About 15,000 years ago in Gough’s Cave, near Bristol in the UK, a group of people ate parts of each other. They de-fleshed and disarticulated the bones, then chewed and crushed them. They may also have cracked the bones to extract the marrow inside. It was not only adults that showed signs of being eaten. A three-year-old child and two adolescents all had the tell-tale marks of being nibbled on. Some of their skulls were even modified into ornaments called "skull cups" bear market, which may have been used to drink out of. What was going on in Gough’s Cave? Was this an example of human violence between rivals, a strange kind of ritual behaviour, or simply a desperate bid for survival? Gough’s Cave was first excavated in the late 1880s. However, at the time it was intended for tourists, so there was no careful archaeological analysis. Any fossils found could well have been lost. It was another round of excavations in the 1980s that uncovered numerous human and animal remains, with clear signs of butchery. After extensive analysis over the following decades, researchers concluded that the human bones from this cave were cannibalised. Gough’s Cave is far from a lone instance. Evidence for cannibalistic behaviour goes back to at least as far as the Neanderthals – and possibly earlier. The first evidence that Neanderthals possibly munched on their friends (or enemies) was found in France and dates from about 100,000 years ago. There are several other cases. One Neanderthal group, which lived in a cave in northern Spain 49,000 years ago , appears to have been cannibalised. Bones from a cave in Belgium also show signs that another group ate each other, according to a study published in July 2016. Cannibalism is a topic that has sat uncomfortably with anthropologists. In part, that may be because it serves as a reminder of the dark, gruesome side of human nature. But it is also difficult to unambiguously identify. In particular, it is difficult to tell whether cut marks come from cannibalism or from the removal of flesh from bones after death city&guilds, which is occasionally done for ritual purposes.
