Derek Adams/Trustee of the Natural History Museum
Researchers had previously found skull shells at the Gough’s Cave site in England.
CNN –
Cannibalism was a routine burial practice in Europe about 15,000 years ago, with people eating their dead not out of necessity but as part of their culture, according to a new study.
While researchers had previously found gnawed bones and human skulls that had been turned into cups at Gough’s Cave in England, a study published in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews suggests this was not an isolated incident.
Her research focused on the Magdalenian period of the late Upper Paleolithic. The Magdalenians lived around 11,000 to 17,000 years ago.
Experts at London’s National History Museum examined the literature to identify 59 Magdalenian sites containing human remains. Most were in France, with locations in Germany, Spain, Russia, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Poland, the Czech Republic and Portugal.
They were able to interpret burial behavior at 25 locations.
Fifteen showed evidence of human remains with chewing marks, skull bones with cut marks, and bones that were intentionally broken in a pattern related to the extraction of bone marrow for nutrients, suggesting that cannibalism was practiced.
There was also evidence that in some cases human remains were mixed with those of animals.
The ritual manipulation of human remains and their frequent occurrence at sites across northern and western Europe suggest that cannibalism was a common burial practice – rather than a dietary supplement – in the Magdalenian culture, researchers said.
“[It is] “It is undeniable that the frequency of cannibalistic cases at Magdalenian sites exceeds the frequency of this behavior in earlier or later hominin groups, and suggests that cannibalism in morgues was a method by which Magdalenian people disposed of their deceased,” the study says .
Trustee of the Natural History Museum
Human remains with chew marks, skull bones with lacerations, and bones intentionally broken in a pattern related to the extraction of bone marrow for nutrients suggested cannibalism.
“Instead of burying their dead, these people ate them,” study co-author Silvia Bello, a paleoanthropologist and senior researcher at the National History Museum, said in a press release.
She added that cannibalism is “not practiced simply out of necessity.”
“This is interesting in itself because it is the oldest known evidence of cannibalism as a burial practice,” Bello added.
The researchers also managed to obtain genetic information from eight sites and combine it with the archaeological evidence to identify a link between burial behavior and genetic ancestry.
They found that there were two distinct ancestral groups in the region at the time – one from the Magdalenian culture and another called Epigravettian, another European and geographically distinct human culture.
Researchers found that members of the Magdalenian culture in northwestern Europe preferred to eat their dead, while people of the Epigravettian culture preferred to bury their dead without cannibalism.
“There was a trend toward people burying their dead, a behavior common throughout south-central Europe and attributed to a second distinct culture known as Epigravettian,” the Natural History Museum press release said.
Trustee of the Natural History Museum
Map of the Magdalenian sites where cannibalism has been identified in northwestern Europe.
The existence of regular burials during the Upper Magdalenian was due to the migration of individuals with epigravettian ancestors into areas previously inhabited by people with Magdalenian ancestors who practiced burial cannibalism, the study found.
“We believe that the change in burial behavior seen here is an example of demic diffusion, where one population essentially comes in and replaces another population, resulting in a change in behavior,” William Marsh, a postdoctoral researcher at the museum, said in the press release .
These are preliminary results and further analysis of the results on a larger scale is needed to fully examine the results, the study authors said.
Thomas Booth, a senior laboratory researcher at the Francis Crick Institute who was not involved in the study, told CNN on Thursday: “We are missing the remains of most of the people who lived in Europe during the Paleolithic, and so it can always be difficult to find them.” Be aware of what people did with their dead.
“However, this study provides fairly convincing evidence that ritual cannibalism was practiced in human burials across Europe between 20,000 and 14,000 years ago.”