Comments on: South-East Asia's earliest known homicide victim

South-East Asia's earliest known homicide victim

chariot pulled by cassowaries — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 03:06:33 -0800

Evidence points to remains being South-East Asia's earliest known homicide victim. It was on a sweltering morning in 2018 in a cave in northern Vietnam when Chris Stimpson and his team uncovered what may be the oldest cold case murder in South-East Asia.

By: HearHere

HearHere — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 04:28:45 -0800

Dr Wilshaw also recovered a white quartz point ... "It's a very solid data point ... we can also infer from where he was buried and the manner in which he was buried, that there were folks looking out for him as well," he said. "Despite the evidence of conflict, it speaks to his life and how he was looked after at the end. "So the worst of human nature and potentially the best." [cambridge:] "nature" in "human nature" fosters unproductive essentialist thinking, epitomized in the adage "a tiger cannot change its stripes." Universalist, fixist, and teleological perspectives each erode epistemic reasoning and blur the distinction between normative and descriptive justification... (i get the point though!)

By: SoberHighland

SoberHighland — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 07:40:27 -0800

One could also guess a hunting accident? Unless those kinds of points were not used for hunting. I'm trying to look on the bright side here, it's Monday morning. Fascinating nonetheless.

By: evilDoug

evilDoug — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 07:51:21 -0800

[cambridge:] "nature" in "human nature" fosters unproductive essentialist thinking, epitomized in the adage "~~a tiger cannot change its stripes~~." "The Leopard cannot change it's shorts." Universalist, fixist, and teleological perspectives each erode epistemic reasoning and blur the distinction between normative and descriptive justification... ftfy

By: kyrademon

kyrademon — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 09:41:16 -0800

They got a suspect yet?

By: BlueHorse

BlueHorse — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 11:13:26 -0800

They got a suspect yet? I imagine it was personal--someone in the group angered by him because of a disagreement about a significant other, thief, insult, retaliation for injury or some other subjective issue. Or it was political--hatred of someone different, ongoing competition between groups for resources, religion or different ideologies or warfare??? And on that subject, I'm not going any further today.

By: Mr. Excellent

Mr. Excellent — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 17:12:57 -0800

My inner pedant objects to the use of "homicide," which would mean the killing was unlawful. First, we don't know whether this man's culture had *any* legal prohibitions on killing (although most cultures seem to). But more important, we don't know whether the killing of this man was acceptable in his culture, or would have even been considered lawful in our own. Perhaps the fatal wound was defensive; perhaps it was administered as a lawful punishment. Perhaps it was inflicted in war.

By: Rumple

Rumple — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 10:35:20 -0800

The exotic, distant origin of the projectile point is of extra significance here, especially to competing explanations he was killed by his own people in a culturally-allowed context. Also the fact that if the neck wound was the cause of death, it took weeks or month for the individual to die speaks against some sort of formal process - very clumsy execution if it was. He was also apparently buried with some care. It's disappointing the authors don't consider whether he was accidentally wounded while cleaning his bow and arrow /s The mind is drawn to other examples of early homicide/interpersonal violence. For example, the famous frozen man of the Tylorean Alps, Ötzi, who had a projectile point embedded in his body that had passed through the scapula and into a lung (so, shot in the back). He also had indications of a beating and a fractured skull. He had an arrow in his quiver from which human blood from two different persons was extracted, suggesting he had shot at least two people with that arrowhead. Another example is The Ancient One (Kennewick Man) a ca 8500 year old skeletal finding in Washington State and a case study in the (to put it gently) evolving archaeological relationship with First Nations. Initially identified as "Caucasoid" based on his cranium, it soon was noticed he had a large "Cascade style" (11,000 to 7,000 year old) projectile point in his pelvis, well healed up (so, shot in the ass) - but, very unlikely to be an accident . The combination of Caucasoid + ancient translated in the coffee shops of Washington State (and a regrettable portion of Acdemia) as "white person in the USA 9000 years ago shot by Indigenous person." Anyway, lots of archaeological global evidence for humans hurting/killing each other and this new finding is an interesting addition. Thanks, Cassowary Cart :)