"He was certainly a mature individual when he died, but we cannot say exactly why his skull, or for that matter the other skulls that were buried alongside him, were chosen to be plastered," Alexandra Fletcher, the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Curator for the Ancient Near East at The British Museum, told Seeker. "It may have been something these individuals achieved in life that led to them being remembered after death."
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Fletcher added that the individuals might have also been related, since each of the skulls in the same burial were missing their second and third molars, which she said could be an inherited trait.
The Imaging and Analysis Center at the Natural History Museum completed a micro-CT scan of the Jericho Skull, which led to the construction of a 3-D digital model of the object, complete with bones inside. For the first time, hidden areas were revealed, such as the shape of his palate, cheekbones, brow ridge and eye sockets.
The researchers determined that the skull lacked a jaw. They could also see that the man had broken and decayed teeth, and that he had broken his nose during his adult life, but that it had healed before he died.
Notably, there is evidence he had undergone tight head binding from early infancy that changed the shape of his skull.
"Head binding is something that many different peoples have undertaken in various forms around the world until very recently," Fletcher explained. She said the practice of head binding in some modern cultures are intended to "make an individual appear more beautiful. In this case, the bindings have made the top and back of the head broader-different from other practices that aim for an elongated shape. I think this was regarded as a 'good look' in Jericho at this time."
The head binding adds to evidence that the man and other individuals found with him were of an elite status.
Jericho is featured prominently in the Bible. Fletcher said that in the Book of Joshua, Jericho is the first city the Israelites came to after their return from Egypt. With Joshua as their leader, they marched around the city, shouting and blowing horns, causing Jericho's walls to collapse.
"Most scholars agree that this is not an historically accurate account, but that it relates to the political situation in the Iron Age, when the territories around Jericho were vassal states of Assyria and Babylon," Fletcher said. "During this period, huge numbers of people were forcibly moved from their homes to live in different areas."
Since that Iron Age event happened around 900–500 B.C., Fletcher thinks it is unlikely that the Jericho Skull man could have been mentioned in the Bible.