10 Human Skulls That Taught Us Something About Humanity
By: Joe Duncan
Tags: Biology, History, Humanity, Science, Evolution

10 Human Skulls That Taught Us Something About Humanity

The Science of Interpreting Human Bodies From Centuries Past

Skulls…when we’re kids, they terrify us and fill us with horror; when we’re adults, they are the remnants of a person who once lived, a person like us, with a story to tell. Their historical use in art and other expressive mediums span the length of human history, but in the past few centuries, we’ve begun to turn to skulls to teach us about the world around us and the people who lived before us. Besides being merely a grim find, skull discoveries have often significantly advanced our understanding of biology and the history of the human race.

The Chalcolithic Skulls

The Chalcolithic skulls were a group of skulls found in separate graves in Russia, totaling 35 people in 20 different gravesites, dating back to the Chalcolithic period of human history. The Chalcolithic is a period not often discussed when metallurgy and pottery was primarily done with copper and is sometimes referred to as the copper age, between around 5,000 and 3,000 B.C.E. While bodies found in graves from this period isn’t unusual, in itself, what makes these skulls unique is what was observed on them: several of the skulls had holes which had been drilled into them, likely when the people were still alive. These particular skulls were found in a grave containing three men and two women, as well as two children, one a teenage girl and the other an infant between a year and two years old.

The skulls of two men and two women showed a single bore through them which indicated that they’d been trepanned, while the third man had an indention which had been carved into his skull, but it did not penetrate. This prompted an investigation that led to the discovery of many more such skulls in Russia. Further investigation revealed that not only had many of these skulls healed very well, with others healing for a couple of weeks before the person died, but it also appears that the bulk of these trepanations were performed on perfectly healthy individuals. This means not only is trepanation a lot more widespread than we’d previously believed, having never have discovered trepanation anywhere near the site in Russia but that it was a lot older than formerly thought. It’s still uncertain why these prehistoric people chose to trepan perfectly healthy humans, however. Unlike the ancients who performed trepanation as a form of surgery, these people seemed to have been doing it for some other reason, or perhaps to treat a mild illness like headaches. Nonetheless, our prehistoric ancestors were a lot more inventive than we’d previously given them credit for.

Austrapolithecus: Ethiopia

The next skull on the list was found in Ethiopia, in 2016, and was in remarkably good condition considering its age and freakishly unusual shape. Just how old was the skull? 3.8 million years old, and it belonged to our distant relatives, a human species similar to ours called Australopithecus. Austrapolithicus anamensis lived between 3.9 and 4.2 million years ago, and the site was only 34 miles from where the remains of the famous Lucy, another early human was found. The skull was in such good shape that researchers were able to reconstruct the face of the person to whom the skull belonged, giving us an astonishing glance into our distant past. The skull not only shaped our perception of our early ancestors but our conception of evolution. It was previously believed that Austrapolithecus anamensis died off and gave rise to a new race of humans, Austrapolithicus afarensis, but the dating of the skull compared with bone fragments found at nearby sites have shown that several species of humans lived concurrently. This challenges the long-held linear view of human evolution, that one species gave rise to the next, showing that multiple species lived side-by-side, in competition with one another for space and resources. The linear line of human evolution is starting to look a lot more non-linear as we discover more and more remains.

Homo Sapiens: Greece

Two skulls were found entombed in stone in Apidima, Greece, all the way back in 1978. They were encased together in a tiny stone box and it seemed that the skulls had been buried together and were of the same species of humans, Neanderthal. One of the faces was heavily degraded due to its age, being about 200,000 years old, and the other one had no face at all. But recent research would come to find out that one of the skulls was 170,000 years old while the other had been buried there separately, being 210,000 years old, and even more strikingly, only one of them was Neanderthal and the other was a 210,000-year-old Homo sapiens skull. This is incredible for three reasons, the first of which is that this is the oldest Homo sapiens fossil found in Europe by a long shot, with the next oldest dating back to 40,000 years ago.

It also demonstrates that seeing as the Neanderthal skull was 170,000-years-old and the Homo sapiens skull was 210,000-years-old, Homo sapiens and Neanderthal lived side-by-side, at some point in human history. Lastly, this greatly pushes the date back for when it’s believed that Homo sapiens first left Africa. Homo sapiens not only spread out earlier than we’d previously thought, but managed to make it a lot farther, into the Neanderthal territory, than we’d previously thought.

Tenochtitlan Skulls: Mexico

In 2015, archeologists discovered something astonishing in Mexico City, Mexico: a mass grave of human skulls. The skulls are some of the remains of Aztec culture who inhabited the area long before Mexico was even a country, and it’s almost certain that these skulls were used in human sacrifices, a practice which was prominent in Aztec culture. What’s most shocking about the find of 650 human skulls is the fact that they were coated with lime and placed together in an extremely organized fashion. As it turns out, this was once a massive tower of skulls fastened together, and it once stood near an Aztec church dedicated to the god Huitzilopochtli, the god of the sun, war, and human sacrifice. This behemoth of a tower was 6 meters wide and didn’t contain the skulls of just young men who were once warriors, but women and children also. This site confirmed what had been documented in the literature of the Conquistadors for centuries, the existence of massive towers and other objects made from human skulls, reports that were often doubted.

Homo Naledi: South Africa

Homo nalendi is an extinct species of humans who had an interesting blend of features that belonged to both modern anatomical humans and their ancestral primates. Scattered remains of these humans have been found in South Africa, primarily in the Rising Star cave complex. The reason for this? Homo nalendi would carry their dead and bury them deep, deep into the caves of the earth, probably as a ritual. They aad smaller, but rounder heads, a prominent eyebrow, but mainly, the remains found spanned in age, from very young to very old, meaning that at this point in human history, Homo nalendi was already beginning to care for the elderly, supporting families through multiple generations.

Yes, compassion, care, devotion, and solidly-bonded tribes go back a very, very long time. Anyone who suggests that humans are fundamentally selfish and warlike only isn’t telling you the whole story, it seems.

Archanthropus of Petralona: Greece

In 1960, researchers discovered an ancient skull inside of a cave in Greece, a skull that would greatly challenge our running theory of evolution, as time went on. At first, it was assumed to be just a Neanderthal skull, the Neanderthals having been a race that lived approximately 120,000 years ago, and, as we’ve discovered, alongside early modern anatomical humans. But, further dating would reveal the skull to be much older, between 200,000-years-old and 350,000-years-old. Some estimates have even suggested that the skull might be 700,000-years-old. Subsequently, researchers found additional remains from various species and human teeth dating within these older time ranges, topping out at 800,000-years-old. All of these severely damages the theory that all humans came from Africa, especially flying in the face of the theory that humans left Africa beginning around 120,000 years ago, with actual mass migration being much later. Could it be possible that we’re missing links in the chain of evolution? Or, is it possible that several species of humans evolved concurrently on different continents, although slightly different? Time will tell.

Naia: Mexico

Somewhere between 12,000 and 13,000 years ago, a young, teenage girl was wandering in a dark cave in modern-day Mexico, likely searching for water. At some point, she must have made a misstep in what we can only believe was total darkness and plunged to her death. In 2007, after the cave structure had significantly changed, divers in the waters which had come to fill the cave found an amazing discovery: the girl’s perfectly intact skull sitting on the bedrock of the cave. A diving team painstakingly removed the skull with tremendous care to preserve it as much as possible.

The girl would come to be named Naia, and she among the earliest humans to arrive in the Americas. A question that has baffled researchers for some time is why the earliest Americans who’d crossed into the Americans from Russia across the Bering Strait look so different from modern Native Americans. Some have sought to explain this by suggesting that there were many migrations rather than one. But with Naia’s skull so well preserved, researchers were able to perform the oldest facial reconstruction in the Americans, as well as a comprehensive DNA analysis. The results were groundbreaking in understanding early Americans, showing that Naia shared the facial features and bone structures of the earliest of Americans, which is different from Native Americans, but shared the same DNA as modern Native Americans, showing that there was only one instance of migration across the Bering Strait and into the Americas.

Denisovan: Siberia, Russia

Back in 2010, researchers stumbled upon a tiny fragment of a single bone inside of a cave in Siberia and a subsequent DNA analysis turned up something startling: a proposed new race of humans called Denisovans, after the Denisovan cave in Siberia in which the sliver of bone was found. Finding more remains to confirm this theory, however, proved to be quite difficult. Then, in 2017, two skulls were discovered in a cave in Eastern China, and though researchers couldn’t bring themselves to utter the word, the 105,000–125,000-year-old skulls are thought to belong to Denisovans. These skulls looked neither like Neanderthal nor modern humans, sharing some traits with each, and are thought to be distant cousins of Neanderthals. Ultimately, these skulls allow us to look into the past and give us an idea of what some humans looked like at a pivotal time on Earth, the Ice Age, when they lived. They had features like Neanderthals, like a strong eyebrow ridge, but they also have very big skulls suggesting a large brain capacity, in fact, the brain capacity of the skull even tops most modern humans. Could our brains have possibly gotten smaller? Time will tell what stories Denisovans have to tell and what more they will teach us about ourselves.

Pakal Na Trophy Skull: Belize

Ancient Mesoamerican civilizations, like the aforementioned Aztec and the Mayans, had a habit of skull collection, but not just any old boring skulls would do, it was a sign of prestige to have decorated skulls, or “trophy skulls” to proclaim your social status with. These skulls were often decorated with elaborate dressing and even painted or carved for effect. Turn the skulls of your enemies into decorated symbols of power and you’ve got yourself one hell of a method for scaring off any militant rivals who may want to challenge that power.

In 2019, fragments were found of such skulls at a site in Belize called Pakal Na, including fragments of jaws and cranium, each carved with holes punched out that were likely used to place feathers into for decoration. These skulls, in combination with others, are helping to guide us to what caused the curious collapse of the Mayan civilization. While it’s certain that environmental factors played a role, these skulls had an important story to tell: the imagery was that of the Mayan culture that resided much farther north, in the Yucatan region, suggesting that the Mayan empire went through a sort of civil war. Why else would a northern warrior be found so far south as Belize? It is quite possible that warfare from within the civilization was what caused the collapse of the Mayan empire.

Misliya Cave: Israel

More evidence that changed our view of when humans left Africa came out in 2018 when the jawbone and several teeth were found in the Misliya Cave, in Israel, suggesting that humans had left Africa much earlier than previously thought. The time frame these fragments are estimated to have come from are between 177,00 and 194,000 years old, which tells us that humans likely left Africa 50,000 years earlier than previously expected, which is quite the chunk of time. (link 19) Other remains of modern humans have been found and dated from about 90,000 to 120,000 years ago, as we’ve discussed, and this confirms those finds. The discovery also included stone tools that help to tell us how advanced these subjects were.