Humans Have Always Been Warring, And Cambridge Researchers Have Found Another Evidence

by Benson Agoha | Archaeology

* Skeletal remains of a victim of group hostility which has been
preserved for thousands of years.  (Credit: via Cambridge Research).

The above remains of a human skull has been lying in its grave for the past 10,000 years. But it is not alone. It is one of several buried in a mass grave, according to a new study by researchers from the University of Cambridge.

So before the earliest known organised warfare, humans have been to clashing and killing one another - like they still do today.

Published Friday in the journal Nature, the find compares only to the evidence, discovered in Sudan in the 1960s, which though still undated, but often quoted as of similar age, consists of cemetery burials, suggesting a settled lifestyle.

The research show the fossilised bones of a group of prehistoric hunter-gatherers who were massacred around 10,000 years ago. They have only just been unearthed 30 km west of Lake Turkana in Kenya, at a place called Nataruk. They were not even honoured with a burial. No one cared.

* This remains of a victim of inter-group clashes, fell into a shallow river
that dried but remained preserved. (Credit: via Cambridge Research).

According to researchers from Cambridge University’s Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies (LCHES), the partial remains of 27 individuals, including at least eight women and six children, were victims of hostile clashes, long before organised warfare was known to have begun.

Twelve skeletons were in a relatively complete state after all these years and ten of them showed clear signs of a violent death: including extreme blunt-force trauma to crania and cheekbones, broken hands, knees and ribs, arrow lesions to the neck, and stone projectile tips lodged in the skull and thorax of two men. Several of the skeletons were found face down; most had severe cranial fractures.

Among the in situ skeletons, at least five showed “sharp-force trauma”, some suggestive of arrow wounds. Four were discovered in a position indicating their hands had probably been bound, including a woman in the last stages of pregnancy. Foetal bones were uncovered.

Because the bodies were not buried, it could be seen that some had fallen into a lagoon that has long since dried; the bones preserved in sediment.

Known as the Nataruk massacre, it is the earliest record of inter-group violence among prehistoric hunter-gatherers who were largely nomadic.

Dr Marta Mirazón Lahr, from Cambridge’s LCHES, who directs the ERC-funded IN-AFRICA Project and led the Nataruk study said: “The deaths at Nataruk are testimony to the antiquity of inter-group violence and war,” said, adding “These human remains record the intentional killing of a small band of foragers with no deliberate burial, and provide unique evidence that warfare was part of the repertoire of inter-group relations among some prehistoric hunter-gatherers.”

Read the full Cambridge research [ here ].

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