When did people start fighting? Researchers have not found an exact answer to this question today. Nevertheless, evidence of armed conflicts and large strikes of our ancestors has been found not a little. So, scientists have found out that the struggle for food-rich lands began at least 13,400 years ago.
Researchers have long debated when the first wars began on Earth: during the hunter-gatherers of the Stone Age or later, between states (6000 years ago). At the same time, it is known that people have been killing people for about 430,000 years, but all the findings speak of private cases, not wars.
The very first war on Earth took place in prehistoric Sudan?
More than 8000 years before the emergence of the Egyptian civilization, hunter-gatherers were already fighting for the food-rich Nile Valley. According to paleoanthropologist Isabelle Krevecker, the skeletons of adults, adolescents and children excavated in the 1960s at an ancient cemetery in Sudan, known as Jebel Sahaba, have injuries resulting from constant clashes. The age of the remains is approximately 13,400-18,600 years, and this is the oldest evidence of conflicts between people. All this speaks in favor of the fact that the first war on Earth took place here.
Thousands of years ago, hunter-gatherers settled the territories of present-day southern Egypt and northern Sudan. As the ice age receded, there were fewer places for successful fishing and hunting in this region. Lack of food provoked the first war on Earth between tribes, researchers say.
Burial 117 in Jebel Sahaba is one of the earliest official cemeteries in the world. Fragments and flakes of silicon, the remains of arrows or other weapons were found mixed with the bones of 24 skeletons. Cuts were found on the bones of other skeletons. The healed wounds also indicate that conflicts were quite frequent. Perhaps the first wars on earth were fought because of competition for food and resources. Wendorf Archive, British Museum
Of the 61 skeletons found in Jebel Sahaba and stored in the British Museum in London, 41 have at least one wound that has healed or has not had time to heal. In favor of the version that it was here that the first war in the world took place, the characteristic of the injuries speaks. According to scientists, most of the injuries were inflicted by stone spears, arrowheads or during hand-to-hand fighting.
Kenya is the birthplace of one of the first warriors on Earth
In 2012, in the vicinity of Lake Turkana in Kenya, scientists led by British archaeologist Martha Mirazon Lar discovered a mass grave of 27 ancient people. It was possible to identify the gender of only 16 of them. So, there were eight men and women in the burial. In addition, the researchers found the remains of six children and five adults. The researchers concluded that almost all of these people, judging by the condition of their remains, posture and manner of burial, died a violent death. It turns out that one of the first the first war on earth took place right here, at the place Nataruk.
Note that the age of the remains, according to researchers, is about 10,000 years. Thus, the remains from Jebel Sahaba turn out to be older. Nevertheless, the Kenyan remains shed light on the details of one of the first warriors on earth.
So, in a 2016 study released Marta Mirazon Lar and her colleagues describe the injuries of people from the burial near Turkana. Their character is proof that we are talking about one of the first warriors on Earth. Many of the injuries are interpreted as marks from a blow with a club or a stone axe, and stone tips are stuck in the bones of two men. In addition, the deliberate burial of these remains, apparently, was not carried out. This fact, coupled with the violent nature of the death of people, suggests that there was one and the first warrior among people.