True Left

Cannibalism is seen in many cultures around the world, including in prehistoric Europe (eg the Upper Paleolithic / Mesolithic Magdalenian site of Gough's Cave in Cheddar Gorge). But the Neolithic is a time of settled farmers and herders. Were these people really cannibals?

In this video we're looking at three sites: Herxheim, Germany; El Toro Cave in Malaga, Spain; and Fontbrégoua Cave in Provence, France.

Were these prehistoric Europeans desperate people facing starvation? Were they honouring their own people in complex mortuary rites? Or were they feasting on their enemies?

And were they even practicing cannibalism at all?

European farmers reached the southern edge of the North European Plain, not far south of the Baltic coast, before 5000 BC but didn't reach northern Germany and southern Scandinavia until 1000 years later. So for a thousand years there was some interaction with groups of the Late Mesolithic Ertebølle Culture - a hunter gatherer people in this region during the 5th millennium BC which is shown by traded stone axes and other artefacts.

Once it was thought that these northern hunter gathers gradually adopted farming over that thousand years but thanks to DNA analysis we know that's not the case.