1 hour ago
Neolithic cannibalism wasn’t an act of desperation. Almost 1,000 skeletal fragments from caves in southern Spain show how eating human flesh was a continual practice
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-new...180989849/
EXCERPTS: For generations, human cannibalism in prehistoric Europe was viewed as a desperate response to starvation. Now, a forensic re-examination of three prehistoric cave sites in southern Spain reveals that people ate human remains as a ritual for millennia, including after violent clashes or as a standard funeral rite.
Researchers analyzed 967 skeletal fragments representing at least 60 individuals recovered from the caves of Malalmuerzo, Carigüela and Majolicas in the province of Granada. Using high-resolution microscopy, machine learning and radiocarbon dating, the team discovered that these grisly feasts were not confined to a single crisis, such as war or starvation. Instead, they unfolded in “context-dependent episodes” between roughly 5300 B.C.E. and 3760 B.C.E., according to a recent study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
The bone assemblages were first excavated in the 1970s under the direction of Miguel C. Botella, a forensic anthropologist at the University of Granada. Fifty years later, Botella joined a multi-disciplinary team to subject the historical collection to modern forensic analysis.
“Returning to these materials with new tools has allowed us to address questions that were impossible to answer at the time,” lead author Palmira Saladié, an archaeologist at the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution, explains in a statement.
By scrutinizing butchery traces, impact fractures and tooth marks under the microscope, the researchers distinguished between injuries inflicted on fresh bone around the time of death and natural degradation that took place years later. The skeletons bore unmistakable hallmarks of systematic butchery: defleshing cut marks, bones split open to harvest marrow, crushed crania to extract brain tissue and bones rendered translucent from boiling.
Despite common processing methods, each cave documented a distinct social reality behind the cannibalistic practices. Remains from Malalmuerzo Cave—which coincidentally translates to “Bad Lunch,” Botella tells Joshua Rapp Learn of the New York Times—likely date to an episode of communal violence around 5000 B.C.E. There, 77 percent of the 714 recovered fragments displayed fractures, Historia National Geographic’s Juan Pedro Chuet-Missé reported in September.
“At Malalmuerzo … our analyses indicate the presence of remains from all age groups, which would suggest a violent event in which all or almost all the individuals in a group were killed and subsequently consumed,” co-author Antonio Rodríguez-Hidalgo, an archaeologist at the Institute of Archaeology of Mérida, says in the statement.
Children’s remains from Malalmuerzo also bore human tooth marks indicative of “very intensive consumption,” co-author Ana Solari, an anthropologist at Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council, tells the Times.
[...] The earliest known evidence of cannibalism is a 1.45-million-year-old shin bone with nine distinctive cut marks. The bone was found in 1970 in Kenya’s Turkana region.
The absence of any alternative funerary practice such as burial or cremation in the cave further strengthens this explanation. “The great majority of them, they didn’t kill them,” Botella tells the Times. “They just died; and after they died, they ate them.”
He speculates that these communities may have consumed deceased relatives or friends to keep them connected to their lives, drawing a parallel to mortuary cannibalism historically recorded in parts of South America... (MORE - missing details)
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-new...180989849/
EXCERPTS: For generations, human cannibalism in prehistoric Europe was viewed as a desperate response to starvation. Now, a forensic re-examination of three prehistoric cave sites in southern Spain reveals that people ate human remains as a ritual for millennia, including after violent clashes or as a standard funeral rite.
Researchers analyzed 967 skeletal fragments representing at least 60 individuals recovered from the caves of Malalmuerzo, Carigüela and Majolicas in the province of Granada. Using high-resolution microscopy, machine learning and radiocarbon dating, the team discovered that these grisly feasts were not confined to a single crisis, such as war or starvation. Instead, they unfolded in “context-dependent episodes” between roughly 5300 B.C.E. and 3760 B.C.E., according to a recent study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
The bone assemblages were first excavated in the 1970s under the direction of Miguel C. Botella, a forensic anthropologist at the University of Granada. Fifty years later, Botella joined a multi-disciplinary team to subject the historical collection to modern forensic analysis.
“Returning to these materials with new tools has allowed us to address questions that were impossible to answer at the time,” lead author Palmira Saladié, an archaeologist at the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution, explains in a statement.
By scrutinizing butchery traces, impact fractures and tooth marks under the microscope, the researchers distinguished between injuries inflicted on fresh bone around the time of death and natural degradation that took place years later. The skeletons bore unmistakable hallmarks of systematic butchery: defleshing cut marks, bones split open to harvest marrow, crushed crania to extract brain tissue and bones rendered translucent from boiling.
Despite common processing methods, each cave documented a distinct social reality behind the cannibalistic practices. Remains from Malalmuerzo Cave—which coincidentally translates to “Bad Lunch,” Botella tells Joshua Rapp Learn of the New York Times—likely date to an episode of communal violence around 5000 B.C.E. There, 77 percent of the 714 recovered fragments displayed fractures, Historia National Geographic’s Juan Pedro Chuet-Missé reported in September.
“At Malalmuerzo … our analyses indicate the presence of remains from all age groups, which would suggest a violent event in which all or almost all the individuals in a group were killed and subsequently consumed,” co-author Antonio Rodríguez-Hidalgo, an archaeologist at the Institute of Archaeology of Mérida, says in the statement.
Children’s remains from Malalmuerzo also bore human tooth marks indicative of “very intensive consumption,” co-author Ana Solari, an anthropologist at Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council, tells the Times.
[...] The earliest known evidence of cannibalism is a 1.45-million-year-old shin bone with nine distinctive cut marks. The bone was found in 1970 in Kenya’s Turkana region.
The absence of any alternative funerary practice such as burial or cremation in the cave further strengthens this explanation. “The great majority of them, they didn’t kill them,” Botella tells the Times. “They just died; and after they died, they ate them.”
He speculates that these communities may have consumed deceased relatives or friends to keep them connected to their lives, drawing a parallel to mortuary cannibalism historically recorded in parts of South America... (MORE - missing details)