Descripción del proyecto
Estudio de la masacre prehistórica del lago Turkana
Aproximadamente 16 000 personas de todo el mundo mueren cada día por traumatismos. Accidentes de tráfico, asesinatos y suicidios son las principales causas de muerte y lesiones por traumatismos. ¿Fue siempre así? El proyecto financiado con fondos europeos TRAUMOBITA estudiará cómo la mortalidad por traumatismos entre humanos prehistóricos conformó nuestro comportamiento durante el Pleistoceno superior y hasta el Holoceno medio. Comprender cómo murieron los humanos es fundamental para especificar el papel de la violencia en la formación del comportamiento humano. El proyecto estudiará fósiles humanos del lago Turkana, en Kenia, donde se produjo un ataque entre dos grupos de cazadores-recolectores hace unos 10 000 años. Los hallazgos permitirán identificar y caracterizar la muerte por traumatismo y proporcionarán información sobre adaptaciones del comportamiento humano.
Objetivo
Traumatic death affects our daily life, but how did traumatic mortality affect human behaviour from an evolutionary perspective? TRAUMOBITA aims to understand how traumatic mortality among prehistoric humans shaped our behaviour during the Late Pleistocene to the Middle Holocene. Confirming that how we died had an enormous influence on our ancestors and represents an enormous change in how we understand human societies. Traumatic mortality has an enormous influence among non-human primate social life and environmental adaptations, but not much effort has been dedicated to the study of how such deaths affected the behavioural development of modern humans. Identifying and understanding how humans died is essential for determining the role of violence in shaping our behaviour and, it seems, an equally important factor among our primate relatives. The goal here is to study these behavioural adaptations on the basis of two analytical sections. The first will comprise analysis of human fossils from different key sites from Lake Turkana (Africa): the region is known as the cradle of humankind and the archaeopaleontological record is an essential one for reconstructing our own evolutionary path. The second will be dedicated to integration of forensic science into taphonomic study of human fossils, in addition to development of new non-invasive methods based on virtual analysis and experimentation. The data obtained from this approach will facilitate identification and characterization of traumatic mortality in the archaeological record, in order to integrate our results into the study of past societies to determine which behavioural changes are related to traumatic mortality. The research is an integrated analysis that guarantees the interdisciplinary and innovative nature of the project. Little is known on the role of traumatic mortality in human behavioural adaptations, and therefore the project will represent a major advance.
Ámbito científico
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Régimen de financiación
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinador
CB2 1TN Cambridge
Reino Unido