Was Neanderthal life violent? This wound suggests lethal fighting was more common
I keep coming back to the wound itself. A spear point driven into bone 75,000 years ago, and we're only now reading it. The question that nags me is whether this was a clash between Neanderthals, or something else entirely, a hunting accident or a run-in with a predator. But if it really was interpersonal violence, that changes how I picture Neanderthal life.
We've spent decades softening their image, pushing back against the old brutish caricature, and now we have evidence that lethal fighting was part of their world too. That doesn't make them monsters. It makes them us, which is somehow more unsettling. I'd want to know how common this kind of wound was, whether it shows up across other Neanderthal remains, and whether the bone healed, which would tell us if someone survived the attack.
The bigger story here is that violence might be less a cultural invention and more a deep inheritance, and I find that both humbling and hard to look away from.