The wheel is often considered a defining moment in mankind’s development, but a display that recently was unveiled at the Natural History Museum in London shows that for ancient humans the cup was a major evolutionary milestone.
And it’s not just any cup. When ancient man needed a drinking vessel he could not just open his cupboard and pull out a pint night giveaway or the Oktoberfest masskrug that somehow found its way outside of the Theresienwiese festival grounds.
Skull Cups
An archaeological dig at Gough’s Cave in southwest England uncovered skull cups that are said to be 14,700 years old. They are considered the earliest known containers to be made from human skulls. The skulls show that Cro-Magnons were not only skilled hunter gatherers, but also made tools and often treated their dead in ways that would be a bit outside the range of acceptable behavior in today’s world.
“We suspected that these early humans were highly skilled at manipulating human bodies once they died, and our research reveals just what great anatomists they were,” says Dr. Silvia Bello, a paleontologist involved with the project. “The cut marks and dents show how the heads were scrupulously cleaned of any soft tissues shortly after death. The skulls were then modified by removing the bones of the face and the base of the skull. Finally, these cranial vaults were meticulously shaped into cups by retouching the broken edges possibly to make them more regular.”
The ancient inhabitants of the British Isles were not alone in using skulls as bowls and drinking vessels. In Mongolia in 177 B.C. the son of a Xiongnu chief killed the Yuezhi king and his skull was turned into a drinking cup. A number of early European tribal leaders were said to have skull cups made from the remains of enemy leaders. Krum of Bulgaria had the skull of Nicephorus I turned in to a jeweled cup after killing the Byzantine ruler in the battle of Pliska in the 700s. In 1510, Shah Ismail I killed Shaybanid Empire leader Muhammad Shaybani in battle in what is now Uzbekistan. He had the skull cap covered in gold and jewels and used it for toasting. After several important victories in the 1570s, Japanese Warlord Oda Nobunaga had several skull cups made for drinking sake. One of them was from his son’s head. In Tibet and India Buddhist and Hindu ceremonies include drinking from a skull cup called a kapala.
A Tibetan skull cup, made of silver "with human calvarium," would have been used in religious ceremonies, not for common imbibing.
Obviously, the idea of drinking from skull cups is did not come from just the lore of marauding Viking hordes. In fact, some research suggests the Vikings actually did not partake in this activity. Several Catholic saints “donated” their skulls for drinking vessels. Drinking from the chalices made from the skulls of Saint Theodulf, Saint Sebastian and Saint Ernhart was said to have a curative effect on the ill.
In the 19th century, English poet Lord Byron had a drinking vessel made from a skull his gardener had found while digging around his home at Newstead Abbey. Byron wrote, “There had been found by the gardener, in digging, a skull that had probably belonged to some jolly monk or friar of the Abbey, about the time it was demonasteried. Observing it to be of giant size, and in a perfect state of preservation, a strange fancy seized me of having it set and mounted as a drinking cup. I accordingly sent it to town, and it returned with a very high polish and of a mottled colour like tortoiseshell.” Byron was said to break out the skull to sip wine when guests came to the abbey.
