Cannibalism 15,000 Years Ago Was Common Ritual at Funerals to Dispose of Deceased

Cannibalism was practiced at funerals about 15,000 years ago as a ritual of disposing of the dead rather than as a means of nutrition.

Cannibalism at Funerals

According to a new study, cannibalism was a common burial practice in Europe some 15,000 years ago, with individuals eating the deceased for cultural reasons rather than out of necessity.

At Gough's Cave in England, researchers have previously discovered gnawed bones and human skulls that have been altered into cups, but a recent study suggests this was not a unique incident.

The late Upper Paleolithic Magdalenian era was the subject of their study, a period between 11,000 and 17,000 years ago when the race was called Magdalenian.

59 Magdalenian sites with human remains were found when experts at the National History Museum in London studied the available literature. The majority were in France, but there were also locations in Belgium, Poland, the Czech Republic, Germany, Spain, Russia, and the United Kingdom.

At 25 of the monuments, they were able to decipher the funerary customs.

In fifteen, there were signs of cannibalism, including gnawing marks on human remains, cut marks on skull bones, and bones deliberately shattered in a fashion consistent with the removal of bone marrow for nourishment.

Additionally, there was evidence that suggested there were instances where animal and human remains were combined.

A Burial Ritual to Dispose Their Deceased

Researchers stated the ritualistic handling of human remains and their frequent discovery at archaeological sites throughout northern and western Europe showed cannibalism was more common in Magdalenian culture than just dietary augmentation.

The study concludes that there is no disputing the fact that the frequency of cannibalistic occurrences among Magdalenian sites surpasses any incidence of this behavior among earlier or later hominin populations, and it shows that funeral cannibalism was a strategy utilized by Magdalenian people to dispose of their dead.

Paleoanthropologist Silvia Bello, lead researcher at the National History Museum and co-author of the paper, said that these people were consuming their dead rather than burying them.

She continued by saying that cannibalism was not just a survival tactic.

That in and of itself, according to Bello, is intriguing since it is the earliest example of cannibalism as a known kind of interment.

Magdalenian Ancestry

Additionally, eight sites' worth of genetic data were made available to researchers, who combined it with the archaeological data to establish a connection between funerary practices and genetic ancestry.

They discovered that two unique ancestral populations, one of Magdalenian culture and the other known as the Epigravettian, a distinctively European and geographically distinct human culture, were present in the area at that time.

Researchers discovered that whereas people from the Epigravettian culture chose to bury their dead without cannibalism, those from the Magdalenian culture in northwest Europe preferred to devour their corpses.

According to the Natural History Museum's press release, a second unique culture known as Epigravettian is responsible for the trend of people burying their dead, a practice that is common throughout south-central Europe.

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According to the study, individuals with Epigravettian-related ancestry moved into regions that had previously been occupied by people with Magdalenian-related ancestry who engaged in funeral cannibalism, which led to the development of regular burial practices during the Upper Magdalenian.

According to William Marsh, a postdoctoral researcher at the museum, this change in funerary behavior is an illustration of demic diffusion, in which one group effectively replaces another and causes a behavior change.

To thoroughly explore the findings, the study's authors noted that further examination of the results at a broader scale is required.

The majority of the people who lived in Europe during the Palaeolithic period do not have any skeletal remains, so it is difficult to know for sure what they did with their deceased, according to Thomas Booth, a Francis Crick Institute senior laboratory research scientist who did not participate in the study.

However, this study offers rather strong proof that individuals in Europe between 20,000 and 14,000 years ago engaged in ceremonial cannibalism.