The first known murder happened 430,000 years ago

(an archaeological dig site in the Atapuerca mountain range of Northern Spain)

 

The Claim
The Worlds first murder took place 430,000 years ago

 

Deep in the Atapuerca mountains in northern Spain lies a cave which has been given the name Sima de los Huesos, or “Pit of bones”. It was named as such because at some point in the distant past of human history, this chimney like cave shaft was used to dump bodies down.

 

The pit wasn’t discovered until 1983 and since then, over 5,500 pieces of bone have been found, belonging to 28 individuals of the Homo Heidelbergensis, a now extinct human like species of the Pleistocene period.

 

The strange thing about this discovery is that the remains all seem to be from murder victims and have been dated to be an absolute minimum of 350,000 years old, which predates any other civilisations records of murder by a long shot.

 

One of the skulls belived to be around 430,000 years old, has 2 blunt trauma marks to the left hand side of the cranium, which seem to have been done by the same object at 2 different angles. Apparently whoever this was had annoyed the wrong pre-human monkey man and got smashed in the head with a stone hammer.

 

 

Since there are numerous other dig sites on the mountain range it suggests the area had some sort of civilisation living there who remained in the area for long enough to leave behind a large amount of historical artifacts.

 

various flint tools and weapons have been found here, along with numerous bones of other Homo heidelbergensis and an extinct species of bear. An interesting thing about this area is that 90% of all Homo heidelbergensis remains ever found on earth have come from this mountain range, suggesting that whatever it was that originally created “life”, managed to make a completely separate species that only lived in this area.

 

Some of the remains and artifacts can be found in the Museum of Human Evolution in Burgos northern Spain. The dig sites around the mountain are listed as UNESCO World heritage sites and most are not open to the public.