Stone Age skull fished out of North Sea
A human skull dating back to the Middle Stone Age was fished from the seabed near the North Sea coast, according to archaeologists working with the province of Noord Holland. The well-preserved skull fragment is estimated at 9,500 years old, and was part of the head of an adult male, the researchers said. It has taken on a jet black color, which scientists say is due to the thousands of years the bones spent at the bottom of the sea.
This is a very extraordinary find, they say, because this is one of the oldest human bones which has ever been found in or around the Netherlands. The discovery is also being called rare, as few human skeletal remains of such old age have ever been found on the bottom of the North Sea. Earlier this year archeologists also found the skull bone of a man who lived 9,600 years ago at Maasvlakte 2, an extension of the Port of Rotterdam. Rob van Eerden, the archeologist of the Noord Holland province, says that this finding is really unusual. He has also mentioned that the coastal area of the North Sea where the fragment was found was marshland in the Stone Age, populated by big-game hunters. Archeologists have also detected that the human skull is similar to those of modern humans. According to van Eerder, that means the modern man is designed to sustain themselves as hunters.
The portion of the Stone Age man's forehead is on display in the exhibition "Hierna(nog)maals" ("Hereafter (yet)once again") in Pavilion Welgeleden in Haarlem. From 2015 it will be included in a new archeological center, the House of Hilde in Castricum, Noord Holland.
