Lethal interpersonal violence in the Middle Pleistocene.

Nohemi Sala,Asier Gómez-Olivencia,Juan Luis Arsuaga,Ignacio Martínez,Adrián Pablos,José María Bermúdez De Castro,Rolf M Quam,Eudald Carbonell,Ana Pantoja-Pérez,Christopher Bae

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0126589

Abstract

Evidence of interpersonal violence has been documented previously in Pleistocene members of the genus Homo, but only very rarely has this been posited as the possible manner of death. Here we report the earliest evidence of lethal interpersonal violence in the hominin fossil record. Cranium 17 recovered from the Sima de los Huesos Middle Pleistocene site shows two clear perimortem depression fractures on the frontal bone, interpreted as being produced by two episodes of localized blunt force trauma. The type of injuries, their location, the strong similarity of the fractures in shape and size, and the different orientations and implied trajectories of the two fractures suggest they were produced with the same object in face-to-face interpersonal conflict. Given that either of the two traumatic events was likely lethal, the presence of multiple blows implies an intention to kill. This finding shows that the lethal interpersonal violence is an ancient human behavior and has important implications for the accumulation of bodies at the site, supporting an anthropic origin.

Highlights

Interpersonal violence in prehistory is of special interest since it provides a window into human social relations in the past and may be associated with subsistence contexts such as competition for scarce resources, population density or territorial defense [1,2]
The 52 fragments that comprise Cranium 17 (Cr-17) show clear postmortem fractures along their edges (Table 1, Figs 2 and 3) typical of a dry bone breakage pattern commonly found in fossils under diagenetic conditions
Because soft tissue decomposition occurs sometime after the death of the individual, it is possible the injuries in Cr-17 could have been produced either during the free-fall down the vertical shaft or inside the Sima de los Huesos (SH) chamber after the body arrived to the site

Summary

Introduction

Interpersonal violence (lethal and nonlethal) in prehistory is of special interest since it provides a window into human social relations in the past and may be associated with subsistence contexts such as competition for scarce resources, population density or territorial defense [1,2]. Interpersonal violence can be manifested in different ways in the archaeological record, including trauma on hominin bones, which makes it susceptible to approach these questions in PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0126589. Ancient Lethal Interpersonal Violence grants from the Fundación Atapuerca.

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