Scientists see signs of culture in scars of Palaeolithic punch-up

Scientists have reconstructed evidence of a murderous attack on a young adult male 36,000 years ago.

The young man, who was a member of the vanished Neanderthal species, was clearly struck in the head by a bladed object such as a stone axe.

His damaged skull and some of his other bones were unearthed from a collapsed rock shelter near the village of St Césaire, in the Charente Maritime in France.

The discovery confirms something long suspected: that the Neanderthal people carried weapons and used them for hunting and for what the researchers call "interpersonal violence".

Christoph Zollikofer, of the University of Zurich, and colleagues from Bordeaux and Poitiers report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences today that they used a computer to reconstruct the shape of the unearthed skull - and spotted a healed fracture of the cranial vault.

They conducted a kind of Palaeolithic postmortem examination and decided they were looking at direct evidence of the impact of a sharp implement.

The wound told them several things: first, to have penetrated the bone, the blow must have been delivered at considerable speed, which suggested that the axe was probably fitted to the end of a shaft. It could not have been an accident, or a wound from an animal. So Neanderthals used complex tools to hunt and perhaps fight.

But although the wound was severe, the victim recovered. So, some other Neanderthal must must have provided food and shelter while the wound healed. That is, the vanished people understood the social obligations of nursing and care.

Neanderthals were larger than modern humans, with bigger noses, heavier skulls and greater musculature. For almost 100,000 years, they had Europe to themselves. Then, for a while, they shared the continent with modern humans who arrived much later, and finally they disappeared about 30,000 years ago.

Some scientists argue that modern humans and Neanderthals may have interbred; most are convinced that Neanderthals were simply less well-equipped than Homo sapiens, and lost the battle for survival in ice age Europe.

But there is also evidence that Neanderthals - the name comes from the original discoveries in the Neander valley in Germany - had mental dexterity, a complex society, some kind of language, and perhaps even a belief in the afterlife. One grave revealed a tiny Neanderthal child, his arms crossed, and what looked like his toy axe near his chest.

There is no evidence of what provoked the distant brawl that cracked a skull in St Césaire.

"Motivations may range from a premeditated assault to a brief argument emerging over temporary conflict between individuals, such as over social status, access to potential mates, or intragroup resources," the authors say.