(ORDO NEWS) — When did people start fighting? Researchers have not yet found a definitive answer to this question.
Nevertheless, evidence of armed conflicts and major strikes of our ancestors has been found quite a bit. So, scientists have found that the struggle for food-rich lands began at least 13,400 years ago.
Once upon a time, a person realized that for the sake of survival, you can attack your neighbors, and this happened a very long time ago – in the Stone Age
Researchers have long argued when the first wars began on Earth: under the hunter-gatherers of the Stone Age or later, between states (6000 years ago). At the same time, it is known that the killing of people by people is already about 430,000 years old, but all the finds speak of special cases, and not of wars.
Did the very first war on Earth take place in prehistoric Sudan?
More than 8,000 years before the rise of Egyptian civilization, hunter-gatherers were already at war over the food-rich Nile Valley.
According to paleoanthropologist Isabelle Crevecoeur, the skeletons of adults, teenagers and children excavated in the 1960s at an ancient cemetery in Sudan known as Jebel Sahaba show injuries resulting from constant skirmishes.
The age of the remains is approximately 13,400-18,600 years old, and this is the oldest evidence of conflicts between people. All this speaks in favor of the fact that the first war on Earth took place here.
Millennia ago, hunter-gatherers settled what is now southern Egypt and northern Sudan. As the ice age receded, places for successful fishing and hunting became less and less in this region. Lack of food provoked the first war on Earth between tribes, researchers say.
Burial 117 at Jebel Sahab is one of the earliest official cemeteries in the world. Shards and flakes of flint, remains of arrows or other weapons were found mixed with the bones of 24 skeletons. Cuts were found on the bones of other skeletons. Healed wounds also indicate that conflicts were quite frequent. Perhaps the first wars on earth were fought because of competition for food and resources.
Of the 61 skeletons found at Jebel Sahaba and held in the British Museum in London, 41 have at least one healed or unhealed wound.
In favor of the version that it was here that the first war in the world took place is evidenced by the characteristic of mutilations. According to scientists, most of the injuries were caused by stone spears, arrowheads or during hand-to-hand combat.
Kenya is the birthplace of one of the first warriors on Earth
In 2012, in the vicinity of Lake Turkana in Kenya, scientists led by British archaeologist Martha Mirazon Lahr discovered a mass grave of 27 ancient people. Sex was identified only in 16 of them. So, in the burial there were eight men and women. In addition, the researchers found the remains of six children and five adults.
The researchers concluded that almost all of these people, judging by the state of their remains, the posture and manner of burial, died a violent death. It turns out that one of the first wars on earth took place right here, near the place of Nataruk.
Note that the age of the remains, according to researchers, is approximately 10,000 years. Thus, the remains from the Jebel Sahaba are older. However, the Kenyan remains shed light on the details of one of the first warriors on earth.
For example, a 2016 study released by Martha Mirazon Lahr and her colleagues describes the injuries of people from a burial near Turkana.
Their character is proof that we are talking about one of the first warriors on Earth. Many of the injuries are interpreted as being hit by a club or a stone axe, and stone tips were embedded in the bones of two men.
In addition, there appears to have been no intentional burial of these remains. This fact, coupled with the violent nature of the death of people, suggests that there was one and the first warrior among people.
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