After her death, about 5600 years ago, a female skull from the Stone Age undertook an unexpected journey when mud and water washed it away from her cemetery into the rocky rocks of a steep cave in what is now Italy, a new study.
When archaeologists found the skull, its resting place in the cave shaft was so difficult to reach that only one archaeologist could push the rock climbing equipment into space to repair it. During a later analysis, the researchers found that the skull was very scratched; at first they could not make heads or tails of what had happened to the old woman.
After the researchers determined what lesions of the skull were likely to be caused by humans and what was likely to occur as the skull tumbled against various rocks, the researchers came up with a possible scenario. After this woman died, people in her community probably broke her body – a funeral practice performed at other funerals from this period and region. After people separated the woman’s skull from the rest of her body, environmental forces dragged it into the cave, the researchers suggested.
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Archaeologists discovered the lone skull in 2015 in the Marcel Loubens Cave in northern Italy. Caves are common sites for ancient burials, but archaeologists could not find any other human remains there, not even when they returned in 2017 with climbing equipment to retrieve the skull.
A CT (computed tomography) scan and the analysis of the skull itself revealed that the woman was between the ages of 24 and 35 when she died radiocarbon dating indicated that she lived between 3630 and 3380 BC during the New Stone Age, or the Neolithic period. To put this in perspective, this woman lived before Ötzi the Iceman, whose mummified remains date from 3300 BC and were also found in northern Italy.
What happened?
Several traumatic lesions on the woman’s skull helped the researchers compile her strange story. One dent – which showed signs of healing, meaning it originated when she was alive, was possibly made with tools, as there were parallel grooves underneath, the researchers said. Perhaps this woman underwent a cranial operation, such as trepanasie A technique that was used during the Neolithic and later in which holes are made in the skull, they said. A stain of red ocher The pigment found on this dent can be placed there for therapeutic or symbolic reasons.
Other lesions indicated that the soft tissue on her skull was cut off and scraped off after she died, as the lesions showed no signs of healing, the researchers said. This practice has been documented at other Neolithic funerals in Italy; For example, at the Re Tiberio Cave in northern Italy, the long arm and leg bones of up to 17 Neolithic human skeletons are arranged in order, and their heads are missing – clues that these people’s body parts may have been separated and rearranged after death. Other Neolithic remains found in nearby caves also show evidence of scratch marks made after the deaths of the people, the researchers said.
Life during the Neolithic was challenging, so it is no surprise that the woman did not have the best health. Small holes on top of her skull could be related to inflammation, possibly due to chronic anemia (iron or vitamin B12 deficiency), the researchers said. The woman also has two dense, ivory spots on her skull, which were probably benign tumors. Even her tooth enamel was underdeveloped, indicating that she had health problems when her permanent teeth developed in early childhood. She also had several cavities, possibly due to a diet high in carbohydrates, the researchers said.
Related: Images: a new face for Ötzi, the Iceman mummy
Rocky tumble
Other damage and deposited sediment to the woman’s skull told a different story – essentially the natural forces that move the woman’s skull after her funeral. After the woman was laid to rest, the decomposed skull rolled away, probably with water and mud flowing downhill to a sinkhole.
“After a long and bumpy ride, [the skull] accidentally ended up in the cave, ”the researchers said said in a statement. Over time, the creeping hole’s geological activity created a cave, where the skull sat for 5,600 years until it was discovered by modern archaeologists.
The resting place of the skull is ‘unusual’, but ‘the authors are able to give a plausible scenario of how the skull ended up in this cave’, said Thomas Terberger, an archaeologist at the State Office for Cultural Heritage in Lower Saxony, in Hanover, Germany, said. , who were not involved in the study. But the origin of some lesions of the skull is still dark, he said.
“I have a feeling that the authors themselves, who have done a very good job, are not 100% sure about this,” Terberger said in an email to WordsSideKick. “It is not always easy to distinguish between streaks (caused by transport in the sediment / rocky soil) and cut marks.”
Although this skull represents only one individual, case studies such as these are important to show the wide range of post-mortem episodes that can actually occur with skeletal remains, initiated by natural or anthropogenic [human-caused] factors, “Christian Meyer, lead researcher at the OsteoArcheological Research Center in Germany, who was not involved in the study, emailed WordsSideKick.com.
The study was published online in the journal on Wednesday (March 3) PLOS Een.
Originally published on Live Science.