These Battered Remains Found In Kenya Demonstrate The Earliest Evidence Of War
The earliest evidence of war between humans was found in the form of skeletons at Nataruk, which is located west of Lake Turkana in Kenya.
The skeletons belonged to a group of African nomadic hunter-gatherers who lived around 10,000 years ago. They met violent ends and were the first victims of human-group conflict.
The battered remains illustrate that vicious behavior occurred among nomadic peoples long before the rise of settled human societies.
They also offer clues that could help answer questions about why humans go to war and where the practice of group violence began.
“What we see at the prehistoric site of Nataruk is no different from the fights, wars, and conquests that shaped so much of our history, and indeed sadly continue to shape our lives,” said Marta Mirazon Lahr, a co-author of the study from the University of Cambridge.
The killers of Nataruk did not bury the bodies of their victims. Instead, their remains were preserved in what was once a lagoon, now long dried up, near the lake’s edge.
The bones were discovered in 2012, and at least 27 individuals were identified. Radiocarbon dating of the fossilized bodies and samples from the surrounding shells and sediment dated them to about 9,500 to 10,500 years ago.
Of the 27 individuals, eight were male and eight were female. The other five adults were of an unknown gender. At the site, there were also the partial remains of six children. Twelve of the skeletons were relatively intact, and of those, 10 showed signs of having met violent ends.
The researchers of the study described their injuries, which included “extreme blunt-force trauma to crania and cheekbones, broken hands, knees, and ribs, arrow lesions to the neck, and stone projectile tips lodged in the skull and thorax of two men.”
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In addition, four of them appeared to have their hands bound. Among them was a woman in the late stages of pregnancy. The researchers have some theories as to why the hunter-gatherers were attacked.
Warfare has commonly been linked to more advanced societies that stay in place more permanently. They control territory, practice farming, produce food, and develop social structures. When one group wants what another has, that’s when conflict breaks out.
But the hunter-gatherers at Nataruk lived a simple lifestyle, so warfare was not necessary. Yet, the killings seemed to have been planned rather than an encounter by chance.
The murderers carried weapons that were not used for hunting or fishing, such as clubs, knives, and arrow projectiles made from obsidian, which is rare in Nataruk and suggests the attackers were from another area.
“This implies that the resources the people of Nataruk had at the time were valuable and worth fighting for, whether it was water, dried meat, fish, gathered nuts, or indeed women and children,” Mirazon Lahr said.
“This shows that two of the conditions associated with warfare among settled societies—control of territory and resources—were probably the same for these hunter-gatherers and that we have underestimated their role in prehistory.”
The study was published in the journal Nature.
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