This Young Woman With a Cone-Shaped Skull Died After Suffering a Severe Head Wound 6,000 Years Ago
Found in the Chega Sofla cemetery in Iran, the skull appears to have been struck by a blunt object. Archaeologists don’t know whether the incident was intentional or accidental
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At a prehistoric cemetery in Iran, archaeologists have discovered a skull belonging to a young woman who lived more than 6,000 years ago. Her cranium had been purposefully molded into a cone shape, likely when she was a baby. Based on dramatic damage to the skull, researchers think she met a violent end.
“An object with broad edges severely fractured the cranium of this young woman during the final moments of her life,” write Hamed Vahdati Nasab and Mahdi Alirezazadeh, archaeologists at Tarbiat Modares University in Tehran, in a recent study published in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology.
The remains of the woman, who was under age 20, were excavated from the Chega Sofla cemetery in southwestern Iran. The site, which dates to around 4700 to 3700 B.C.E., also contains traces of a prehistoric settlement, per UNESCO.
Quick fact: How big is Chega Sofla?
The prehistoric cemetery measures about 6,500 feet long and 2,600 feet wide, while the settlement stretches across roughly 50 acres.
As Alirezazadeh tells Live Science’s Kristina Killgrove, this period was an “eventful millennium.”
“People had temples, belief systems and large buildings and structures,” he adds. By the end of this chapter, “we see the emergence of writing and the beginning of urbanization.”
The occupants of Chega Sofla also appear to have practiced artificial cranial deformation, which involves purposefully molding and binding an infant’s skull to ensure that it grows into a specific shape. Many cultures throughout history—including Japanese islanders, the Maya and the Vikings—modified skulls for various purposes, including religious ritual and social distinction.
Archaeologists with the Zohreh Prehistoric Project have been excavating the cemetery at Chega Sofla for about a decade. According to Live Science, they have unearthed more than a dozen “elongated skulls,” including the newly analyzed young woman’s. Her cone-shaped skull is marred by a distinct triangular fracture, extending backwards from the forehead.
“[It’s] important to note that the intentional cranial modification during the first two years of life had affected the biomechanics of the skull, making it more vulnerable to damage compared to a normal skull,” Alirezazadeh tells Newsweek’s Rachael O’Connor. However, he says that even a normal cranium would have suffered damage from such a severe blow.
“Our study of the fracture pattern indicates that this injury occurred in the final moments of the young woman’s life, and there is no evidence of bone healing,” Alirezazadeh adds.
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Still, the researchers don’t know exactly what object struck the woman’s cranium, or whether the incident was accidental. As Alirezazadeh tells Live Science, “We don’t have any direct evidence to say that someone intentionally struck her.”
Chega Sofla represents a civilization that preceded Elam, an ancient kingdom in southwestern Iran that thrived around the 13th century B.C.E. At least one other fractured skull has been found in Chega Sofla, but that one hadn’t been modified. Overall, the graves have slowly revealed new clues about the prehistoric society that lived in the region thousands of years ago. “There are other interesting samples that we are currently working on,” Alirezazadeh tells Newsweek.
