Skull found in Papua New Guinea belonged to ‘world's oldest tsunami victim’, who died 6,000 years ago
Research in the Pacific has shown that throughout history, the region has seen repeated catastrophic tsunamis that have caused death and abandonment of settlements
A 6,000-year-old skull found in Papua New Guinea is likely the world’s oldest-known tsunami victim, experts said Thursday after a new analysis of the area it was found in.
The partially preserved Aitape Skull was discovered in 1929 by Australian geologist Paul Hossfeld, 12 km inland from the northern coast of the Pacific nation.
It was long thought to belong to Homo erectus (upright man), an extinct species thought to be an ancestor of the modern human that died out some 140,000 years ago.
But more recent radiocarbon dating estimated it was closer to 6,000 years old, making it a member of our own species – Homo sapiens. At that time, sea levels were higher and the area would have been near the coast.
An international team led by the University of New South Wales returned to the site to collect the same geological deposits observed by Hossfeld.
We conclude that this person who died there so long ago is probably the oldest-known tsunami victim in the world
Back in the lab, they studied details of the sediment including its grain size and geochemical composition, which can help identify a tsunami inundation.