The Lascaux Cave paintings are some of the most famous examples of paleolithic artworks. Made by the Magdalenians, a late Ice -Tijdenoeming who lived in Central Europe between 20,000 and 14,500 years ago, emphasize the images of animals and plants how long people have documented the world around them. But based on recent archaeological research, at least a few Magdalen groups were also concerned with a Gorier pastime: cannibalism.
The evidence, detailed in a study published earlier this month in Scientific reportsWas gathered by an international team of researchers who worked at the Maszycka Cave in Poland. The late top paleolithic archaeological site discovered more than a century ago, included stone and bone tools, proof of hunted ice age animals, as well as human skeleton-like remains. Extra excavation work in the 1960s culminated in a total of 63 bones of 10 Magdalenians of about 18,000 years old.
From the nineties, some experts were the cutting traces on skulls and shattered long bone residues suggested that the proof of cannibalism suggested. Later analysis, however, argued that funeral practices declared the damage. But after the final round of Tipehonomic Analysis (the study of rotting organisms), a group led by archaeologists at the German University of Göttingen that the original theory was always correct. And they have the horrible proof that you have to show it.
After examining the bone fragments using microscopic tools, the team explained the cuts and scrap marks “they connect with activities that are carried out during the successful process, such as skinning, extermination, defleshing and disarticulation or disintegration.” In particular, 36 bone fragments from multiple bodies showed proof that Magdalenians were “immediately” dissected after their death. As far as the broken pieces are, “the break is associated with removing the marrow in the long bones and the brains in skulls” for consumption.
It is getting darker. Given which experts already know about Magdalenian life during the upper paleolithic, it seems unlikely that these actions of cannibalism were only performed if food was scarce. In the end it all goes back to the Lascaux Cave paintings.
“The wide range of artistic evidence points to favorable living conditions during this period,” Thomas Terberger, co-author and professor at the University of Göttingen’s Department of Prehistoric and Early History, said in a statement. “It therefore seems unlikely that cannibalism was practiced out of necessity.”
Instead, it is possible that cannibalism was a violent highlight of conflicts.
“After the last ice age there was population growth, and that may have led to conflicts about resources and areas,” the first author Francesc Marginedas added to the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution.
Marginedas pointed to “isolated incidents” of similar cannibalism connected to fighting elsewhere. And then there is the simple fact of where the Maszycka -cotton bones were discovered.
“Human remains were mixed with settlement waste in the Maszycka -cave, which indicates that the dead were not treated with respect,” said Marginedas.
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