Caves prove Neanderthals were cannibals
Studies show that these cavemen were sophisticated
GOYET, Belgium, Dec 30, (AFP): Deep in the caves of Goyet in Belgium researchers have found the grisly evidence that the Neanderthals did not just feast on horses or reindeer, but also on each other.
Human bones from a newborn, a child and four adults or teenagers who lived around 40,000 years ago show clear signs of cutting and of fractures to extract the marrow within, they say.
“It is irrefutable, cannibalism was practised here,” says Belgian archaeologist Christian Casseyas as he looks inside a cave halfway up a valley in this site in the Ardennes forest.
The bones in Goyet date from when Neanderthals were nearing the end of their time on earth before being replaced by Homo sapiens, with whom they also interbred.
Extinction
Once regarded as primitive cavemen driven to extinction by smarter modern humans, studies have found that Neanderthals were actually sophisticated beings who took care of the bodies of the deceased and held burial rituals.
But there is a growing body of proof that they also ate their dead.
Cases of Neanderthal cannibalism have been found until now only in Neanderthal populations in southern Europe in Spain, at El Sidron and Zafarraya, and in France, at MoulaGuercy and Les Pradelles.
sage grouse. She said Zinke, who describes himself as “a Teddy Roosevelt Republican,” could emulate the conservationist Roosevelt by protecting the bird.
Sen Dean Heller, R-Nevada, called the options an “11th-hour attack on Nevada
The caves at Goyet have been occupied since the Paleolithic era. The 250-metre- (820-feet-) long galleries were dug into the limestone by the Samson, a small stream that still flows a few metres below.
They began to reveal their secrets in the middle of the 19th century thanks to one of the fathers of palaeontology, Edouard Dupont (18411911).
A geologist and director of the Royal Museum of Natural History of Belgium, he searched several caves, including that of Goyet in 1867, and collected an enormous quantity of bones and tools.
Just a few years after Charles Darwin first expounded his theory of evolution, Dupont published the results of his own research in his book “Man During the Stone Age”.
But his discoveries remained in the archives of the museum (now called the Brussels Institute of Natural Sciences) for more than a century.
That was until 2004, when the institute’s head of anthropology Patrick Semal discovered, hidden in amongst the drawers of what Dupont thought were human bones, a jaw tip that clearly belonged to a Neanderthal.
Scientists have since been painstakingly sorting through fragments that Dupont thought were animal bones to see if there are other traces of ancient man.
Now an international team led by Helene Rougier, an anthropologist
and the West.” He said he would try to overturn any mining restrictions.
Republicans have berated President Barack Obama for other last-minute environmental measures, including his designation Wednesday of two new national
The downtown skyline of Salt Lake City, Utah is shrouded in haze during an inversion. In the phenomenon, cold, stagnant air settles in the bowl-shaped mountain basins, trapping tailpipe and other emissions, creating a murky haze that
engulfs the metro area. (AP)
at California State University Northridge in the United States, has proved from the bones found at Goyet that the Neanderthals there were cannibals.
Cutting
The bones show traces of cutting, “to disarticulate and remove the flesh,” said Christian Casseyas, who also leads tours for the public at the caves.
The Neanderthals “broke these bones in the same way that they broke those of the reindeer and horses found at the entrance of the cave, certainly to extract the marrow”, he adds.
Rougier, whose work on the Belgian cave was published last July by Scientific Reports, a journal of the Nature group, told AFP that “indeed, we can conclude that some Neanderthals died and were eaten here”, which is a first in Northern Europe.
“Some of these bones have also been used to make tools to touch up the edges of flints to re-sharpen them,” says Rougier.
But the reasons for the cannibalism remain a mystery, as to the extent to which the Neanderthals ate their dead.
“Was it systematic? Was it only at certain particular moments?” she asks. “I don’t know how to interpret the reason behind this cannibalism. It can be purely food, but it can also be symbolic ... The reason remains open,” she says.
monuments, Bears Ears in Utah and Gold Butte in Nevada.
An estimated 200,000 to 500,000 sage grouse remain in 11 Western states, but their numbers are down significantly because they are losing habitat to development. The size of the sage grouse population is considered an indicator of the overall health of the vast Western sagebrush ecosystem and other species that depend on it.
The proposed mining restrictions are part of a broad plan to save the chicken-size bird without resorting to the Endangered Species Act, which could bring stricter limits on mining, drilling, agriculture and other activity.
But the plan is under attack from both sides, with critics saying it is either too restrictive or too lax. Environmental groups and energy companies have filed lawsuits seeking to overturn all or parts of the plan.
The options for mining restrictions are part of a draft environmental impact statement drawn up by the federal Bureau of Land Management, which is part of the Interior Department.
The land that could be affected by the proposals includes about 6,190 square miles in Idaho, 4,320 in Nevada, 2,880 in Oregon, 1,370 in Montana, 414 in Wyoming and 365 in Utah. (AP)