Neolithic Cannibalism

Seven thousand years ago in the village of Herxheim, in the German Rhineland, the people were cannibals. Study of the human bones from the site reveals all the telltale marks of butchery -- cut marks from flensing knives, separation of the ribs from the vertebrae, crushing of long bones to extract marrow. And while it is not rare to find a few such bones from an archaeological site, at Herxheim nearly 500 skeletons were treated this way. Since only half of the site was excavated, the Herxheimers may have eaten a thousand people in the fifty years or so that their village existed. And this was a small settlement, no more than 12 houses. From the Guardian:

Two lines of ditches were dug around the settlement. They can't have been defensive because they weren't continuous. Nor were they intended for use as an ossuary, as the Linear Pottery people generally buried or burned their dead. However, during a rescue dig just before the area was developed as an industrial estate, in some of the ditches archaeologists uncovered tens of thousands of ­human bones.

During the first series of excavations, at the end of the 1990s, the numerous injuries visible on the skeletons were taken as evidence that the victims had been massacred. But in 2008 Bruno Boulestin, an anthropologist at Bordeaux University, examined the fragments recovered from one of the trenches, pointing out that nearly 2,000 samples belonged to fewer than 10 individuals.

"It is impossible to establish direct proof of cannibalism. But here we have systematic, repetitive gestures, which suggest that the bodies were eaten," says Boulestin. The marks of breaking, cutting, scraping and crushing indicate that the bodies were dismembered, the tendons and ligaments severed, the flesh torn off, the bones smashed. The vertebra were cut up to remove the ribs, just as butchers do today with loin chops. The tops of skulls were opened to extract the brains. Another telling clue is that there are proportionately fewer bones containing marrow, particularly vertebrae and short bones, suggesting they were set aside.

A quick investigation of the bones in neighbouring ditches showed that they had suffered the same fate. Extrapolating to the whole site, only half of which was excavated, about 1,000 people must have been butchered. There is no other example in prehistory of a mass grave of this size. "We are dealing with an exceptional event," says Zeeb-Lanz. . . .

Given the difficulty of explaining how such a small community ate so many people, the excavators have suggested that Herxheim served as a ritual center for the surrounding area. People from miles around brought their war captives to the site to eat them. One can imagine how this came about: in a time of crisis, perhaps a war coupled with a food shortage, a charismatic shaman emerged at Herxheim, offerning a solution. The prophet instituted grand rituals, probably pieced together from a mix of old local traditions and borrowings from others, with perhaps an innovation or two. At the height of the ceremony, amidst wild dancing, whirling torches, and crashing music, the captives were sacrificed to their gods. The participants then shared a ritual meal of human flesh. Or perhaps, as with some Indian tribes, there were special people surrounded by taboos -- eaters of the dead -- who ate the flesh for the community.