Cannibal cavemen of Spain uncovered
More evidence that The Flintstones didn't tell us the whole story about cavemen. Our prehuman ancestors cannibalized one another for the "nutritional value" starting about a million years ago, finds an analysis of bones left in a Spanish cave.
In the journal Current Anthropology, a team led by archaeologist Eudald Carbonell of Spain's University of Rovira and Virgili, report fossil evidence of continuous cannibalism - cut marks and butchering remains - as a way of life among the Homo antecessor inhabitants of the Atapuerca Mountains archeological site.
Modern humans did not arrive in Spain until around 30,000 years ago. An "archaic" human species, H. Antecessor possessed a brain about two-thirds the size of modern humans. They are thought to be ancestral to both modern humans and our Neanderthal cousins, who disappeared from the fossil record about the time of the first modern-looking humans in Europe.
The cannibalized bones from the Spanish site, tossed in with the bones of animals butchered for food, suggest that cannibalism was just another dietary option for these early cavemen, one with neither symbolic meaning or pursued solely as a survival strategy during famine....
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In the journal Current Anthropology, a team led by archaeologist Eudald Carbonell of Spain's University of Rovira and Virgili, report fossil evidence of continuous cannibalism - cut marks and butchering remains - as a way of life among the Homo antecessor inhabitants of the Atapuerca Mountains archeological site.
Modern humans did not arrive in Spain until around 30,000 years ago. An "archaic" human species, H. Antecessor possessed a brain about two-thirds the size of modern humans. They are thought to be ancestral to both modern humans and our Neanderthal cousins, who disappeared from the fossil record about the time of the first modern-looking humans in Europe.
The cannibalized bones from the Spanish site, tossed in with the bones of animals butchered for food, suggest that cannibalism was just another dietary option for these early cavemen, one with neither symbolic meaning or pursued solely as a survival strategy during famine....