NEANDERTHALS WERE CANNIBAL

After analyzing the bones found in a cave in Goyet (Belgium) a group of 13 expert anthropologists has proved that these hominids who lived in Europe and part of the occidental Asia during the Paleolitic Age used to eat their equals.

What in a first study years ago looked like animal bones, turned out in human rests. These human skeletons were composed by 69 bones and 3 teeth belonging to 5 individuals, laying there for over 45.500 years.

According to the state of the bones, we asume that Neanterthals knew well what they were doing. The bones appeared with marks made by stone knives in the insertion areas of muscles and tendons, in their attemp to bone the corpse.

It is thought that the process was always the same: first they emptied the bowels and dismembered the body, and then they took the arms and the legs, the most tasty parts into the cave.

They didn't just eat their mates and then throw the bones away, but give them another function as tools and weapons. This is curious since it has been thought that Neandertals were part of the "flat head gender", gender characterized for stammering and feeding on carrion.

However scientifics ensure nowadays that they were able to make simple jewelry and tan leather. One fact attracts specially our attention: they would have been able to tune a violin, due to the inner ear bones found.

The case of Goyet's cannibalism has not been the only one. In the Asturian cave of Sidron have been foung at least 13 corpses -3 of them kids- previously quartered.

There are two hypothesis that give a reason for the cannibalism. The first one ensures that they ate the rival to seize their vital strength; the second one suggests they ate their deads in order to prevent the decomposition of the bodies.

¿What led them to cannibalism?

The answer is simple: eating each other or succumbing as a result of the appearance of the next homo, the Homo sapiens. In fact there is evidence of desnutrition in the kids' rests found in Sidrón.

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#Neanderthal #cannibalism #desnutrition #tools