Anthropology

Mar 27, 2019, 11:11am

Kristina Killgrove
Senior Contributor

Science
Archaeologist, Writer, Scientist

Deep within a Spanish cave, archaeologists have found the remains of seven ancient people whose bodies appear to have been skinned, carved, and boiled in what may have been an extensive funerary practice involving cannibalism.

The skeletons discovered in Cueva de El Toro in Málaga, Spain, date to the Early Neolithic period, or around 5300 to 4800 BC. They represent at least four adults and three kids, whose bones present clear evidence of cutting, scraping, chopping, and smashing soon after their deaths.

Writing in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, archaeologist Jonathan Santana of Durham University and his colleagues at the Universidad de Cantabria and the Universidad de La Laguna detail their discovery of a skull cup among these human remains.

“Skull cups are post-mortem processed heads that display signs of defleshing, breakage by percussion, and careful retouching of the broken borders,” the researchers explain. Specifically, one of the human skulls from Cueva de El Toro was modified into a cup “by careful paring away of skin, fragmentation of the facial skeleton and base of the skull, and controlled percussion of the edges of the calotte to achieve a regular shape.” That is, the head was first skinned, then carved.

More:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinakillgrove/2019/03/27/skinned-carved-and-boiled-skull-cup-reveals-cannibalism-in-neolithic-spain/#d5890264567d