skip to main content
European Commission Logo
en English
Newsroom

Discovery in Kenya sheds light on the origins of warfare

A ground-breaking anthropological discovery took place in East Africa, where ERC Advanced grantee Dr Marta Mirazón Lahr and her team have been studying human origins. At the excavation site in Nataruk in northern Kenya, they have stumbled upon a real archaeological rarity – the earliest historical evidence of warfare.

date:  11/05/2016

Project:  IN AFRICA: THE ROLE OF EAST AFRICA IN TH...

acronym:  IN-AFRICA

See alsoCORDIS

Dr Mirazón Lahr’s team unearthed the remains of 27 individuals brutally murdered around 10,000 years ago from the sediment of a dried-up lagoon. They show clear signs of a traumatic death, such as skulls violently hit and skeletons stabbed with stone arrows or spear tips. The bodies had not been buried, but instead they had fallen into a marshy lagoon at the edge of Lake Turkana which – was much larger at that time helping preserve the remains in a relatively good state.

Read more