Archaeologists from Cambridge have discovered a Neanderthal shoulder blade with a 15-millimetre hole. Analysis suggests it was caused by a blow aimed at the heart.
The remains also show a cracked front tooth from a year before the individual died, indicating a facial injury that required care from others in the group.
"Evidence of systematic violence from this time is extremely rare. The majority comes from periods of settled agricultural societies thousands of years after the Neanderthal hunter-gatherer societies," says Graeme Barker, one of the researchers behind the study, in a press release.