There was an outbreak of cannibalism 10,000 years ago in Spain

[Judi Lynn]

There was an outbreak of cannibalism 10,000 years ago in Spain
Archaeologists find evidence that humans cooked and ate humans in an ancient cave.

ANNALEE NEWITZ - 3/20/2017, 2:46 PM


The Mesolithic period in Europe, roughly 10,000 years ago, was a tumultuous time. Small groups of hunter-gatherers were undergoing a dramatic cultural transformation, making increasingly sophisticated stone tools with wooden components. They were on the cusp of the agricultural revolution, which would grant them a broader range of nutrition sources and greater food security. The environment was changing, too: the Ice Age was over, but the mid-Pleistocene warming period had not yet begun. And in a cave near the coast of Alicante, Spain, 120km south of Valencia, groups of humans began to engage in occasional acts of cannibalism.

In a recent paper for Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, University of Valencia anthropologist Juan V. Morales-Pérez and colleagues describe their discovery of human bones covered in marks that suggest what they delicately refer to as "anthropophagic practices." Carbon dating suggests we're looking at meals from at least two different events between 10,000 and 9,000 years ago. Though 30 different human bones are buried in the cave, the researchers write that there are skull remains from only three individuals: a heavyset person, a more diminutive one, and an infant (the infant skull shows no sign of cannibalism). At a minimum, then, two people were eaten, and possibly several more. There are no signs of violence, so these people were probably eaten after death.

Signs of cannibalism

Identifying cannibalism is a tricky business, for both cultural and scientific reasons. First, we don't want to believe our ancestors ate each other, and second, distinguishing signs of cooking and eating from other kinds of damage that bones can suffer over thousands of years buried in a cave is difficult. Morales-Pérez and his team spent several years analyzing the bones, and they identified several telltale signs that point to cannibalism. They were guided in this investigation by previous work from a paper by Bruno Bulestin of the University of Bordeaux. He lays out this technical rubric:

(1) Direct proof: the presence of human bones within human coprolites or the identification of human bites on human bones.
(2) Indirect proof: mainly cooking or pot polish marks.
(3) First-order primary criteria: anthropogenic fracture and differential anatomical representation (if this anomalous representation is not related to post-depositional processes but to the functional exploitation of the bones).
(4) Second-order primary criteria: mainly cut marks.
(5) Secondary criteria that are not directly related to functional exploitation: position and preservation of the bones and presence of burned bones.

More:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/the-10000-year-old-case-of-the-spanish-cannibals/

[Warpy]

1. The Younger Dryas was ending, sea levels were rising

and the Ice Age food they'd relied on for tens of thousands of years was disappearing. They might have been eating anyone who died of disease or starvation or they might have been eating enemies who were competing for scarce foods.

Whatever. The survivors went on and we are them.

Most instances of cannibalism exist around periods of food scarcity. Given our druthers, we generally don't like to eat each other.

[cstanleytech]

2. Or it might have been part of a religious belief they held back then. nt