Scientists in Spain say that a prehistoric skull contains evidence that our ancestors were committing murder nearly half a million years ago.
Researchers have drawn that conclusion after examining the wounds on a skull, believed to be about 430,000 years old, that was found in a cave in Atapuerca, in northern Spain.
The cranium, belonging to a young adult, was piled together with the remains of 27 other people in a spot known as the Sima de los Huesos, or pit of bones, at the foot of a 13-metre chimney.
It was discovered during excavation work carried out between 1990 and 2010 by a local team. The researchers have since been investigating how the bodies got there, ruling out several possibilities: that they had been killed by wild animals, that geological movement had pushed the corpses together, or that they had all died having fallen down the same hole.
The two wounds on “Skull 17”, as it is known, were sustained on the forehead, above the left eye, and were extremely close to each other. The lesions were key when it came to ruling out alternative theories and reinforcing the hypothesis that the remains in the pit were put there as part of a funeral rite.
"The type of injuries, their location, the strong similarity of the fractures in shape and size, and the different orientations and implied trajectories of the two fractures suggest they were produced with the same object in face-to-face interpersonal conflict," wrote the team in their final report, published this week in the Plos One scientific journal.
The report goes on to state that this “represents the earliest clear case of deliberate, lethal interpersonal aggression in the hominid fossil record, demonstrating that this is an ancient human behaviour.”
Hominids are defined as any two-legged primate mammals, including recent humans and their extinct ancestors. The skull at the centre of the finding belongs to the Middle Pleistocene period, during which Homo sapiens evolved.
While evidence of violence between individuals during this era had previously been detected, this is the first time such a case appears to have caused death.
Atapuerca, in the Burgos province, has been a rich source of findings about prehistoric man. A jawbone found in the area in 2008, was believed to date back 1.2 million years, leading experts to reconsider their views of when primitive humans reached western Europe.
