Flesh-eating Neanderthals stalked mainland Europe and used dead relatives’ bones as WEAPONS
Researchers expose 'grisly evidence' of the continent's dark and bloody history
Europe was once home to huge tribes of hyper-aggressive flesh-eating cannibal Neanderthals, archaeologists have discovered.
German researchers have uncovered "grisly evidence" which suggests pre-human tribes carved up unfortunate victims, chowed down on their flesh and then used the remaining bones as tools.
A team of archaeologists dug up a massive cache of Neanderthal bones from a site in Goyet, Belgium, and found they were about 45,000 years old.
The bones had massive cuts and scrapes which indicate cavemen had sawed off flesh and even drained the bone marrow.
“These indications allow us to assume that Neanderthals practised cannibalism,” Hervé Bocherens, from the University of Tübingen.
The team suggested the cannibal cavemen used their dead relatives' bones as tools. It is also likely they were turned into weapons.
One thigh bone and three shin bones dug up at Goyet appear to have been used to fashion stone tools.
“That Neandertal bones were used for this purpose - that’s something we had seen at very few sites, and nowhere as frequently as in Goyet," Bocherens added,
Neanderthals are a species of human which died out some 30,000 years. Although no-one can fully explain the reason for the cavemen's demise, it has been suggested they were wiped out by homo sapiens, our own species, or destroyed by climate change.
Modern humans arrived in Europe at about the same time that Neanderthals were eating each other and using the bones as tools, making it likely that humans just like us suffered a similar fate if captured by their primitive forbears.
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The extent of Neanderthal cannibalism is not clear, because previous research has shown the cavemen buried their dead just like modern humans.
One body was found festooned with flowers, although it was later claimed a burrowing mouse had left them there rather than a grieving Neanderthal.
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