The evenly rounded hole in the shoulder blade of a Neanderthal who died more than 70,000 years ago may be the oldest evidence to date that a human ancestor was killed by a wooden spear, reports UNN, citing The Guardian.
Details
Archaeologists discovered the distinctive injury while excavating the skeletal remains of an adult Neanderthal (along with the remains of other members of the species) in Shanidar Cave, in Iraqi Kurdistan. The remains lay beneath a layer of rock and sediment nearly 8 metres thick.
At this site — in a hollow behind a huge boulder near the cave entrance (no larger than a refrigerator) — at least five Neanderthals were buried over the course of several years. It appears that some bodies were placed on top of others that were still decomposing at the time.
"The fact that they returned to the same place to bury the dead over the course of several years or even decades is highly unusual for archaeological finds associated with Neanderthals," says Dr Emma Pomeroy, a biological anthropologist at the University of Cambridge. "This indicates that placing the bodies at this site was a deliberate act."
In addition
Researchers were able to find only part of the skeleton of the injured Neanderthal — an adult approximately 45 years old. They discovered the left shoulder blade bearing traces of an injury, seven teeth, several ribs (and fragments of them), as well as an almost completely preserved right arm resting against a boulder.
A detailed examination of the shoulder blade revealed three fractures radiating from a 1.5-centimetre-diameter hole, as well as bone fragments that filled the wound. According to the scientists, these fragments were probably knocked out of the thin bone at the moment the spear struck.
The round shape of the hole and the nature of the bone damage provide compelling evidence that the wound was inflicted by a wooden spear that struck the body from the front. However, it is impossible to determine whether this was an accident during a hunt or a deliberate attack — perhaps a brutal blow delivered by an enemy.
According to Pomeroy, the location of the wound and the force needed for a spear to penetrate the chest (piercing the lung and probably severing arteries before exiting through the shoulder blade) indicate a "fatal blow" aimed at the heart. "It is unlikely that this could have happened by accident," she added. The spear wound was almost certainly fatal, but this individual was already in extremely poor condition before receiving the fatal blow. As noted in a publication in the journal Scientific Reports, an examination of the teeth revealed that one of the lower incisors had split vertically — only half of it remained in place, while the neighbouring teeth had turned inward. "To split a tooth and turn the others like that, a very powerful blow to the face would have been necessary," Pomeroy says. "This person probably needed assistance, as they must have been in terrible pain." A thick layer of hardened dental plaque had formed on the fractured tooth; it would have taken at least a year for so much to accumulate.
Chris Hunt, emeritus professor at Liverpool John Moores University and a co-author of the study, said that the Neanderthals at Shanidar mainly hunted ibexes and probably used wooden spears similar to modern sporting javelins for this purpose.
Because plant materials decompose quickly, very few wooden objects from the prehistoric era have survived to the present day. However, wooden spears around 200,000 years old were found in Germany, preserved because they lay in waterlogged soil. The oldest known find — more than 400,000 years old — is the sharpened end of a round wooden spear discovered in 1911 at Clacton-on-Sea.
Last week, scientists in Spain described hundreds of impressions of wooden objects and artifacts indicating that Neanderthals actively worked with wood: they made trays, plates, tripods, spears, and other items. However, finding evidence of deadly clashes in paleontological finds is much more difficult: we may never find out exactly how the injured Neanderthal from Shanidar died. “It is quite possible that it was an accident during a hunt,” Hunt notes. “However, the possibility that it was caused by deliberate violence between people cannot be ruled out.”