© 2016 reuters
Brilio.net/en - Evidence of the earliest violent human conflict has been discovered. Scientists have found fossilized bones that indicate the brutal killing of over two dozen prehistoric men, women and children, as well as weapons such as arrows, clubs and stone blades in eastern Africa.
According to VOA report, the bloody massacre, dated about 10,000 years ago, is located in Nataruk, a rich and fertile lagoon. The remains of 27 people from a Stone Age hunter-gatherer community were unearthed at Nataruk, roughly 30 kilometers west of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya.
Photo: nataruk fossils/lahr-naturecom
The condition of those skeletons depicted their tragic death. A mans skeleton was found with a sharp blade made of obsidian (type of volcanic glass), still embedded in his skull. Another man had his skull crushed, apparently by a club. A woman in her last months of pregnancy appeared to have been bound by her hands and feet.
Victims also had projectile wounds to the neck and broken skulls, hands, knees and ribs.
Marta Mirazon Lahr, a paleoanthropologist from University of Cambridge said evidence implied these people were slain in a planned attack by warriors, most likely from another region.
"It is a brutal, physical, lethal attack with the intention to kill those individuals who could put up a defense or mount a counter-attack, or who perhaps were of no use to them, whether it was a man or a very pregnant woman, too young or too old," Mirazon Lahr said.
According to Lahr, the human species arrived about 200,000 years ago in Africa. Many scholars had thought that warfare was first emerged long after the time of Nataruk people, when humans formed settlements instead of leading nomadic lives.
The Nataruk fossils raise the question of whether warfare has been part of the human experience for much longer than previously thought," she added.
The planned attack would suggest that Nataruk was a rich place surrounded by forest; indicating an ideal home for hunter-gatherer, who lived from hunted animals, fish, as well as foraged plants and fruits.
The location might have been a bountiful resource of fresh water, meat, fish, nuts, and other richness Nataruk people possessed. The richness that would have also made them potential target for rival prehistoric foragers.
Along with the human remains, scientists discovered pottery, which suggests that inhabitants stored their food; indicating another reason for outside aggressors to pillage this settlement.
There were remains of 21 adults and six children, most under the age of six. There were neither older children nor teenagers.
"Whether they managed to escape, or were taken, we will never know. At the end, all massacres are savage," she said.
"How many examples do we have from our very recent, and current, history? But finding the remains of a massacre among the skeletons of hunter-gatherers of this period was totally surprising," she added.
The research appeared in the journal Nature.
(brl/tis)
