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| New Scientist: Muggings were rife in New Stone Age |
| 2006-05-16 |
| IF YOU are worried about being attacked or killed by a violent criminal, just be glad you are not living in Neolithic Britain. From 4000 to 3200 BC, Britons had a 1 in 14 chance of being bashed on the head, and a 1 in 50 chance of dying from their injuries. Grisly figures from the first systematic survey of early Neolithic British skulls reveal that life then was no rural idyll. "It's certainly more violent than we'd considered," says Rick Schulting of Queen's University Belfast, UK, who conducted the study with Mick Wysocki at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston. The discovery of craniums from the New Stone Age with signs of human-inflicted trauma is nothing new but this is the first clue to the overall frequency of violence. Schulting and Wysocki have so far identified and studied the remains of about 350 skulls, mostly from southern England. The pair found healed depressed fractures in 4 to 5 per cent of the skulls, and unhealed injuries in about 2 per cent - suggesting the person died from their wounds, or at some point in the attack. Most of the fatal blows were to the left side of the head, which would make sense if two right-handed people were fighting, says Schulting. The injuries were mostly caused by blunt objects, although some of the skulls seem to have been hacked by stone axes and there is some evidence that ears were chopped off. Schulting presented the work at last month's annual conference of the Society for American Archaeology in San Juan, Puerto Rico. From issue 2551 of New Scientist magazine, 11 May 2006, page 16 |
| Posted by:3dc |
| #9 Coffee alert, Nimble Spemble. |
| Posted by: gromgoru 2006-05-16 21:15 |
| #8 If they ran this in the fertile crescent, I bet they'd find most of the fatal blows were to the right side of the head, which would make sense if right-handed pre-muzzies were attacking. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-05-16 18:39 |
| #7 *rimshot* |
| Posted by: Frank G 2006-05-16 18:29 |
| #6 Have they found the cave wall 'club registry' records yet? |
| Posted by: Seafarious 2006-05-16 17:59 |
| #5 The reason men refuse to ask for directions TO THIS VERY DAY! |
| Posted by: mojo 2006-05-16 17:41 |
| #4 This squares with one archaeologist's observation of pre-Clovis skulls in North America. Same injuries, same pattern. |
| Posted by: Rob Crawford 2006-05-16 14:40 |
| #3 I will give up my club when they peel it from my cold fossilized hand... |
| Posted by: tu3031 2006-05-16 12:17 |
| #2 and a 1 in 50 chance of dying from their injuries Does this prove blunt trauma is a good stopper, but a bad killer??? IIRC, from what I've read online, the FBI stats are that (hand)guns wounds in the USA have a 5% lethality rate (IE 1 in 20 chance of dying), while knives have 15%. (I also seem to recall that assault rifles calibers are at about 15% (Fackler states a 14% mortality rate for the 7,62x39 from his Viet Nam experience as a war surgeon), while shotguns are about 66%, I've even read in a swell russian site that 95% of thoses incapacited by shotgun blast during police raids die, against 5% of thoses incapacitated by pistols, not sure what to make of this. Of course, all this supposes modern medecine, figures would probably would be higher without it, not counting short term survival from sepsis, permanent disabilties, etc, etc... prevented by it). Boy, were theses cavedudes tough! |
| Posted by: anonymous5089 2006-05-16 11:25 |
| #1 Ban Clubs!! Someone think of the children!!! |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2006-05-16 11:11 |