WHO SHOT THE RHODESIAN MAN? A BULLET HOLE THAT DEFIES HISTORY

In 1921, a team of miners working near Broken Hill, then in Rhodesia (now Kabwe, Zambia), unearthed something that would become one of the strangest mysteries in archaeological history: a human skull, aged tens of thousands of years, preserved in fossilized form. That in itself was fascinating—but it was what was on the skull that shook historians, scientists, and fringe theorists alike: a perfectly round hole on the left side of the skull, with no radial cracks, and an exit wound that appeared to have blown out the other side.

It looked like a gunshot wound.

Let that sink in: A gunshot wound… in a fossil tens of thousands of years old.

THE MAN WHO ASKED “WHO SHOT RHODESIAN MAN?”

In his book Secrets of the Lost Races, author and researcher Rene Noorbergen devoted a section to this enigma. Under the provocative title “Who Shot Rhodesian Man?”, he revisited this fossilized skull and argued that it showed all the forensic signs of being hit by a high-speed projectile—something far beyond the technological capacity of any known civilization from the era.

The hole is near-perfectly round. There are no fractures radiating from the point of entry—fractures that you would expect to see if the wound had been made by a slower, blunter weapon like an arrow or spear. Instead, the other side of the skull is shattered outward, consistent with the explosive exit pattern seen in modern gunshot victims.

THE MUSEUM THAT HOLDS THE MYSTERY

Today, the skull sits—largely unnoticed—at the Museum of Natural History in London, cataloged as a specimen of Homo heidelbergensis. Officially, it’s considered to be around 125,000 to 300,000 years old, one of the oldest known human skulls from Africa. But despite its age, it has something no other ancient skull has: apparent evidence of a gunshot wound.

Incredibly, a forensic expert in Berlin who examined the skull independently came to the same chilling conclusion: this was no primitive wound. The type of clean entry hole and explosive exit wound could only have been caused by a bullet.

Which leads to two possibilities—both equally outrageous.

POSSIBILITY ONE: THE DATING IS WRONG

The first possibility is what skeptics prefer to believe: that the skull is not ancient at all. Perhaps it is a few centuries old—just old enough to be fossilized under special conditions, and likely from a colonial-era shooting victim. Maybe someone mistakenly dated it, and for some reason, it ended up catalogued as a prehistoric fossil.

But this theory has a problem.

The skull was found alongside other fossils, including prehistoric animal remains, in layers of sediment that match the age of other known Homo heidelbergensis specimens. No modern artifacts were found. No clothing. No metal. Nothing to suggest it came from the colonial era. In fact, many of the surrounding fossils are dated to hundreds of thousands of years ago.

So unless a modern skull somehow ended up buried next to prehistoric remains in identical sediment and was mistaken for a specimen of Homo heidelbergensis, the age appears to be genuine.

That leaves the second—and more disturbing—possibility.

POSSIBILITY TWO: SOMETHING MORE ADVANCED EXISTED LONG AGO

What if the skull is as old as scientists say? What if this fossil really is from a time before humans were supposed to have even discovered fire, let alone metallurgy and weaponry?

Then the gunshot wound becomes evidence of something unimaginable: an ancient civilization advanced enough to use firearms. A race—or group—of humans, or even non-humans, who possessed knowledge and tools that should not have existed. A civilization that left behind only whispers, anomalies, and artifacts that defy explanation.

If so, the Rhodesian Man isn’t just a fossil. He is a casualty from a war we never recorded in history.

THE BISONS AND THE BULLETS

To make matters even more mysterious, a fossilized bison skull from Kansas, USA, dated to about 40,000 years ago, was found with an almost identical hole. A clean, round entry wound—no cracks, no trauma consistent with arrowheads or spears. The opposite side of the skull was blown out.

Critics claimed the wound could have been caused by a spear. But experts countered that arrow- and spear-killed animals show stress fractures and tearing, not surgical perforation. In fact, the bison skull belonged to the now-extinct Auroch—a massive beast with a much denser skull than any modern animal. Piercing it cleanly would have taken immense force. Force equivalent, some claim, to a modern bullet.

And if that’s true, then the Rhodesian Man isn’t alone.

THEORIES AND WHISPERS: ANCIENT WARFARE?

The implications have drawn theorists and historians alike into debate. Was there a forgotten chapter of human history—or prehistory—where early humans (or something else entirely) had advanced weaponry? Were there global civilizations that rose and fell long before our earliest empires?

Even mainstream geologists now admit that massive climate catastrophes may have wiped out previous cultures. Randall Carlson, for instance, has pointed to ice core data from Greenland showing repeated, violent cataclysmic events going back 250,000 years. Entire civilizations may have risen and fallen, leaving behind only fragmentary clues—like a skull with a hole.

CONSPIRACY OR COVER-UP?

Many theorists believe these types of discoveries are ignored, suppressed, or buried by mainstream science, not out of malice, but fear: fear of rewriting everything we know about history, human evolution, and the timeline of technological development.

After all, if it became accepted that firearms—or something like them—existed hundreds of thousands of years ago, we would have to ask: Where did they come from? Who made them? And why did they disappear?

More disturbingly: Could they return?

CONCLUSION: A FOSSIL, A BULLET, AND A QUESTION THAT WON’T DIE

Who shot the Rhodesian Man? Was it an early hunter from a forgotten race? A traveler from another time? Or a fluke of fossilization, misunderstood by both skeptics and believers?

We may never know the full truth. But the skull remains—evidence of something deeply wrong with our accepted timeline. A hole that shouldn’t exist… in a fossil that shouldn’t have seen such violence.

And until that mystery is resolved, one thing is certain:

History isn’t just written by the victors. Sometimes, it’s etched in bone.