Oldest Evidence of Human Cannibalism as a Funerary Practice

While in the modern day most people will either bury or cremate their dead, some of our ancestors did things a little differently. 

I read in ScienceAlert today that stone age humans from Magdalenian culture practiced cannibalism as part of funeral rituals. This conclusion is based on the findings from an extensive analysis of bones uncovered from archeological sites across Europe, including Poland, Russia, Germany, Belgium, France, Spain, and England.

Named after a Magdalenian rock shelter in Dordogne, France, called La Madeleine, the Magdalenian culture was the last cultural period of Ice Age Europe. Archeologists have learned that this ancient society lived in central Europe and northern Spain. The time period was 11,000 to 17,000 years after the Last Glacial Maximum ended and human populations started dispersing into warmer climates. 

The Magdalenians’ elaborate artistic abilities and manufacturing skills are clearly apparent in the fossil evidence. Their were impressive craftsmen, creating tools with intricate designs using antlers, bone, and ivory projectile points and burins.

The Gough’s Cave, situated in Cheddar Gorge – yes, the home of the famous Cheddar Man – in Somerset, UK, is a popular Paleolithic site believed to have served as home to a group of Magdalenian people. The cave has also been famously associated with the discovery of three manipulated human skulls shaped into cups. 

Over the years, hundreds of human bone fragments scarred by human chewing marks, breakage, and cut marks have been retrieved from the cave. The specimens for this study came from this collection and other sites across Europe where Magdalenians lived.

Lead author of the study was Dr. Silvia Bello (left), a paleoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London, UK. She emphasized that the human bite marks found on the bones indicate this cannibalistic ritual was not based on the need to survive on the meat from the bodies, but as a ceremonial activity associated with funerals in that era. 

Evidence from Gough's Cave already suggests that the eating of the bodies there was of a more ritualistic form. This is because there is ample evidence that the people responsible were hunting and eating lots of other animals, such as deer and horses, while the careful preparation of some of the human remains like the skull cup and an engraved bone show that some thought was being put into the cannibalism. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In fact, Bello and fellow archaeologist William Marsh believe Gough's Cave may not have been some weird outlier. 

The pair set about a thorough examination of the topic, conducting a review of the published literature to look for evidence of cannibalism across Europe. That didn't mean just the Magdalenians. Europe during the Upper Paleolithic, was home to two distinct cultures. The Magdalenians scattered across the north-west. The south-east was home to the Epigravettians. 

Bello and Marsh studied 59 sites, both Magdalenian and Epigravettian. They found evidence of funerary practices in 25 of these sites. At 10 of those sites, the dead seem to have been buried, and left alone once laid to rest. But at 13 of the sites – these include the Gough’s Cave in England, Courbet Cave in France, Maszycka Cave in Poland, El Castillo in Spain, and Peterfels in Germany – human bones showed signs of postmortem manipulation, i.e. cut and tooth marks associated with butchering, eating, and repurposing the bones to be used as tools and vessels, such as cups or bowls made from human skulls. The remaining two sites showed evidence of both burial and cannibalism. 

What's interesting is that all the evidence of cannibalism was found in Magdalenian sites.

The team also performed genetic analysis on bones associated with these funerary rites. They found that the culture that buried their dead – the Epigravettians – was genetically distinct from the culture that ate theirs, the Magdalenians. Evidence also suggests that Epigravettian culture lasted several thousand years longer than Magdalenian. And burial became the dominant means for dealing with the dead.

More research, Marsh and Bello say, will need to be undertaken to understand this grisly funerary practice. 

Note that the research has been published in Quaternary Science Reviews, Volume 319, November 01, 2023, 108309.