{"id":718112,"date":"2026-07-29T23:42:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T23:42:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/718112\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T23:42:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T23:42:14","slug":"archaeologists-thought-these-early-cannibals-mostly-ate-children-they-were-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/718112\/","title":{"rendered":"Archaeologists Thought These Early Cannibals Mostly Ate Children. They Were Wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"

Homo antecessor is among the oldest known human relatives in Europe. Their fossils have long shown grim signs of cannibalism<\/a>, mostly involving children. But a new finding suggests cannibalism was a more widespread practice among these prehistoric humans.<\/p>\n

Archaeologists with the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES) announced the discovery of 24 new H. antecessor fossils at the Gran Dolina site in Spain. In a translated statement<\/a> (via Google Translate), the IPHES explained that the fossils included six adult individuals whose bones retained cut marks associated with cannibalism practices. This suggests that it wasn\u2019t necessarily younger humans who were cannibalized, as previous discoveries have indicated.<\/p>\n

\"HomoAn ulna (lower arm bone) from an adult H. antecessor. Credit: Maria D. Guill\u00e9n\/IPHES-CERCA <\/p>\n

\u201cThe relationship between stone tools, faunal remains, and Homo antecessor bones allows us to reconstruct an occupation area from 850,000 years ago with an extraordinary level of detail,\u201d Andreu Oll\u00e9, the project\u2019s co-director, said in the statement.<\/p>\n

In 2010, archaeologists, including project co-director Palmira Saladi\u00e9, proposed<\/a> that H. antecessor cannibalized their young. Also at Gran Dolina, the team found bones belonging to childlike individuals with butchering marks that resembled ones left on animal remains at the site.<\/p>\n

According to an explainer<\/a> by the Australian Museum, it\u2019s debatable whether this truly points to cannibalism, but archaeologists haven\u2019t found evidence for alternative scenarios, such as H. antecessor funerary rites. In 2012, Saladi\u00e9 and colleagues published a study<\/a> suggesting that H. antecessors cannibalized their young for reasons similar to some chimpanzees, who sometimes hunt<\/a> the young to defend their territories.<\/p>\n

Then last year, the team behind the latest discovery found<\/a> precise cuts and human bite marks on the bones of an H. antecessor toddler, likely between 2 and 5 years old. To Live Science, project co-director Saladi\u00e9 said<\/a> this was the \u201cmost reliable evidence that the bodies found at the site were indeed consumed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new discoveries indicate that it wasn\u2019t necessarily the youngest, most vulnerable individuals who were subjected to cannibalism. In the statement, Saladi\u00e9 said that the findings are a \u201cturning point\u201d for the Gran Dolina site, as previous discoveries had been \u201cconditioned\u201d by the overwhelming number of infant and juvenile skeletons.<\/p>\n

\"HomoAtlas (spinal bone) of an adult H. antecessor. Credit: Maria D. Guill\u00e9n\/IPHES-CERCA <\/p>\n

In addition to the adult bones, the team also unearthed a trove of stone tools and animal remains from hyenas, beavers, horses, rhinos, and more. According to the statement, H. antecessor is \u201cone of the most unknown\u201d species among human relatives that occupied modern-day Europe, so the latest excavations provide much-needed evidence for researchers to reconstruct the prehistoric humans\u2019 anatomy, as well as their lifestyles.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the first time, we can approach its demographic structure with a representativeness that we did not have until now,\u201d Oll\u00e9 said. \u201cEach new campaign brings us a little closer to understanding how these human groups lived, how they exploited resources, and how they were socially organized.\u201d<\/p>\n

Related article: Humanity\u2019s Origin Story Just Got More Complicated<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Homo antecessor is among the oldest known human relatives in Europe. Their fossils have long shown grim signs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":718113,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[59,30146,50527,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-718112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-gb","tag-human-evolution","tag-prehistory","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=718112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/718113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=718112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=718112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=718112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}