For centuries during the Stone Age, a series of caves in southern Spain were home to a gruesome habit of cannibalism, confirming perhaps the most literal case of 'you are what you eat.' Starting at least 8,000 years ago, according to a new study, people there consumed their dead in much the same way they ate wildlife and livestock — as another available food source, not out of dire circumstances.
Dr. Miguel Botella began studying caves in southern Spain in 1972 at a site called Las Majolicas, where he discovered heaps of Neolithic bones. Now, in a recent study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, he and his team compared three caves in the area, all with signs of cannibalism over occasionally overlapping time periods. In total, the team analyzed 967 human remains representing at least 60 individuals, dating to distinct periods between 5,300 and 3,760 B.C.
The bones bore cut marks consistent with butchering: marks made by defleshing tools, meat removal and chopping. Some bones also appear to have been boiled, based on their whiter color and translucency. Others were smashed, most likely to remove the marrow. Analyzing the individual caves showed the researchers that cannibalism occurred consistently in the area over centuries, with some technical variations.
The team proposed that because all the remains were discarded alongside animal bones with similar processing marks, these people probably weren't hunting others for the express purpose of eating them, either. Instead, it seems more likely that people in these caves cannibalized one another as a funerary practice, in contrast to other communities in Europe at the time, who buried their dead or left them in open-air graves.
Source: New York Times Top Stories · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing