500,000-Year-Old Human Skull Might Be The Evidence of Earliest Known Murder

Around half a million years ago, first ancient human was murdered, according to a new study. With two brutal blows to the head, the attacker fractured his victim's skull, killing him (or her).

The skull was discovered in a cave in Atapuerca, in northern Spain. The cranium was piled together with the remains of 27 other people at the foot of 13-meter chimney.

"The type of injuries, their location, the strong similarity of the fractures in shape and size, and the different orientations and implied trajectories of the two fractures suggest they were produced with the same object in face-to-face interpersonal conflict," wrote the team in their final report.

The report goes on to state that this "represents the earliest clear case of deliberate, lethal interpersonal aggression in the hominid fossil record, demonstrating that this is an ancient human behavior."

"Murder is an ancient feature of humanity," co-author Rolf Quam of Binghamton University told NPR.

The study was published this week in the Plos One scientific journal.