SANTIAGO: Anthropologists at Chile’s National Museum of Natural History have reconstructed a human skull aged 10,400 years, considered the oldest in Latin America.

The cranium was discovered by chance in 1995, during excavations in the central Piuquenes region.

Anthropologist Ruben Stehberg, quoted in El Mercurio daily, said that at first scientists thought the remains belonged to a political prisoner killed during the 1973-90 military dictatorship under General Augusto Pinochet. Then they realized the skull was considerably older.

Stehberg said that the reconstructed cranium was from a man about 25 years old whose morphological characteristics were different from those of contemporary humans.

Primitive inhabitants in that region of Chile had elongated craniums with thickened bases.

“The excellent preservation of the remains is because they were kept apart inside a cave, mainly because there was a mudslide that sealed the entryway to the place,” Stehberg said.

Scientists discovered that bones and other objects found at the excavation site came from four different cultural periods spanning thousands of years. Humans were drawn to the region from the north as they followed animals they were hunting, the report said.

According to scientists, the region was covered by glaciers 20,000 years ago, but the ice melted about 2,000 years later, giving way to vegetation.

Ancient human inhabitants in the area used Pacific Ocean shells to make arrow heads and items such as bracelets and necklaces.—dpa