More than 9,000-year-old decapitated head discovered in Brazil
Skull is oldest known to have been severed in the Americas
CHOPPED The Americas’ oldest known instance of human decapitation, a more than 9,000-year-old skull, has been discovered in Brazil.
Mauricio de Paiva
A human skull found in a Brazilian rock-shelter represents the oldest known case of decapitation in the Americas, researchers report September 23 in PLOS ONE.
Radiocarbon dating places the skull at between 9,127 and 9,438 years old, says a team led by André Strauss of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. That’s at least 4,000 years older than previous evidence of severed heads in South America and at least 1,000 years older than reported decapitation cases in North America. The skull might even be the oldest instance of decapitation in the world, Strauss says.
Excavation of a small pit in the rock-shelter in July 2007 produced the skull. A pair of severed hands covered the skull’s face. Incisions on one of six human neck bones in the pit denoted where the individual’s head had been cut off.
