It was found in 2015 – an isolated clue to a macabre mystery set in motion thousands of years ago.
This ancient puzzle consisted of just one piece: a lone human skull, discovered all by itself with no other skeletal remains around, resting in a cave in Bologna, Italy, in the middle of a cavernous depression call the locals Dolina from hell (Hell’s sinkhole).
It was not easy to find.
The well-hidden skull, which was missing its lower jawbone, could only be reached by traversing a difficult cave passage through which the Meander of wickedness (Maze of Malice), and then ascend a vertical shaft to a height of 12 meters (39 ft), where the skull rested on a rocky ledge.
Due to the difficulty of accessing the site, cavers were not able to retrieve the skull until 2017, after which researchers had the opportunity to study this mysterious, ancient specimen.
The solitary skull was indeed found to be ancient, with radiocarbon dating suggesting that the skull belonged to a person who lived sometime between 3630 and 3380 BCE, making them in the archaeological context of the region’s early Eneolithic (aka Chalcolithic) period. posted.
Other Eneolithic human remains have been found in the general area; not in Hell’s sinkhole, but in an air raid shelter about 600 meters away from the cave in which the skull was found.
So the larger context makes sense. But how exactly did this lone skull get so far away from its Eneolithic counterparts, set high on a ledge, yet buried in an evil cave maze, and hidden at a depth of 26 meters (85 feet) underground?
According to anthropologist Maria Giovanna Belcastro of the University of Bologna – the lead author of a new analysis of the skull’s unusual fate – a number of factors played a role.
Belcastro’s team examined the skull, which the team says most likely came from a young woman between 24 and 35 years old.
Evidence of various lesions on the sides of the skull are likely the result of human manipulations of the skull at the time of the woman’s death, the researchers suggest, perhaps as a result of ritualistic acts to remove flesh from the skull as part of a funeral custom.
Other lesions on the skull, some suspected ante-mortem (before death), could be due to an injury that killed the woman, and other markings could be evidence of some type of medical treatment being provided by her people .
As for how the skull became so separated from the rest of its skeleton, the researchers hypothesize that the skull was deliberately or accidentally removed from the rest of the body before it rolled on the ground or became flooded with water or mud. pushed until it somehow got to the edge of Hell’s sinkhole and eventually fell into the depression.
Over time, water infiltration into the sinkhole may have dissolved gypsum deposits in the cave, creating the vertical shaft next to the skull’s safe resting place.
“The reactivated cave passage began to evolve downward, forming a lateral sinking creek and carving out the maze beneath it,” the researchers write in their paper.
“This new reactivation was able to bury about 12 meters of plaster and connect it to the lowered base level.”
Several sediments located in the cranial cavity provide some support for this argument, suggesting that matter got stuck in the skull during the flow of water or debris as the skull made its unlikely, chaotic journey to the cave. Signs of other trauma to the skull indicate many bumps during the ride.
This hypothetical interpretation, of course, is not what necessarily happened, something we can never really know for sure. But as the researchers note, the shape of a skull makes all parts of a human skeleton best suited for a runaway.
“If the skeleton were intact by the time of this sequence of events, other skeletal elements, different in shape and size, would have lingered elsewhere and scattered during transport,” the authors suggest.
“The skull would have rolled more easily than other skeletal parts in a water flow and debris flow … During its decomposition and those dynamic phases it would have been filled with sediment. Therefore it would have reached the cave and come to a stop on the plateau where it was. was found. “
The findings are reported in PLOS One