Skull of Neolithic women away from burial site; Archaeologists are discovering the burial practices of the Stone Age

An archaeologist finds a 5,600-year-old human skull over a straight leg in Marcel Loubens’ cave in the Bologna region of northern Italy.

Press Preview of materials from the latest Bonhams auction in a gentleman's library

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LONDON, ENGLAND – JANUARY 24: A gallery skull at Bonhams’ auction house has a human skull engraved, expected to receive 900 GBP in their upcoming Gentleman’s Library Sale, on 24 January 2013 in London, England. The auction includes a mix of rare items such as the pygmy hippo skeleton, a cigar belonging to Winston Chuchill and the MI9 spy catalog. It will take place at Bonhams Knightsbridge on 29 and 30 January 2013.

The resting place of the skull at the foot of the cave was so difficult to access that only one archaeologist could recover it using rock-climbing machines.

The woman died between the ages of 24 and 35, showed a CT scan (computed tomography) and an examination of the skull itself. According to radiocarbon dating, it existed between 3630 and 3380 BC That is at the time of the New Stone Age, or Neolithic Age. To put that in context, this woman lived only before Tzi the Iceman. Their embalmed bodies were found in northern Italy around 3300 BC

A possible explanation for the researchers came after they determined which skull wounds were caused by humans and which could have been sustained when the skull fell into a number of rocks. .

Experts uploaded their study in the magazine PLOS One on March 3 with the title “Revealing a Post-Death Situation: The Isolated Eneolithic Cranium Found in Marcel Loubens Cave (Bologna, Northern Italy).”

What went wrong: How did funeral rites be practiced during the burial ages?

Several traumatic signals on the woman’s brain, according to LiveScience, helped the researchers compile her strange story. According to the researchers, one tooth may have been forcibly drilled with drills because there were parallel grooves underneath. They speculated that this woman underwent cranial surgery, such as trepanation, a Neolithic procedure and later that involves drilling holes in the skull. The team believed that someone present a smear of ocher red dye on these teeth there for medicinal or symbolic purposes.

According to the researchers, other lesions showed no signs of recurrence. They noticed that soft turf on her skull had been cut and scraped since she died. Other Neolithic burials in Italy have confirmed this practice.

For example, at Re Tiberio Cave in northern Italy, the long bones of arms and legs of up to 17 Neolithic human skeletons were excavated. However, their heads were absent, indicating that the body parts of these individuals may have been removed and rearranged after death. According to the researchers, other Neolithic fossils found in nearby caves also show signs of cranial scraping symptoms formed after the people died.

How the skull ended up in an unusual position

Another trauma and grueling sediment on the woman’s skull told a different story. There were natural causes for her skull to move after she was buried, most likely water and the dirt pushed her head down into a sinkhole.

Researchers said in a statement that the skull ended up in the cave by mistake after a long and bumpy journey. Volcanic activity created the tunnel, where the skull lived for 5,600 years before modern researchers discovered it.

Thomas Terberger, an archaeologist at the Lower Saxony State Office for Cultural Heritage in Hannover, Germany, said the resting place of the skull was unique. Terberger, who was not involved in the study, said the authors explained how the head entered this cave in a convincing way.

Christian Meyer, a lead researcher at the OsteoArchaeological Research Center in Germany, who was not involved in the study, told LiveScience that case studies like this are relevant to show the wide range of possible postmortem events to skeletal remains. stimulated by nature or human-induced anthropogenic causes.

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