Cannibal ritual identified more than 14 thousand years ago – Trade

An international team of paleontologists has found that hominids found more than a century in a cave in Somerset in the UK , were cannibals who they used the skulls of their peers as containers, probably as part of a treatment ritual of bodies.

The remains of those humans, about 14.7 thousand years old, were found in the cave Gough (Somerset), and since then, experts have accumulated data from these fossil .

Now, new research led by the Natural History Museum, London (MHNL) and University College London (UCL), with the participation of scientists from IPHES (Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology Social Evolution), noted that those hominids were cannibals, according to a work published in the Journal of Human Evolution.

The human remains of the cave Gough recovered largely in the 1880s, and the rest in 1903. This was all the skeleton bones of several individuals, but size was also found a mammoth and thousands of Paleolithic flint tools.

Research

Human Resto analyzed. (Photo: The Natural History Museum)

During this study, the researchers turned to three-dimensional imaging techniques to examine human remains found in the cave, and carbon-14 technique to date them .

“So we have identified the bones of the hominids cut marks (striae made stone tools for skinning and emaciated bodies); bone fractures marrow for consumption and abundant human teeth marks, which are the most irrefutable proof of cannibalism, “says Palmira Saladié, one of the authors of the research.

Skulls with bowl-shaped

The skulls, however, received a different treatment: were broken gently to shape bowl

“. In fact, its configuration shows many similarities with those recovered in the cave of the Mirador, in the Sierra de Atapuerca (Burgos, Spain). The latter, however, have a younger age, because they belong to the shepherds of the Bronze Age, about 4,000 years ago, “Saladié. Notes

In a broader context, the treatment of human corpses and skulls-glass manufacturing in Gough’s Cave have parallels with other Paleolithic sites in western and central Europe.

This suggests that cannibalism during the Magdalenian period, which belong human remains of this cavity, was part of a common mortuary practice that combines the processing and consumption of the bodies with the ritual use of skull-cup, concludes the study.

Source: EFE