healed or unhealed, with no relation to sex or age at the time of death, including
children as young as four years old. On the other hand, the stone objects associated
with each grave had been part of a projectile (arrows or spears). These
observations suggest that the aggressions were not between group members or
within families, but were caused by attacks by other hominid groups.
Although some of the graves were double or multiple, and therefore the
subjects buried in them had probably died at the same time, the demographic data
and the subsequent disturbance caused by reburials suggest that the cemetery does
not contain the human remains of a single episode of warfare. The possibility that
Jebel Sahaba was a burial site for victims of violence cannot be excluded, but the
abundance of healed wounds indicates that the individuals buried were repeatedly
assaulted; and the reuse of the burial space supports the idea that there were
repeated episodes of sporadic interpersonal violence. Furthermore, the wounds had
been inflicted on both the front and back of the body, so it seems unlikely that they
originated from face-to-face confrontations between two groups. Therefore, it is
most likely that most of them were the result of skirmishes, raids or ambushes.
Coronal section of a) Cioclovina showing obtuse fracture angles (red lines) consistent with perimortem
trauma and b) the Ballumbie skull showing right angle fractures (blue markers) consistent with
postmortem damage
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure/image?size=large&id= 10. 1371 /journal.pone. 0216718 .g 003