Deep inside Maszycka Cave in southern Poland, researchers discovered something shocking and disturbing about the behavior of prehistoric people who lived in the region around 16,000 BC. A new analysis of excavated human remains showed that people eating people was a thing back in those days, as cannibalism was practiced regularly by local hunter-gatherers. Not by zombies running amock during a zombie apocalypse, but by living human beings using other human beings as a source of nourishment.
In a fresh reexamination of skeletal remains excavated in the cave, the researchers involved in this new study were stunned to find that 70 percent of the bones had signs of cut marks. From the nature of these cuts it seems the ancient cannibals preferred to harvest the human brain and bone marrow, realizing (somehow) that these were the most nutritious parts.
Notably, the last Ice Age was just starting to end at that point. As environmental conditions improved and food sources became more plentiful, this could have spurred population growth to robust levels, which in certain areas might have intensified the competition for food and paradoxically led to food shortages. Hunter-gatherer groups migrating into each other’s home areas with more mouths to feed might have created problems, leading to fierce battles for territory that forced the losers to resort to drastic measures.
A Cave of Horrors
A team of Spanish and Polish researchers collaborated on the study of 63 bone fragments recovered from Maszycka Cave in excavations that took place over the course of several decades. Archaeologists have been exploring this particular cave for more than 120 years, drawn by the variety of prehistoric artifacts that cave has produced, including stone tools, animal bones, and human remains.
An assortment of the bones found with cut marks, represented by the shaded areas on the illustrations of the human skeletons. (Marginedas/et.al/Scientific Reports).
The bone fragments studied in this case dated back to the Magdalenian cultural period, which made them approximately 18,000 years old. Applying the best available technology, the researchers relied on three-dimensional microscopy to complete a thorough scan of the bones, which included a lot of femurs and skulls but bones from other parts of the body as well. When the results were in, the researchers realized they had uncovered convincing evidence of cannibalism.
“The location and frequency of the cut marks and the intentional fracturing of the skeleton clearly show nutritional exploitation of the bodies, ruling out the hypothesis of funerary treatment without consumption,” study lead author Francesc Marginedas, a researcher at the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES-CERCA) in Spain (the main sponsor of the study), stated in a press release.
As the study authors explain in an article about their research published in Scientific Reports, archaeologists had gone back and forth in their interpretation of cut marks on Magdalenian bones recovered from Maszycka Cave. While cannibalism had been suggested before, in recent years an alternative view had become more popular, namely that the signs of cutting on bones reflected prehistoric burial customs rather than dietary preferences.
But the researchers from IPHES-CERCA and their colleagues refute this notion. Completing an exhaustive study of bones taken from different bodies, they collected evidence of deliberate cut marks and fractures showing up in places where brains and bone marrow could be easily harvested (and on occasion organs were harvested as well).
“This behavior is also observed in other chronologically and culturally similar assemblages throughout continental Europe, suggesting that cannibalism was integral practice within the cultural systems of these Magdalenian groups,” the researchers wrote.
Why Did Prehistoric Communities in Poland Turn to Cannibalism?
There are several reasons why prehistoric residents of Eastern Europe might have consumed human flesh.
- Ancient And Modern Cannibalism: A Question Of Taste
- 8 Ancient Cultures Practicing Cannibalism Through the Ages
It could have been a ritualistic practice, motivated by a desire to connect with gods or channel spiritual forces. If the consumed people were enemies killed in battle it may have been done out of spite or revenge.
But the researchers consider these kinds of ideas unlikely. They were able to determine that the harvesting of bone marrow and brains occurred shortly after death, and was practiced commonly. This suggests a behavior that evolved over time out of necessity, and not a ritual practice performed only in special circumstances.
In their analysis of their results, the Spanish and Polish researchers emphasized the resource competition angle and the conflicts it caused as the likeliest explanation for the adoption of cannabilistic practices by the Magdalenian people.
Enhanced microscopic images that show clear cut mark lines on bones from different parts of the body. (Marginedas/et.al/Scientific Reports)
“Several factors support the possibility of warfare cannibalism amongst Magdalenian groups,” they wrote. “After the Last Glacial Maximum, European populations experienced a demographic increase which began to repopulate and colonize previously inhabited areas of northern and central Europe. The increase in the hunter-gatherer populations is directly linked to the constraints imposed by the carrying capacity of the environment, which leads to a state of resource strain and gives rise to intergroup tensions, occasionally escalating into acts of violence.”
And out of this violence, they believe, the practice of eating a vanquished enemy’s flesh may have arisen.
Breaking the Taboo
The earliest evidence of cannibalism in Europe dates back over 800,000 years, to people living in the Atapuerca Mountains of Spain. Such behavior seems to have always been the exception to the rule, however.
The taboo against cannibalism has been around for as long as history has been recorded, meaning it must have started even earlier. It may have always been a desperate measure for desperate times, and if so its existence in 16,000 BC in the lands of modern Poland suggests that people were strugging to survive at that time.
An actual zombie apocalypse in progress (from the movie Meat Market 3). (Joel Friesen/Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0).
Despite the presumed taboo, archaeologists have found five sites in Europe from the same time period that produced evidence of cannibalism. The Magdalenian culture was dominant in Europe between 17,000 and 12,000 years ago, during the Upper Paleolithic, and it seems cannibalism wasn’t all that unusual for them.
“This high number of sites together with the archaeological data has allowed researchers to suggest that cannibalism during the Magdalenian was part of the culture of these groups, whether consuming their own dead or those of their enemies,” the researchers noted in their press release. The links between the various cannibal sites will now be studied more in-depth, to see what can be learned about why this forbidden practice increased in frequency during the early post-glacial era.
Top image: Entrance to Maszycka Cave.
Source: Darek Bobak/IPHES.
By Nathan Falde
