Cuts, breaks and chew marks. The human bones found in northern Europe had certain peculiarities that surprised archaeologists. And they were not exclusive to a particular place, but extended throughout all the corners occupied by the people of the Magdalenian culture in England, France, Switzerland or Germany.
Researchers at the Natural History Museum in London have analyzed these remains and have come to the conclusion that some human groups who lived around 15,000 years ago ate their dead. But they did not do it out of a nutritional need, but rather as part of their funeral practices.
Gough’s Cave, located in Cheddar Gorge (southeast England) is a clear example of this tradition. This Paleolithic site is well known for the discovery of human skulls shaped like what are believed to have been cups or bowls, as well as bones that had been gnawed by other humans.
In an article published in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews, Dr. Silvia Bello, a specialist in the evolution of human behavior, and her team point out that Gough’s humans were not alone. Other remains from the same period throughout northern and western Europe also show evidence that they were cannibalized.
“Instead of burying their dead, people ate them,” explains Silvia Bello. “Cannibalism was practiced on multiple occasions in northwestern Europe over a short period of time, as this practice was part of widespread funerary behavior among Magdalenian groups,” she adds.
“That in itself is interesting, because it is the oldest evidence of cannibalism as a funerary practice,” says the researcher. Even so, soon the trend changed and gradually the choice was made to bury the dead, a behavior that is widely observed throughout southern central Europe and is attributed to a second different culture, known as Epigravettian.
During the Late Upper Paleolithic, between 23,000 and 14,000 years ago, there were two dominant cultures in Western Europe, distinguished largely by the stone and bone tools they made. The Epigravettian culture was found in southern and eastern Europe and buried their dead with grave goods, which could be considered a more common practice by modern standards.
The Magdalenian culture of northwestern Europe, however, did things differently. They processed the bodies of their dead, removing the flesh from the corpse, eating it, and in some cases modifying the remaining bones to create new objects.
Evidence found in Gough’s Cave already suggested that eating the bodies was more of a ritual than a necessity in times when food was scarce or the winter was long. These people hunted and ate many other animals, such as deer and horses. But with the human remains, careful preparation was followed.
“To better contextualize Gough’s Cave, I reviewed all the archaeological sites attributed to the Upper Paleolithic Magdalenian and Epigravettian culture,” explains Dr. William Marsh. Thus he found up to 59 sites throughout Europe from this time that had human remains, of which 13 showed evidence of cannibalism, 10 of burial and two combined burial and cannibalism.
Marsh realized that the practice of eating the dead was quite localized, found at sites throughout Western and Central Europe and as far away as the United Kingdom. “Cannibalism was practiced on multiple occasions during a short period of time, in a fairly localized area and only by individuals attributed to the Magdalenian culture,” he notes.
The genetic evidence found with the study of DNA further suggests that the two groups that practiced different funeral behaviors were genetically different populations. All of the sites where evidence of cannibalism has been found show that the people were part of a group known as ‘GoyetQ2’, while the most common burials were of people who belonged to the ‘Villabruna’ group.
Both groups lived in Europe at the same time, but the GoyetQ2 are associated with the region spanning the Franco-Spanish border, while the Villabruna ancestry was carried by individuals who inhabited the Italo-Balkan region. This implies that when the practice of eating the dead ended and more conventional burials became common, it was not due to the spread of ideas, but rather because the Epigravettian people replaced the Magdalenian.
“In the terminal period of the Paleolithic, a change is observed in both genetic ancestry and funerary behavior,” notes William. “The Magdalenians were replaced by the Epigravetian groups that migrated to northwest Europe,” he adds. What the experts at the Natural History Museum still do not know is whether these cannibalized humans were related to each other or whether they were eating people outside their own group.
