doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-10266-w
Credibility: 989
#CannibalismÂ
Around 5,700 years ago, on the Iberian Peninsula, during the late Neolithic period, a group of people may have committed a shocking act of violence: they ate other people, possibly their neighbors
This discovery was made from bones found in the El Mirador cave in the Sierra de Atapuerca, Spain.
At least 11 people, including children and adolescents, were skinned, their flesh removed, dismembered, their bones broken, cooked, and eaten.
This is what marks on bones dating from 5,709 to 5,573 years ago reveal.
The most curious thing is that it all appears to have happened in a single, possibly isolated, event, suggesting that these people were not habitual cannibals.
They may have done so for extreme reasons, such as a conflict between rival groups in the region.
“We are dealing with a new case of cannibalism at the Atapuerca sites,” explains Palmira Saladié, a paleoecologist at the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES) in Spain.
“Cannibalism is a very complex behavior to understand because it is difficult to imagine humans eating other humans.
Furthermore, there is often a lack of evidence to explain the exact context of this act, and social prejudices often interpret it as something barbaric.”
Human history has numerous records of cannibalism over the millennia, including at different times in the Iberian Peninsula.
This behavior could have various reasons, from the need for survival to funerary rituals, where eating the dead was a symbolic way of keeping them “alive” in the bodies of the living.
In the El Mirador cave, researchers found 650 human bone fragments with signs of postmortem manipulation.
These signs include cut marks on 132 bones, indicating that the people were skinned, dismembered, and had their internal organs removed.
Some bones also show signs of “pan polishing,” which occurs when bones are cooked in a pan, and discoloration caused by fire.
Additionally, some bones bear human teeth marks, suggesting they were gnawed.
Another interesting detail is that radiocarbon dating indicates that all the people consumed died at approximately the same time and were processed in a single event, which may have lasted several days.
Analysis of the bones also shows that the victims were locals, not outsiders.
“It doesn’t appear to have been a funerary ritual or a response to extreme famine,” says Francesc Marginedas, an evolutionary anthropologist at IPHES.
“The evidence points to a violent episode, likely the result of a conflict between neighboring agricultural communities.”
We will never know for sure what led to this gruesome feast 5,700 years ago, but researchers believe it may have been an extreme display of social control.
“Conflicts and ways to manage or avoid them are part of human nature,” explains Antonio RodrÃguez-Hidalgo, an archaeozoologist at IPHES.
“Archaeological and ethnographic records show that, even in small, less hierarchical societies, violent episodes could occur, and enemies could be consumed as a form of total elimination.”
There is growing evidence that intergroup violence was common in the Iberian Peninsula during the Neolithic, likely due to territorial disputes, competition for resources, or population pressure as more people migrated to the region.
The manipulated bones suggest that cannibalism was part of this violent scenario, as an extreme tool to completely defeat enemies.
This discovery also helps to better understand cannibalism in human history.
“The repetition of these practices at different times in recent prehistory makes El Mirador Cave an important place for understanding prehistoric human cannibalism, its relationship with death, and possible ritual or cultural interpretations of the human body in the worldview of these communities,” Saladié concludes.
Published in 08/16/2025 08h55
Text adapted by AI (Grok) and translated via Google API in the English version. Images from public image libraries or credits in the caption. Information about DOI, author and institution can be found in the body of the article.
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