Their detailed picture of the engravings clearly shows how the bone was processed. In their new study, published in PLOS One, the team took a closer look at the engraved bone. Among a 30-year-old collection of ancient bones from the same area, they found one, a right arm bone, that the cave dwellers engraved with a zigzag pattern.Ĭurrent imaging techniques give archaeologists the ability to scrutinize such artifacts in a way they could not do 30 years ago.

Now, the same team, led by Silvia Bello, an anthropologist and paleobiologist at The Natural History Museum, in the U.K., has made another discovery related to ritualistic cannibalism. The researchers also found skulls that had been modified for drinking or eating, indicating the cannibalism was likely ritualistic. In other words, a new study confirms, the practice of consuming humans was almost certainly not just for their nutritional needs.Įvidence for this macabre ritual at Gough's Cave in Somerset, in southwestern England, emerged in 2015 after anthropologists and archaeologists found human bones scarred with cuts and tooth marks where they had stripped of flesh and chewed. providing clear evidence that some Paleolithic humans engaged in cannibalism for ritual purposes.Īfter filleting and consuming dead bodies, these groups stopped to inscribe a design on the bones before sucking out the marrow, and then using the skulls as cups. Now, a human bone engraved 15,000 years ago has fleshed out a long-incomplete picture about this ancient practice. Archaeologists have long known about our cannibalistic past, but why humans who lived thousands of years ago ate each other has been unclear.

Skull and bones ritual