How this old, defoliated human skull ended up in such a strange place

Archaeologists have finally discovered how a 5,300-year-old skull ended up on the edge of a deep vertical cave shaft in northern Italy.

The skull, without jaw, was discovered in 2015 during exploration work in a natural gypsum cave in northern Italy. It was found near the top of a vertical shaft, about 12 meters below a complex of winding caves and 26 meters below ground level.

That a skull had to be found in such a strange and isolated place was, to say the least, a total surprise. No other human remains were found in the immediate area or archaeological evidence. The location of the inverted skull – a natural cavity in the shaft – can only be obtained with special climbing equipment, and not with a place that ancient people could easily reach.

In 2017, archaeologists return to the cave, known as Marcel Loubens, to document and retrieve the skull. New research published in PLOS One today, provides a detailed analysis of the fossil, along with a possible explanation for how it ended up in such an unlikely location. The article was led by archaeologist Maria Giovanna Belcastro of the University of Bologna in Italy.

As the authors speculate, the skull was probably transported to the shelf by a series of natural geological processes, including the opening of sinkholes, mudslides and stormwater. The 5,300-year-old fossil apparently traveled through this cave system on its own.

For the study, the researchers’ focused on investigating the circumstances surrounding the death of this individual, as the skull shows signs of some lesions appearing to be the results of [post-death] manipulation probably performed to remove soft tissues. ”

Indeed, the skull, known as the Marcel Loubens skull, or MLC for short, has some scratches and cuts on it that correspond to the removal of meat, which according to the authors was probably done as part of a death ritual. Sounds strange, but the defecation of deceased individuals was a relatively common prehistoric practice (even among Neanderthal people), both in this part of the world and elsewhere.

As anthropologist Alessia Zielo of the University of Padua explained in 2018 paper, there were many good reasons for the exercise:

In the cultures of the past, the head was intended as the seat of the soul, which contains the life force, and which possesses extraordinary qualities. It was also the profound symbol of a power closely linked to the concepts of life, death and fertility. After death, the scheduling also showed that the bodily remains of the deceased still played an important role in community life. [they] belongs to.

That the skull was found in a cave, however, is no surprise. The use of these Italian caves as ‘natural cavities’, in the words of the researchers, was common during the first half of the 3rd millennium BC, as evidenced by previous archaeological discoveries. Deceased individuals were brought into these caves and laid to rest, which is probably the situation here. Indeed, dating the carbon with carbon dioxide dates it back to between 3630 and 3380 BC, and places it within this time frame, known as the Aeolian period of Italy, also known as the Copper Age.

For the context, Ötzi the Iceman – that famous natural mummy found in ice – lived at some point between 3400 and 3100 BC. Ötzi died in the Ötztal Alps on the border between Austria and Italy, and about 345 km north of the Marcel Loubens Cave.

The skull, with more teeth attached, was found in a particularly good shape, which made a detailed analysis possible. Belcastro and her colleagues used microscopes and a CT scanner to study the fossil, in addition to analyzing a detailed 3D replica.

There were cross-references to detailed measurements of the skull with a forensic database, indicating that it belonged to a woman who died between the ages of 24 and 35 years. The lesions probably occurred after death, as no signs of healing were detected. An ocher has also been found, possibly related to the funeral ritual.

Other evidence suggests that this woman was not particularly healthy. She suffered from chronic anemia, such as an iron or vitamin B deficiency. She probably endured prolonged metabolic stress as a child, and it appears that she had an endocrine disorder, as a dental analysis showed. The shift to Neolithic lifestyles was indeed not only enjoyable and enjoyable; new diets (based on agriculture), new living conditions and tighter living arrangements have, according to the newspaper, led to reduced health and increased exposure to unhygienic conditions, pathogens and parasites.

The lesions on the skull do not appear to be caused by the behavior of animals such as biting, gnawing or scratching. What’s more, the detection of “irregular thick calcite crusts” on the MLC fossil indicates that the skull began to move shortly after the woman was laid to rest and by natural processes.

By studying a geological survey of the cave system and by the skull, the scientists devised a plausible explanation for the strange location of the skull.

Here is the explanation: Shortly after the woman was laid to rest, her skull rolled loose and rolled away. Water and mud began to rush through the cave and transported the skull further down the slope of a sinkhole and into a deeper cave. Continuous sinkhole activity shaped the cave in its current form and landed the skull on its strange resting place.

The Marcel Loubens Cave, it should be pointed out, is located in a depression in the region known locally as ‘Dolina dell’Inferno’, which literally translates to ‘Hell’s Sinkhole’. That sinkhole activity and ongoing geological processes that transported the skull to such a strange place seem quite reasonable.

We will probably never know the exact story of how this skull ended up in those deep caves, but this study offers some remarkable findings based on one skull found completely outside an archaeological context. Archaeologists, as this article shows, are very skilled at working with very little. In a way, it’s kind of what they do.