500-Year-Old Skulls with Facial Modification Unearthed in Gabon
upstart writes:
500-year-old skulls with facial modification unearthed in Gabon:
Men and women living in West Central Africa 500 years ago dramatically changed their looks by removing their front teeth, ancient skulls reveal. Archaeologists found the centuries-old altered skulls deep underground in a cave that could be reached only by rope, through a hole in the cavern's roof.
The harrowing vertical drop of 82 feet (25 meters) led to thousands of bones from at least 24 adults (men and women age 15 or older) and four children that were deposited there on at least two occasions, researchers reported in a new study. Hundreds of metal artifacts - jewelry, weapons and hoes, made of local iron and imported copper - lay near the remains, hinting at the wealth and status of the people who were buried there.
[...] Richard Oslisly, an archaeologist with The French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Paris, discovered the Iroungou cave in Gabon's Ngounie province in 1992. Oslisly first investigated the cave in 2018, and accessing the subterranean space was so difficult that archaeologists have explored its depths on only four expeditions since then, according to the study.
[...] Of the human remains, the skulls were of particular interest to the researchers, as all of the intact upper jaws were missing specific teeth: the central and lateral permanent incisors - four teeth in the very front of the mouth. All of the empty tooth sockets showed signs of healing after the extractions - known as alveolar resorption - indicating that the teeth were removed while their owners were still alive and the holes had enough time to heal before the people died.
Journal Reference:
Sebastien Villotte, Sacha Kacki, Aurelien Mounier, et al. Mortuary behaviour and cultural practices in pre-colonial West Central Africa: new data from the Iroungou burial cave, Gabon, Antiquity (DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2021.80)
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