It is not customary to talk about this topic in a decent society, and experts avoid touching on it once again. However, judging by the results of the excavations, the childhood of mankind was cruel and bloody. Moreover, the numerous remains of the killed people of the Stone Age show that our not so distant ancestors were cannibals.
The first sign that made the scientific community think seriously about the cannibalistic past of mankind was a message from Spain in December 2006. Then Antonio Rosas of the Spanish National Museum of Natural History said that his team had finished examining eight Neanderthal skeletons found in the El Sidron cave system in 2000.
Dr. Rosas argued that "some of the bones of the Neanderthals are split in a very characteristic way to gain access to the bone marrow." In addition, according to the scientist, the chemical composition of their teeth clearly indicated constant starvation and malnutrition during childhood. The observations allowed scientists to assume that "about 43 thousand years ago, the Neanderthals from El Sidron, for unknown reasons, were on the verge of starvation, which prompted them to resort to cannibalism."
The scientific community was satisfied: these particular Neanderthals, of course, were cannibals, but not all the same. And the question of their relationship with Homo sapiens raised great doubts among scientists: in the mid-2000s, researchers still believed that Cro-Magnons with Neanderthals did not interbreed, which means that they cannot be our direct ancestors.
CROMAGNONS FROM LE ROIT
Three years later, only the hypothesis of "non-native" made it possible to somehow justify the behavior of our immediate ancestors Cro-Magnons, who, as it turned out, ate Neanderthals.
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The reason for the unpleasant discovery was the discovery of the jaw of a Neanderthal man who lived about 35 thousand years ago in the Le Roi region (in western France). The archaeologists who studied it from the French National Research Center found a wound on the jaw caused by the weapon of the Cro-Magnons, representatives of the Aurignacian culture. On reflection, scientists suggested that the Cro-Magnons killed the hapless Neanderthal, dragged his body to their cave, where the meat was separated from the bones, leaving specific scratches on them, and ate. And the teeth were ripped out of the jaw and used as jewelry.
“For many years we have been ashamed of this version, but it's time to face the truth: ancient people ate Homo neanderthalensis from time to time. Obviously, this was one of the factors contributing to the extinction of the latter, - said one of the authors of the study, Fernando Rozzi, which caused a storm of indignation in the scientific community.
MAN PRECEDING FROM ATAPUERC
A message that came at the same time from Northern Spain added fuel to the fire. In June 2009, the head of the excavations in the Ata Puerca caves, Jose Maria Bermudez de Castro, said that the antecedent Man (Homo antecessor), who lived in these parts 1.2 million - 500 thousand years ago, "was without a doubt a cannibal."
The scientist was prompted by “the discovery of several ancient caves, where the remains of children's human bones of 11 juvenile hominids are in a fragmented state, they show traces of external damage caused by stone tools and human teeth, and the bones themselves are mixed with the bones of large animals - deer, horses, bears. This gives us reason to say that cannibalism was part of the gastronomy here, not a ritual."
Of course, the previous Man was not a man in the full sense of the word, although outwardly he very much resembled Homo sapiens. The flat face of the modern type was combined with powerful superciliary arches, a massive lower jaw without a chin and large teeth characteristic of Neanderthals. This, by the way, gave scientists reason to speak of him as the common ancestor of the Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals. This means that at least one of the ancestors of modern people was a real cannibal. But, as it turned out in the same year, not only him.
HERKSHEIM PEOPLE
In the spring of 2009, anthropologist Bruno Boulestan from the University of Bordeaux (France) published the sensational results of a study of bones found in ditches in the Stone Age site of Herxheim (seven thousand years ago) near the German city of Speyer. It was then that it turned out that they have very specific damage. “Turtles have grooves that start near the nose and go down to the neck. And on the temples are the same. Some of the bones show fine parallel incisions made with sharp flint tools. The edges of the thigh bones are shattered. These traces undoubtedly indicate that the meat was torn off here,”said the head of the local archaeological department, Andrea Ceb-Lanz.
“There is only one explanation for this: bones were broken, cut, scraped and crushed. Probably, the bodies were dismembered, the tendons and ligaments were separated, the meat was cut off, and the bones were split in order to … then use them for food, - echoes Doctor Bulestan. - Human bodies were butchered in the same way as animal corpses. The spine was cut open to remove the ribs. The top of the skull was opened to expose the brain. Apparently, it was considered a delicacy in those days. There are very few bones that are left with bone marrow."
In total, according to scientists, the remains of over 1000 people eaten by cannibals lie in the ditches of Herxheim. This is strange when you consider that the settlement itself is very small (at most a dozen houses). Hot on the heels, genetic tests confirmed the assumption that those killed were neither local nor members of the same tribe, but came from different parts of Europe. Anthropologists who studied the remains have proved that the subjects were not captured on the battlefield either. Among them were many old people, women, children (including the unborn).
None of them were injured or sick, or suffered from exhaustion. "It is quite possible that they were sacrificed in the course of some kind of religious ceremony that includes the ritual of eating sacrificial flesh," Dr. Tseb-Lanz cautiously suggested. - This version is also supported by the fact that bowls were made from their skulls, from which no one ever drank. Even today, the edges are so sharp that you can cut your lips. " However, all this does not exclude the fact that the ancient inhabitants of Herxheim ate their own kind.
TORQUE PEOPLE
Two months later, in August 2009, the British also made their contribution to the cause of pan-European cannibalism. Back in 1866, British archaeologist William Pegelli discovered in the Kent caves near the city of Torquay (Great Britain) a perfectly preserved human humerus, nine thousand years old. The find ended up in the museum of the city of Torquay, where it was safely forgotten for many years. They remembered only in December 2008, when they carried out an inventory. Curator Barry Chandler was alarmed by the parallel serifs on it. An independent examination carried out by archaeologists from the University of Oxford showed: “The scratches are clearly deliberate and the bone appears to have been deliberately split. And these two circumstances, taken together, may indicate a possible cannibalism.
Moreover, the location of the crack (just above the elbow joint) corresponds to what would happen with a deliberate dismemberment. And the fact that all the serifs are in one place suggests that they appeared as a result of the separation of muscle tissue from bone, and while the flesh was still fresh. If these were the remains of an animal, one would assume that the bone was split to get to the bone marrow, which was considered a delicacy by the people of the Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age),”said Dr. Rick Schulting, who performed the examination.
True, the scientist did not insist on his version: “These scratches could have been made in order for the body to decompose faster, in order to speed up the process of reunification with ancestors. This emphasizes the complexity of the idea of death of people of the Mesolithic era, who lived many thousands of years before the advent of farming, which arose in the Neolithic period, with which we usually associate complex funeral techniques,”he offered another, much more pleasant explanation.
However, by this time, most scientists had already come to terms with the idea of a man's cannibalistic past and rejected such an interpretation as far-fetched.
"Details of the World" No. 10 2012