The consumed Neanderthals were not from the local tribe and the presence of bones from numerous other animals means they were likely to have been brought into the community just for food, like any other animal, rather than as part of some elaborate ritual.
The bones show fresh fracturing and percussion, demonstrating intentional treatment of the bodies. The individuals (GNx, for “Goyet Neandertal” x), numbering six at minimum, were identified by genetic analyses: XX indicates female gender, and XY male gender. Credit: Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences /Scientific Reports
Like natives in America before Europeans arrived, Neanderthals were mass murdering each other long before Homo Sapiens pushed them to the biological background. DNA, carbon dating, and isotopics show we can exit the world of archaeological and anthropological speculation and enter that of science. That is how we definitely know Europeans did the same thing. In the winter of 1609-10, the immigrants had been under constant siege by the 'give us your weapons or else' Powhatan tribe, who went from defecating in their water to outright war to starve them out.
What happened then was gory enough to have been included in my Halloween Science 2.0 book but because it was instead early American settlers, it didn't survive editing and can be in Thanksgiving Science 2.0 next year.
Some of their plight was due to bad luck, some was bad planning. Of the 104 settlers who had arrived in 1607, nowhere near enough were experienced farmers, and even without the Chinese causing climate change back then, the climate was changing. They arrived during a period of drought that continued for years. If, like Plymouth Rock, some were into the socialism cause because farming was and is hard work, that aggravated the problem. Hostile natives, a supply ship wrecked in a storm, plus drought led to their number being halved during the "Starving Time" George Percy referenced when discussing eating dead corpses outt of graves in 1625.
It took nearly 200 years for science to validate that the Percy letter was true. They found evidence that a 14-year-old girl had died and was dismembered, right down to her skull for brains and tongue.
Neanderthals likely did much less rationalizing. Women and children were eaten for the same reason we eat veal; old muscular males taste a lot worse.
Don't try any of this for your paleolithic diet, though. No matter what some social media influencer claims are healthy traditional ways.
Citation: Cosnefroy, Q., Crevecoeur, I., Semal, P. et al. Highly selective cannibalism in the Late Pleistocene of Northern Europe reveals Neandertals were targeted prey. Sci Rep 15, 40741 (2025). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-24460-3
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