In the latest fascinating anthropological finding, it has been found that a skull that had been found in a cave a while ago is actually the oldest murder victim fossils ever found, as scientists have come to the conclusion the skull had severe trauma from a blunt object.
Before the discovery of the oldest murder victim fossils, there have been a string of remarkable anthropological findings in the past months, including the fact that Stonehenge was actually a much more complex structure in its beginnings, as well as the recovery of two lost cities from Honduras' myths and the astounding recently discovered fact that humans and Neanderthals interbred thousands of years ago.
Just about everyone in the world has watched enough "C.S.I." episodes in their lifetime to pretend to know the very basics of forensics, but the team of scientists that have uncovered the oldest murder victim fossils are much more interested in the science behind the landmark discovery than finding a guilty party when it's been 430,000 years since the homicide took place.
According to Forbes, the oldest murder victim fossils were found in a cave at Sima de los Huesos ("Pit of Bones") in the Atapuerca mountains of Spain, entirely covered in red clay; there's still a wisdom tooth within the remains, erupted and with only slight wear - the murder victim, in all, had to be a young adult.
While it's basically impossible that the 430,000 year-old oldest murder victim fossils are actually the first case of murder in the history of humanity, but it's definitely the oldest record found at this point.
The Washington Post reports that the study about this matter was published last Wednesday in the specialized journal PLOS One, as scientists reconstructed the death scene from the victim's fractured skull, which was ruptured in two different places with the same blunt object, making it clear that there had been aim to kill and it wasn't an accident. "This individual was killed in an act of lethal interpersonal violence, providing a window into an often-invisible aspect of the social life of our human ancestors," said Nohemi Sala, a paleontologist from Madrid's Centro Mixto UCM-ISCIII de Evolución y Comportamiento Humano.
CBC reports that the skull belonged to a primitive member of the Neanderthal lineage and it was found at what seems like a funerary site, as nearly thirty other individuals were also found around the oldest murder victim fossils.
