Prehistoric Skulls With Bullet Holes

[Opmmur]

Prehistoric Skulls With Bullet Holes -
An Unsolved Ancient Mystery - Who Shot Them?
26 December, 2014

MessageToEagle.com - In 1922, a very peculiar Neanderthal skull was found near Kabwe (also known as Broken Hill), Zimbabwe.

The skull discovered by Swiss miner Tom Zwiglaar was exceptional because on the left side of the cranium was a small, perfectly round hole.

At first it was assumed that the hole had been made by a spear, or other sharp implement. However, further investigation revealed something much more shocking.

When examining the right side of the so-called Broken Hill skull scientists discovered yet another abnormality. As one of the anthropologists stated, the right side of the cranium had been "blown away" from the inside out.

What kind of object could have caused such damage to the cranium and whom did the skull belong to?

Initially scientists believed that it was a new species: Homo rhodesiensis.
Today, most scientists assign the Broken Hill skull to Homo heidelbergensis.

When a skull is struck by a relatively low-velocity projectile - such as an arrow, or spear - it produces what are known as radial cracks or striations; that is, minute hairline fractures running away from the place of impact.


As there were no radial fractures on the Neanderthal skull, it was unanimously concluded that the projectile must have had a far, far greater velocity than an arrow or spear. But what?

A reconstruction of the Broken Hill skull. Who shot him? Image credit:

Rene Noorbergen, researcher and author of the fascinating book Secrets Of The Lost Races commented: "This same feature is seen in modern victims of head wounds received from shots from a high-powered rifle."

If that is the case, who possessed a power rifle during when the Neanderthal roamed the Earth?

The first humans with proto-Neanderthal traits are believed to have existed in Eurasia as early as 350,000 - 600,000 years ago with the first "true Neanderthals" appearing between 200,000 and 250,000 years ago. According to orthodox science, no such high-tech weapons are beleieved to have existed at that time.

Still, forensic experts who have studied the skull in Berlin have since concluded that, "The cranial damage to Rhodesian Man's skull could not have been caused by anything but a bullet".

The bullet hole is the darkest spot right above the ear.

The entire story becomes even more intriguing due to the fact that an ancient aurochs (an extinct type of bison) was found in Russia by the Lena River.

It, too, had been shot in the head, thousands of years previously, but had survived for some time, as the bullet hole had calcified.

"This sensational discovery came to the attention of professor Constantin Flerov, curator of Moscow's Palaeontological Museum of the USSR, who promptly put the skull on display.

Incredible though it sounds, we are faced with quite forceful evidence that, thousands of years ago, someone discharged a bullet into the skull of one of our anthropological cousins and also nearly killed a large mammal by the same method.

Close-up of the human skull bullet wound.

One obvious, but very radical solution is to conclude that, contrary to what we have always understood, ancient man may have been technologically developed to a very high degree. Did a small but advanced civilization develop the concept of ballistics long before the Chinese?

Skull of an extinct bison reveals a bullue-like hole.

The problem with this idea is that it is too much of a coincidence. Could two separate societies, separated by thousands of years and a vast cultural gulf, have both invented weapons that just happened to fire small, cylindrical projectiles at high speed?

An even more thought-provoking theory is that someone from the future, carrying a firearm, traveled back into the past and engaged in some sort of trans-temporal hunting expedition.

Yet, another solution to this dilemma can be sought in the Ancient Astronaut's theory. If our planet was at this time inhabited by a superior alien civilization from outer space, these beings could have had technology that infected bullet-like wounds.

 

[Opmmur]

Was Neanderthal shot by a time traveler?

MYSTERY ... did guns exist before we think?

Published on the 14 August
2014

ONE day in 1922, near Broken Hill, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), a skull was found. When it came to the attention of the British Museum, the curators were pleased.


It was, in fact, a Neanderthal skull, and Neanderthal bones did not exactly come ten-a-penny.

But the Broken Hill skull was special for other reasons. On the left side of the cranium was a small, perfectly round hole. At first it was assumed that it had been made by a spear, or other sharp implement, but further investigation proved that this had not been the case.

When a skull is struck by a relatively low-velocity projectile – such as an arrow, or spear – it produces what are known as radial cracks or striations; that is, minute hairline fractures running away from the place of impact.

As there were no radial fractures on the Neanderthal skull, it was unanimously concluded that the projectile must have had a far, far greater velocity than an arrow or spear. But what?

Another mystery was that the right side of the cranium had, in the words of one anthropologist, “been blown away”. Further research also proved that that the right side of the cranium had been “blown away” from the inside out.

In short, whatever had hit the Broken Hill Neanderthal on the left side of his head had passed through it with such force that it had caused the right side to explode.

Researcher Rene Noorbergen, who investigated the mystery in his excellent book Secrets Of The Lost Races, commented: “This same feature is seen in modern victims of head wounds received from shots from a high-powered rifle.”

Noorbergen’s comments were more than appropriate, for forensic experts who have studied the skull in Berlin have since concluded that, “The cranial damage to Rhodesian Man’s skull could not have been caused by anything but a bullet”.

Compounding the mystery further is the fact that the skull of an ancient aurochs (an extinct type of bison) was found in Russia by the Lena River.

It, too, had been shot in the head, thousands of years previously, but had survived for some time, as the bullet hole had calcified.

This sensational discovery came to the attention of professor Constantin Flerov, curator of Moscow’s Palaeontological Museum of the USSR, who promptly put the skull on display.

Incredible though it sounds, we are faced with quite forceful evidence that, thousands of years ago, someone discharged a bullet into the skull of one of our anthropological cousins and also nearly killed a large mammal by the same method. But how could this be?

One obvious (but very radical) solution is to conclude that, contrary to what we have always understood, ancient man may have been technologically developed to a very high degree. Did a small but advanced civilisation develop the concept of ballistics long before the Chinese?

The problem with this idea is that it is too much of a coincidence. Could two separate societies, separated by thousands of years and a vast cultural gulf, have both invented weapons that just happened to fire small, cylindrical projectiles at high speed?

One colleague suggested to me that the only alternative is the possibility that someone from the future, carrying a firearm, traveled back into the past and engaged in some sort of trans-temporal hunting expedition.

This takes us perilously close to the realms of science fantasy, of course, but the fact is that the hole in the aurochs’ skull got there somehow.

Like it or not, the fact is that someone or something seemed to be using high-velocity bullets thousands of years ago. We don’t know who, we don’t know why and we don’t know how – but it happened.

 

[IroncladMarshmallow]

*whistles innocently*

 

[Harte]

Like it or not, the fact is that someone or something seemed to be using high-velocity bullets thousands of years ago. We don’t know who, we don’t know why and we don’t know how – but it happened.

Sorry, no, it didn't happen.

A number of books and internet sites make the claim that The British Museum (Natural History) in London holds the skull of a Neanderthal, dated 38,000 years old and excavated in 1921 at Kabwe in what is now Zambia. The left side of the skull displays a circular hole about 8 mm in diameter. None of the radial split-lines that would have been left had the hole been made by a cold projectile, such as a spear, are visible around the hole. On the opposite side of the skull, the parietal bone is shattered, as if skull was blown up from inside. Two solutions have been proposed: either the skull is from something that lived in recent centuries and was shot by a European, or there were rifles in Palaeolithic Africa.
Virtually nothing is correct in these claims. The Kabwe skull (often known as ‘Broken Hill Man’ after the name of a nearby town) is older than the claim, at 125,000 to 300,000 years old, and it was found on 17 June 1921 by a Swiss miner, Tom Zwiglaar, in a limestone cave. It was the first early human fossil to be found in Africa and was sent to Arthur Smith Woodward (1864-1944), who gave it the new species name Homo rhodesiensis (Rhodesian Man). More recent anthropologists have preferred to see it as a primitive form of Homo sapiens, but are undecided on the precise species. It may be related to Homo heidelbergensis, the ancestor of the predominantly European Neanderthals (there were never any Neanderthals in Africa) or it may indeed be a separate species, Homo rhodesiensis, as Arthur Smith Woodward originally proposed, which would be our direct ancestor.
So much for the species and the date. What about the “bullet hole”? Well, for one thing, it did not kill the individual. The edges of the lesion have started to heal, so whatever caused the hole was not the cause of death. Instead, the wound appears to have been a pathological, rather than a traumatic lesion, caused by an infection in the soft tissue over it. Few individuals survive a bullet to the brain; needless to say, the parietal bone on the opposite side is not shattered, as is claimed, but is very much intact. The individual may thus have died from a pathological condition, perhaps an abscess or ulcer that had become septic.

Bad Archaeology.

Harte