Cueva del Toro Stone Age Cannibalism Find
A new study claims that Stone Age people around 7,000 years ago carried out cannibalistic practices and had a bloodthirsty lust for human flesh.
The study was carried out by an interdisciplinary team of archaeologists, anthropologists and palaeontologists headed by Dimas Martin Socas and Maria Dolores Camalich Massieu.
They found Neolithic evidence of human cannibalism in the ‘Cueva del Toro’ in the El Torcal de Antequera nature reserve in the southern Spanish province of Malaga.
According to reports, the two head scientists have been working at the Neolithic cave since 1977.
Unearthed skeletons show teeth fragments and bite marks in human rib bones as well as tools that were used to separate the flesh from the bone.
Reports also said that boffins found a skull that had been skinned and boiled.
The remains of seven Stone Age individuals were found: four adults, two adolescents and a child.
The 7,000-year-old bones are believed to be one of the oldest examples of human cannibalism found in Spain.
The results of the ‘Cueva del Toro’ study were published in the ‘American Journal of Physical Anthropology’.
The study also included the involvement of Dr Jonathan Santana-Cabrera from Durham University, Dr Francisco Javier Rodriguez Santos from the International Institute for Prehistoric Research of Cantabria, and Dr Rosa Fregel from the University of La Laguna.