Archaeologists Solve Mystery of 5,600-Year-Old Skull Found in Italian Cave

smithsonianmag.com

48 points·Hooke··4 comments

"The analysis found evidence of some kind of procedure, possibly a surgery, performed on the woman when she was alive. The team posits that someone applied a red ocher pigment around the injury, possibly for therapeutic or symbolic purposes." I will never cease to be amazed by these ancient examples of assumed surgeries. However, it would be nice if the article expanded more on that or left a key to accompany the photo of highlighted areas on the skull.

They talk about a lot of manual manipulation on the skull. Muscles removed. Then talk about lack of variety in diet. Makes you wonder if they are not alleging something else without saying it.

de-fleshing leaves characteristic marks on bone. I believe contemporaneous animal bones show both de-fleshing and bone breaking for marrow. Brains have fats. If you're eating a person, you'd eat the brain (yes, I know ...) if you already ate marrow.

De-fleshing for ritual might not be distinguishable from de-fleshing for food. Except, maybe food would show signs of heating because, 5000 years ago I think they had fire, and fire makes protein yummy.

Lots of cultures in time past (and present?) leave bodies and then collect the bones, clean them up, do ritualised things with them. I think fewer cultures eat their dead, its not unknown, its less common.

I'm not an archeologist. This is just my opinion.

The journal it links to does provide such detail, https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

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