The Goyet caves in Belgium have been hiding a grisly secret for ages and archeologists have discovered it—cannibalism among our ancestors, the Neanderthals. The excavated fossils were radiocarbon dated at about 40,500 to 45,500 years old, and the bones revealed evidence of being butchered and used as tools.
Researchers found 99 mysterious bone fragments of Neanderthals making the discovery one of the most remarkable in the northern Alps. Remains will also assist in further research on our ancestors’ genetics. Analysts said that certain grooves and notches on the bones suggested the bodies had been massacred by humans—skinned and carved up with the bone marrow removed.
“These indications allow us to assume that Neanderthals practiced cannibalism,” said Hervé Bocherens, one of the lead investigators from Tübingen’s Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment.
There’s a possibility, however, that the slaughter was a ceremonial ritual. Bocherens compared the findings to the remains of horses and reindeer found in Goyet that had similar markings.
Although the discovery is the first of its kind in northern Europe, clues of ancient cannibalism have been found at El Sidrón and Zafarraya in Spain and at French sites, Moula-Guercy and Les Pradelles. The human fragments were used in the same manner as animal bones; one thigh bone and three shinbones were used to shape tools according to scientists.
More broadly, the site provides more clues into their customs. “The big differences in the behavior of these people on the one hand, and the close genetic relationship between late European Neanderthals on the other, raise many questions about the social lives and exchange between various groups,” Bocherens noted.
Neanderthals perished 30,000 years ago. Yet before their demise, some mated with fledgling homo sapiens leaving traces of their DNA in the present.
Details were released from Eberhard Karls University of Tubingen and later published in the journal Scientific Reports.
Source: CBS News