This is a tale about the tragic and brutal death of a man who lived in Japan, 3,000 years ago.
The manner of his death was a mystery until scientists pieced the evidence together to come to a surprising conclusion.
It turned out that this man who died 3,000 years ago was a victim of a vicious and frenzied shark attack, this is the earliest recorded victim of a shark attack.
Since mankind has been on or in the sea looking for food, there has always been the threat and the fear of the shark.
‘Throughout the course of the Human Story, one reminder of our earthly status has been that, at times, in some landscapes, we have served as an intermediate link on the food chain’
D. Quammen (2003) The Monster of God
The site of the mystery
In 1860 construction workers uncovered the Tsukomo Shell Mound, and archaeological excavations started in 1915 and since then archaeologists have found around 170 human remains buried in the shell mound.
Conditions in the shell mound helped preserve the human bones/remains.
The mound contains various shells such as clams, oysters, and scallops as well as bones of fish and sea animals such as seals and whales.
Since these shell mounds also contain the village cemetery it must be concluded that these shell mounds were also places of worship.
The pottery from the site dates primarily to the late-final Jomon period, spanning 2500 – 435 BC.
The Tsukumo shell mound is located 3 km from The Seto Inland Sea, in Kasaoko City, Okayama prefecture, Japan.
The Jomon period of the Japanese archipelago spans more than 10,000 years, beginning with some of the earliest pottery production in the world. The period is mainly a fisher-hunter gathering economy with some plant cultivation.
The investigation
A group from Oxford University, Alyssa White, Izumi Braddick, and Professor Rick Schulting traveled to Japan to investigate the collection at Kyoto University, as part of their project investigating evidence of violent trauma among remains of prehistoric hunter-gatherers and early farmers of the Japanese archipelago.
On the last day with a few hours remaining, Alyssa and Rich opened a box containing the remains of a man covered with traumatic injuries (individual No. 24) from the Tsukumo shell mound cemetery site excavated around 1920. Radiocarbon analysis revealed he died between 1370 and 1010 BC. So over 3,000 years ago.
‘We were initially flummoxed by what could have caused at least 790 deep, serrated injuries to this man. There were so many injuries and yet he was buried in the community burial ground, the Tsukumo shell-mound cemetery site.’
A joint statement by Alyssa White and Rick Shulting.
What could have caused the hundreds of injuries
The researchers had to slowly eliminate potential causes.
They ruled out human conflict as the serration marks didn’t match weapons used during the Jomon period, some cuts in the bone were deep and V-shaped, similar to what metal weapons would cause, but these types of weapons weren’t used by these hunter-gatherers at this time.
Land animals, the carnivorous and scavenger tooth marks didn’t match the injuries and the areas which were attacked on the skeleton.
I suppose like Sherlock Holmes they worked through the possibilities, until …
“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of the Four
They finally had to look at the possibility of a shark attack. Archaeological cases of shark attacks are extremely rare, so Alyssa and Rick had to look towards modern-day cases of shark attacks, they found that nearly all the characteristics of a shark attack were present on No 24’s skeleton. They consulted with shark attack expert George Burgess, Director Emeritus of the Florida program for shark research, he agreed with their findings and joined their investigation.
Reconstructing the attack and identifying the guilty party
Just like detectives they had to piece together the evidence to find out Who had done it. It was a really cold case 3,000 years old. The only evidence was the skeleton.
His left hand and right leg were missing. Looking at original pictures of the Tsukumo No 24 skeleton at the burial, it showed that his left leg was placed on top of his body in an inverted position.
The pelvis had tooth marks in the area near where his right leg used to be. The majority of larger bites on the lower body suggest that he was probably in deep water, maybe swimming, and was alive at the time of the attack.
The missing left hand was probably a defensive wound as he tried to beat off the attack from below.
There were so many wounds it became nearly overwhelming, so a 3D model of the skeleton was made recording all the wounds.
Fig. 5. A complete distribution map of the traumatic injuries found on Tsukumo No. 24. The red features represent wounds caused by bite marks, and the orange is
overlapping striations (sparsely located on the axial skeleton), and the purple are fracture lines.
The 3D model made it easier to see the main concentrations of bits. It showed that a number of bites would have severed major arteries, suggesting that he would have lost consciousness after a few minutes and died soon afterward.
The attack was probably witnessed by others, maybe fellow fishermen/shell divers, since his body was recovered and buried in the village cemetery.
The most likely shark species responsible for the attack was either the tiger or white shark, based on the tooth marks (both sharks have serrated teeth) and their feeding habits and distribution according to sea temperatures 3,000 years ago.
Types of Shark Attacks
Most sharks avoid humans, and so do not attack without provocation. The sharks which are more inclined to attack humans are the white, tiger, and bull sharks.
There are three types of unprovoked shark attacks they are:
Hit and Run
Bump and Bite
Sneak attack
Hit-and-run attacks usually occur in the surf zone, consist of a single bite, and tend not to be fatal. It’s thought this type of attack is considered a misidentification of humans as prey.
The other two types of attacks cause more severe injuries and occasionally death. These two types of attacks are considered to be sharks actively targeting humans as prey.
In bump and bite attacks the shark circles and bumps the victim before the attack.
While no warning is given in the sneak attack.
Conclusions
This 3,000-year-old Japanese mystery was investigated by Oxford University researchers. I found it amazing that they were able to recreate what happened to this man, just by looking at his skeleton.
Their results suggest that around 3,000 years ago Tsukumo No 24 was attacked by either a tiger or white shark in the Seto Inland Sea.
Fig. 4. The original excavation photograph of Tsukumo No. 24 and a photograph of the extant skeleton: Left: No. 24 excavation photograph showing the irregular placement of the left leg (inverted and on top of the upper body) and missing right leg and left hand (courtesy of Laboratory of Physical Anthropology, Kyoto University). Right: Photograph of the extant skeleton available for examination. Photograph by JAW, courtesy of Kyoto University
The vicious attack with the slicing off his hand and leg would have killed him in minutes.
He most likely lost his right leg and left hand in the attack, and his wounds would have been fatal. There were 790 tooth marks, which were deep enough to leave marks on the bones.
His body was recovered and he was buried according to Jomon funerary practices in a shell mound, which helped to preserve his skeleton in excellent condition, because of these 3,000 years later researchers from Oxford University were able to piece together his tragic death in such great detail.
Credits
Thank you to Oxford University for the use of their research and photographs.
I first heard about this topic from the podcast – The Ancients – History Hit – Episode 111 – Shark attack – 20/07/2021
