Man, we keep trying to help the hapless Neanderthals with their image problem. We post articles on how scientists have made discoveries proving they were smarter and more cultured than previously believed, how they likely entertained spiritual beliefs and possibly practiced religion, how our own Homo sapiens forebears had sex with and reproduced with—and quite possibly lived with—Neanderthals. But the Neanderthal just won’t cooperate. All the good press we give him is undone by one report like this one. He becomes the hirsute boogeyman of communal nightmare once again.
Neanderthal bones dating back 40,000 years and discovered in a cave in Belgium show clear evidence of their owners having been butchered. These bones were cracked open to extract the marrow. The bones were then used as crude tools. In other words, they belonged to Neanderthals who were eaten—and, if the bones bore no evidence of scorch marks, eaten RAW—and then put to use. There have been archaeological finds of comparable age in the same general area, however, showing no evidence of cannibalism, so it seems a logical conclusion that some Neanderthals were cannibals and some were not. The bigger questions, then, are how common the practice was, and why did they do it? Were they desperate? Were the dead eaten as part of some ritual? Or were the Neanderthals just hungry and possessed no taboo against munching on their own kind? The biggest question of all, for me, is, did the Neanderthals simply make use of their dead by eating them, or were the cannibalized killed specifically for that purpose?
