Richard Wrangham, a biological anthropologist at Harvard University who has studied the evolution of human warfare, says the find at Nataruk shows that violent conflict is ancient and primal, a vestige of our pre-Homo ancestry rather than a recent adaptation to life in settled societies. Marta Mirazon Lahr, enhanced by Fabio Lahr Obsidian, a volcanic glass that is relatively rare around Lake Turkana, suggests that the marauders may have come from a different region.Īt Kenya’s Nataruk site, a fractured skull is a clue to even earlier violent human conflict. A few of the victims were bound before death, and some have arrowheads of stone and obsidian embedded in their bones. The captors used blunt force trauma to the head to kill, but other fractures - at the neck, ribs, knees, legs and hands - speak to the brutality of the event. The most complete remains are 12 skeletons found facedown in what was the lagoon. In this Eden-like landscape, aggressors captured and massacred at least 27 people: men, women - one of them pregnant - and children. Although the terrain is arid and desolate now, around 10,000 years ago this was a lagoon near Lake Turkana, surrounded by lush vegetation. The shattered cranium is one of several from a site in Kenya known as Nataruk, where, long ago, a band of hunter-gatherers met its end.ĭescribed in Nature in 2016, the remains are believed to be among the earliest evidence of human warfare. Unmistakable, too, are the signs of a violent death: massive fractures from the blunt force of a weapon wielded by another human. I should probably spend more time with this album before calling it “brilliant”, but that’s the word that’s on the tip of my tongue at the moment.The skull, though weathered from millennia of brutal heat and scouring sands, is unmistakably human. The album displays a masterful ability to create changing moods with a constant ebb and flow of energy and pacing, and to maintain a firm grip on the listener’s attention by integrating progressive-minded flourishes along with loads of killer riffs and flesh-rending vocal savagery. “Divine Seduction” reveals not only Apognosis‘ talent for crafting irresistible riffs and propulsive rhythms, but also a propensity for lacing the music with eerie, dissonant guitar sorcery and for crafting musical journeys that follow unpredictably branching paths - sometimes soaring in glorious triumph, sometimes bearing down with knives out and grim butchery in mind, sometimes presiding over solemn, incense-shrouded rituals beneath the vault of gothic arches. Yes indeed, “Divine Seduction” is an apt name for that track - its violent charms seduced me into exploring the album as a whole. The introductory riff in the introductory track rings like a warlike fanfare, and it’s so piercingly vibrant that it speared my head immediately. Though the album isn’t released yet, it’s available for streaming now. This one happens to be one-man band, with a debut album named Phase 6 that’s set for release on December 25 in a three-panel digipak CD format via Ars Marginalia. Apognosis is the first of two projects from Athens, Greece, featured in this collection.
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