15,000-year-old “zombies”: This new study suggests that early Europeans may have eaten their enemies’ brains
Science suggests Europeans could have been cannibals. Look away if you’re squeamish.
A new study published last week in Scientific Reports made the rather gruesome conclusion that people may have eaten the brains of their enemies both in acts of violence and ritual.
The project analysed the remains of at least 10 individuals from the Magdalenian culture, a people who lived in Europe between 11,000 and 17,000 years ago, drawing the rather grisly results.
While it may not be breakfast reading for us, previous studies had indeed indicated that cannibalism was fairly common among the Magdalenian people, practiced both as a funerary ritual and as a form of violence.
Advanced imaging techniques was used by the researchers from institutions in France, Spain, and Poland who managed identified marks and cuts on the bones and skulls which revealed evidence of the extraction of marrow from bones and brain matter from skulls.
Francesc Marginedas, the co-lead author of the study at the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution in Spain, argued that the most recent discovery in Poland “was a case of warfare, as there was “no kind of special treatment compared to other Magdalenian sites,” nor the presence of skull cups, “which is related to the ritualization of the bodies.”
Talking to CNN, he added that marking on the skull “makes us think that it’s something more related to violence and conflict rather than a funeral ritual.”
Bill Schutt, a zoologist and author of “Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History,” said that “there are alternative answers to this question of what happened back then... who knows what these people were doing? Did they believe it was respectful to smash up the skulls of the dead or deflesh them? There are cultures where bodies are defleshed as part of funerary rites.”
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