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Skull sheds light on Neanderthals
23/04/2002 11:02 - (SA)
Maggie Fox
Washington - A Neanderthal who lived and died with a hole in his skull provides the first scientific evidence that these early humans used tools to attack one another, researchers said on Monday.
The remains add to other clues that Neanderthals, a dead-end species of pre-human who colonised Europe, nursed their sick and thus had strong social ties, the researchers say.
The 36 000-year-old skeleton was found in southern France years ago, but a study using recent techniques such as CT scans show the skull was crushed but healed.
"During computer-assisted reconstruction of the skull, we detected a healed fracture in the cranial vault," the researchers, led by Christopher Zollikofer of the University of Zurich, wrote in Tuesday's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"This bony scar bears direct evidence for the impact of a sharp implement," they added.
Erik Trinkaus, a Neanderthal expert at Washington University in St Louis, said the findings did not surprise him, but added they provided important scientific support for theories about how Neanderthals behaved.
"All social mammals squabble," Trinkaus, who edited the study, said. "The one lesson that we have is that the stakes increase markedly when you have serious weaponry available."
Neanderthals were once characterised as grunting, shuffling cave-dwellers, but in recent years a picture has emerged of a more complex being who was extremely successful, surviving the Ice Ages for millenniums before finally being out-competed by Cro-Magnons.
Evidence of mercy
"It's another piece of evidence that in the light of serious injury or other serious kinds of problems, these people were taking care of each other," Trinkaus said.
Zollikofer said the adult Neanderthal, probably a male, did not seem to have died of his wound. "Considering that bone healing is visible only two to three weeks after a traumatic event, it can be concluded that the individual survived the injury for at least some months," his team wrote.
In 1982, Trinkaus reported on the skeleton of a Neanderthal in present-day Israel who seemed to have survived being stabbed in the ribs, and last year he reported on the jaw of a pre-human whose teeth were all rotted out.
Surviving on a hunter-gatherer diet with rotted teeth would have been extremely difficult, unless there was help.
"When we published that, a number of people said, 'Right on - of course they were taking care of each other,"' Trinkaus said, but he added a few scientists questioned the evidence.
Scientists have also recently found that Neanderthals and early modern humans, often called Cro-Magnons, must have lived side by side.
The skeleton described in Monday's paper was found at St Cesaire in France, a site noted for the discovery of stone tools that were made in a more modern style as opposed to the clumsier tools made by Neanderthals for most of their history.
Scientists do not know if the Neanderthals evolved their tool-making abilities or perhaps learned from their modern neighbours.
The tool that broke this particular Neanderthal's crown may have been more modern, Zollikofer's team said. It had a sharp edge, like an axe, and the angle of attack suggests it was hafted - attached to a handle.
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