A cemetery reveals the secrets of wars in Sudan 13400 years ago
Some of the remains bore evidence of wounds healed
Bordeaux | Times of Sudan
examination of remains buried in a cemetery in one of the oldest sites that show the tools of war between humans in the world revealed that the lives of the peoples who inhabited the eastern bank of the Nile in northern Sudan some 13,400 years ago were not without wars between them.
Researchers said, Thursday, that the re-examination of the remains exhumed in the 1960s from the Jabal al-Sahaba cemetery provides a new vision of prehistoric wars, including evidence of a series of violent confrontations rather than a single, deadly encounter as was previously believed.
That widespread violence affected men and women alike, and children as young as four years old were injured..
Isabel Krevecour
Of the remains of 61 men, women and children, 41 showed signs of at least one wound, and most were from projectiles such as spears and arrows.
Some of the remains bore evidence of healed wounds, indicating that their owner was injured in combat.
The remains of 16 people bore traces of healed wounds and others that did not heal, which indicates that their owners survived one battle and died in another. The microscopic examination revealed wounds with fragments of stone weapons embedded in the bones, reflecting the hell of wars since time immemorial.
The original analysis in the 1960s concluded that only 20 people were injured and did not indicate that any of them had healed.
Anthropologist Isabel Krevecour, from the French National Center for Scientific Research at Bordeaux University and a senior researcher for the study published in Scientific Reports, said that widespread violence affected men and women alike, and children as young as four years old were injured.
She added, “It appears that one of the main causes of death was bleeding that caused wounds.”
While spears and arrows can be launched from a distance, there was also evidence of a close fracture, in the presence of many cases of fractures caused by defensive movements such as injuries to the forearm that occur when raising to protect the head, in addition to fractures of the bones of the hand.
