─Murder in Atapuerca
Another case of interest is that of Atapuerca (^) [ 42 ], which is important because it
shows that both modern hominids, as well as those who preceded us, cemented the
continuous use of violence to refine social relations. At the Atapuerca site
(Burgos), a murder was discovered that is recorded in the fossil record, and whose
study on skull 17 from the "Sima de los Huesos" was published in the scientific
journal PLoS ONE (^) [ 43 ], finds it to be the oldest known case of intentional
homicide (not necessarily murder) in the history of mankind to date, since skull 17 ,
made up of 52 fragments recovered over 20 years of excavation ( 1990 - 2010 ), an
exemplary exercise in patience and perseverance, corresponds to an individual
who died at the beginning of his youth and arrived at the site 430. 000 years ago,
where he lies with 27 other individuals from the same period. The origin of this
accumulation of corpses in the “Sima de los Huesos” is one of the greatest
unknowns of world prehistory in recent years.
In the publication that you can consult on the internet, the mortal injuries
of the individual in question have been studied; whose skull shows two
perforations in the frontal bone, above the left ocular orbit. The study shows that
these two holes were most likely caused by the impact of a hard object before or
after the death of the individual. Where the significance of the study stands out is
that it concludes that both injuries were produced by the same object in two
different impacts and with different trajectories, which would rule out that either
or both of the injuries were the result of an accident or the same fall into the Sima.
The researchers therefore conclude that in all likelihood both punctures were
produced by another individual who struck him twice with what we might call "the
murder weapon".
The Atapuerca Research Team has defended the hypothesis that it could
be an accumulation of corpses by other humans. However, other researchers have
proposed different hypotheses which, little by little, after years of study, have been
discarded. This new work reaffirms the Atapuerca Research Team's hypothesis
that the accumulation of corpses was intentional. Thus, the “Sima de los Huesos”
would be the first cemetery or burial pit discovered to date. In the study of this
skull, the first signatory is Dr. Nohemí Sala, postdoctoral researcher 2014 at
the "Fundación Atapuerca" (^) [ 44 ], also adds clues to solve the mystery of the