This week’s Wraithscape column in the Shields Gazette seems to be a record-breaker for cramming so much nonsense into such a small space.
The claim made is that in 1922 a Neanderthal skull was found in South Africa, but that it had a bullet hole in the left side of the skull, and that the opposite side of this skull had been “blown away.” As Mike Hallowell puts it:
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.
That sounds like the type of wound that would be caused by a high powered rifle. And, of course, some unnamed forensic experts have concluded:
The cranial damage to Rhodesian Man’s skull could not have been caused by anything but a bullet.
The same article also makes a similar claim about an ancient aurochs – an ancestor of modern cattle, but I’ll not bother with that bit of claptrap; the Neanderthal “shooting” is more interesting.
The whole article is full of factual inaccuracies. First of all, the skull referred to was found in 1921, not 1922. It’s a relatively minor point, but still a factual error.
More important, however, is Mike Hallowell’s claim that the skull in question is that of a Neanderthal. He says:
It was, in fact, a Neanderthal skull, and Neanderthal bones did not exactly come ten-a-penny. [Emphasis added.]
In fact, Neanderthals were never in Africa. The skull is now identified as Homo heidelbergensis, with the evidence suggesting that it is an ancestor of both Neanderthals and modern humans. Neanderthals are on a different branch of our evolutionary tree and their remains have only ever been found in Europe. Not Africa.
But what about the bullet hole and the large exit wound? The “bullet hole” shows signs of healing, and was most likely caused by an infection in the overlying tissue; it certainly did not kill this individual. As for the other side of the skull that supposedly exploded as a bullet passed through, that is simply wrong. The opposite side of the skull is intact. There’s an interesting article about this particular skull at the Bad Archaeology blog.
Mike Hallowell thinks he has “forceful evidence” that thousands of years ago a Neanderthal was shot with a modern firearm, when in fact there is no evidence of the sort. And there is even less evidence for his other conjecture – that…
…someone from the future, carrying a firearm, travelled back into the past and engaged in some sort of trans-temporal hunting expedition.
Then Mike finishes his article with this declaration:
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. [Emphasis added.]
I have to say, I don’t mind a mystery, but a genuine mystery has to have a factual basis to make it worthy of examination. The only mystery here is how this drivel got into print.
For a brief, but scientific, account of the skull, there is a good article here at the Natural History Museum. For some reason, the scientists there just don’t seem to have recognised the “bullet hole,” the (non-existent) “exploded” exit wound, or any evidence of time-travelling hunting parties. What are they doing all day long? Don’t they read the Shields Gazette?
Bad Thinking 