Huesos, located in the Atapuerca Mountains in northern Spain. The skull belongs to a female hominin.
The researchers found numerous cut marks and indentations made by stone tools on the surface of the bone and also on the inside, which were almost certainly made while she was still alive, suggesting interpersonal violence.
“We are looking at a murder scene from half a million years ago, although we might be just witnessing the final act of a longer sequence of violent events,” says João Zilhão, a professor emeritus in the department of anthropology at U of T Mississauga.
The researchers point out that the Atapuerca site has yielded a large collection of hominin fossils, belonging to the species Homo antecessor, which are associated with stone tools and animal remains.
The research team believes the killing was likely carried out by members of the same group of hominins rather than a different species, as has been proposed in other cases of ancient hominin violence.
“If the Sima individuals engaged in lethal and nonlethal interpersonal aggression on a regular basis, as our findings and the archaeological context seem to indicate, we should not be surprised if this behaviour is later found to be repeated elsewhere and in different human species,” says Zilhão.
The researchers hope their findings will shed new light on the evolution of human behaviour, particularly the dark side: our violent nature.
“Despite many decades of studying early human remains and their archaeological context, we are still in the early stages of understanding not just the origins of our species, but also of our propensity to violence,” says Zilhão.
