Grisly prehistoric massacre shows signs of first known war

Fossilised remains of men, women, and children showing clear signs of being violently massacred have been discovered in Kenya, suggesting that humans have been engaging in warfare for at least 10,000 years.

The first person to spot the bones, some of which were lying on the surface, said Lahr, was Pedro Ebeya, one of the fossil hunters who work with the Turkana Basin Institute.

In this August 2012 photo provided by Marta Mirazon Lahr, researcher Frances Rivera, right, Michael Emsugut, left, and Tot Ekulukum excavate a human skeleton at the site of Nataruk, West Turkana, Kenya. This technique measures half-life decay of a radioactive isotope (of carbon) found exclusively in organic material.

There was even a woman who must have been heavy with child.

“The question is whether this [warfare] happened with hunter-gatherers”. The inhabitants and subsequent victims of the conflict that ensued, are thought to be members of an extended family that lived there together. Researchers believe the Nataruk massacre is the earliest scientifically-dated historical evidence of human conflict. As the authors mention in the paper, which is published today in Nature, violence between different groups is prevalent in chimpanzees-but whether or not it was humankind’s evolutionary destiny (and thus has haunted us since our species emerged), or whether it later came about when the notion of ownership developed from humans settling on land as farmers is unclear.

The discovery of this hardened molten rock among the remains point to an attack from the outside. However, Nataruk may simply be evidence of a standard antagonistic response to an encounter between two social groups at that time.

“This would extend the history of the same underlying socio-economic conditions that characterise other instances of early warfare: a more settled, materially richer way of life”.

At that time the area around Nataruk was a fertile lakeshore bordered by marshland and forest giving covetable access to drinking water and fish.

While there are many examples of group massacres in agricultural societies, very few examples have been found in hunter-gatherer societies. The varying remains at Nataruk indicate that this probably was not the case. Kalakoel 4 was a temporary camp where people returned with some of what they had hunted and gathered in places such as Nataruk, Lahr speculates. The children’s bones were not found near any of the men’s bones, and a lot of them were under around 6 years of age, with the eldest somewhere between 12 and 15.

Ten of the bodies had signs of injuries that were likely lethal: Five showed evidence of blunt-force head trauma, and five or six (one was ambiguous) had markings consistent with arrow wounds around the head and neck.

One of the males had a sharpened blade fabricated with obsidian lodged in his head but not fully puncturing the bone. “The man appears to have been hit in the head by at least two projectiles and in the knees by a blunt instrument, falling face down into the lagoon’s shallow water”, said Dr. Mirazon Lahr.

Whereas most groups of skeletons are found on the site of ancient cemeteries, the scientists believe that these ones were never given a deliberate burial. As the depiction at left shows, the pregnant woman was found in a sitting position, with her hands crossed between her legs.