Researchers continue to work on the daily life and death patterns of the first humans, and at this point, their geography, diet, physical structure and especially the remains of their bodies play a very important role in these researches.
Let’s take a closer look at the unusual ways of death of 5 ancient people whose deaths can be determined with various findings.
The first of these is “Turkana boy (Homo ergaster)”.
Known to have lived in Africa about 1.5 million years ago, Turkana died at a young age, but scientists could decipher his death. In the first place, the bones in his skeleton were examined and no trace of any predator was found.
The only thing that could be identified of Turkana, whose bones were all in place, was the strangeness of the jawbone. One of her milk teeth was missing, which was a clear indication of a gum condition called “Gingivitis”. According to research, this person, known to have lived in Kenya, was infected by his illness and died, possibly from blood poisoning.
Another of the first people to die of gum disease is “Kabwe”.
Kabwe lived about 400,000 years ago and struggled with gum disease, in addition to severe dental cavities. This person’s skull had multiple dental cavities and abscesses affecting the jawbone where the teeth were embedded.
What made Kabwe, like the Turkana boy, unusual was that ancient people rarely had oral and dental problems. Because until the beginning of agriculture, about 10 thousand years ago, the food of the first people was very limited and the possibility of eating sugar was very low.
A woman known as “KNM-ER 1808 (Homo ergaster)” had suffered from vitamin A poisoning.
KNM-ER 1808, who died painfully about 1.7 million years ago, had an unusual bony swelling covering his arm and leg bones. This abnormal condition of the woman whose skeleton was found in 1973 was a sign of vitamin A poisoning, as it is now.
Excessive consumption of vitamin A in the diet causes the tissues around the bone to bleed, rupture and form large clots. Subsequently, the bone tissue begins to grow abnormally, just as seen in this woman.
Although there are eggs, larvae and pupae in foods with high vitamin A; Analysis of the KNM-ER 1808’s teeth shows that it mainly feeds on meat. So it’s very likely that this person’s poisoning was due to excessive consumption of the livers of carnivorous animals.
Next up is the “Taung boy” hunted by an eagle.
Hunted by an eagle 2.3 million years ago, the Taung boy (Australopithecus africanus) was only three years old when it was attacked. The reason for this determination was the presence of puncture marks on the child’s skull. It is also known that these traces are generally seen in eagle hunts today.
An unidentified young individual, on the other hand, had a meal of the leopard.
A Paranthropus fossil (SK 54), about 2 million years old, led to some interesting information about one of these ancient humans. The upper part of this person’s skull was pierced and had two small round holes.
Surprisingly, these holes matched the canine teeth of an ancient leopard species exactly. According to estimates, this ancient human, who was thought to be still in adolescence, was caught and carried to a tree to be eaten by the leopard, and there it was eaten by the leopard.
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