Neanderthal Eats Neanderthal
Neanderthals along the Rhône river in southeastern France 100,000 years ago ate a lot of venison. There, in a cave called Baume Moula-Guercy, prehistorian Alban Defleur and his colleagues found an abundance of ancient deer bones that had been hacked and smashed with stone tools. Also in the cave, and bearing the same butchering marks, were Neanderthal bones. Apparently, Neanderthals ate other Neanderthals as well.
"To prove that cannibalism took place, you have to prove that the human bones were treated just like the animal bones," says Defleur, whose lab is at the University of the Mediterranean, in Marseille. Fragments from six skeletons display such characteristic cuts and fractures. Two Neanderthal skulls had been shattered to get at the nutritious brains. Marks on the jawbone of an adolescent Neanderthal indicate the tongue had been removed. Would they have eaten that too? "Absolutely. C'est très, très bon," says Defleur.
Animals will eat others of their species if they're hungry enough, but the Neanderthals at Moula-Guercy probably had access to plenty of game. Cannibals who aren't warding off starvation might be trying to become what they eat (such as a deceased family member) or appropriate its strength (from a vanquished enemy, say). Either way, the meal is a symbolic act. Yet symbolic behavior is generally thought to have emerged only tens of thousands of years later, when humans started wearing jewelry and painting caves. Could Neanderthal cannibalism be considered an early sign of modernity? "I think this cannibalism suggests a very elaborate intellectual behavior," says Defleur.
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