In Spain, evidence of cannibalism through the ages at the archaeological site of Atapuerca

While eating one's fellow human beings is considered a universal taboo today, this wasn't always the case. The archaeological site of Atapuerca, in Spain, offers a striking example. Paleontologists have unearthed scenes of cannibalistic butchery there dating back nearly a million years, from the Paleolithic period, as well as just a few thousand years, from the Neolithic and Bronze Ages.

The Gran Dolina cave forms a kind of literal primal supper, where the bodies, blood, and marrow of others were widely shared—perhaps not for spiritual reasons. “It’s the oldest known case of cannibalism,” says Palmira Saladié of the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology in Tarragona. She is co-directing excavations at this site, which is part of the vast Atapuerca karst complex. It is an 850,000-year-old settlement where no fewer than 180 human fossils belonging to a new species, Homo antecessor , were discovered during excavations conducted between 1994 and 2011.

In the stratigraphic level called TD6, the remains of 11 children, adolescents and young adults were found disarticulated: "They were eaten here, in a base camp, where human and animal meat were shared, with the same butchery treatment." the researcher explained to Le Monde at the beginning of July. TD6 shows at least three episodes of cannibalism, spread "probably over several thousand years."

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