SCIENTISTS have uncovered a mass grave dating back 6,200 years – and one of the dead met their end in a particularly grim way.
A woman’s head appears to have been brutally bashed in by a broad-edged object.
Mass grave was uncovered in Iran[/caption]
Unclear if the brutal death was a result of murder or an accident[/caption]
Experts noticed a very prominent triangular fracture on the left side of the head.
But they’re stumped about whether it was a deliberate act of murder or a tragic accident.
The skeleton was part of a major haul unearthed in Iran.
Archaeologists also spotted something strange about the woman’s head shape too.
The skull is cone-shaped which suggests it was deliberately modified when she was a child in a process known as cranial bandaging.
This is where fabric is wrapped around the head tightly around the skull of young ones when it’s much softer.
Others with the same type of skull were buried alongside the woman.
Researchers studying the remains say the skull in question would have been weaker at withstanding such a harsh blow to the head.
However, the strike was so tough that it still would have killed her even if she had an unmodified skull.
“It should be noted that the blow was so severe that it would have fractured a normal, unmodified skull as well,” Professor Mahdi Alirezazadeh, from Tarbiat Modares University in Iran, told LiveScience.
“So we cannot attribute cranial fractures solely to modified skulls.”
He continued: “We know this woman experienced the fracture in the final moments of her life, but we don’t have any direct evidence to say that someone intentionally struck her.”
Their research was published in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology.
