Times of India·3 min read·medium

75,000-year-old Neanderthal skeleton reveals signs of targeted violence

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75,000-year-old Neanderthal skeleton reveals signs of targeted violence
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Researchers from the University of Cambridge have identified a 75,000-year-old Neanderthal skeleton in Iraqi Kurdistan featuring a puncture wound consistent with a wooden spear. This discovery suggests that lethal interpersonal violence among hominins occurred much earlier than previously documented.

Why it matters

It challenges the romanticized view of early human ancestors and provides significant evidence regarding the evolutionary origins of human aggression and conflict.

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Everybody is aware of the story of Cain and Abel, the biblical tale of the world's first murder. But what if I tell you that the story of human anger and violence goes way beyond what we can imagine? Everyone hears from their grandfathers and grandmothers how good and lovely the world was before, and they too have heard the same story, almost making early humans seem like they lived in an actual heaven.Factually, long before modern civilisation, our ancestors lived in caves and depended on hunting and gathering for survival, but what if their psychology was not very different from ours? Anger, greed and a thirst for possession grasped them as much as we deal with them. That might be one of the reasons why people find their life's solutions in a book written thousands of years ago. Maybe we have not changed as much as we think.

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