Ice age Britons ate each other and made cups from skulls
Scientists have discovered the remains of three humans – including a child-of-three – that appear to have been killed for food, their bodies butchered and then eaten.
The bones showed precision cuts to extract the maximum amount of meat and the skulls had been carved into cups and bowls for drinking and eating.
The fragments – which are 14,700 years old- are thought to be the oldest examples in the world of skull cups and the first evidence of ritual killing in Britain.
What is particularly horrific is that at the time, humans knew how to bury their dead and so were not savages meaning the remains are most likely the result of premeditated cannibalism.
"At the time life was very tough," said Professor Chris Stringer, a palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum, who helped excavate the skull cups....
Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)
The bones showed precision cuts to extract the maximum amount of meat and the skulls had been carved into cups and bowls for drinking and eating.
The fragments – which are 14,700 years old- are thought to be the oldest examples in the world of skull cups and the first evidence of ritual killing in Britain.
What is particularly horrific is that at the time, humans knew how to bury their dead and so were not savages meaning the remains are most likely the result of premeditated cannibalism.
"At the time life was very tough," said Professor Chris Stringer, a palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum, who helped excavate the skull cups....