Savage past: Ancient Britons ate each other, made cups from skulls
London: Ancient Britons indulged in cannibalism — in fact, they not only ate each other but also made cups and bowls from the skulls of their victims, a discovery has suggested. A team led by the Natural History Museum has made the gruesome discovery of the remains of three humans in Cheddar Gorge. The remains, including that of a child, appear to have been killed for food, their bodies butchered and eaten.
The bones showed precision cuts to extract the maximum meat and the skulls had been carved into cups and bowls for drinking, say palaeontologists. The fragments, 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, 'The Daily Telegraph' newspaper reported. 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 result of premeditated cannibalism, says team.
"At the time life was very tough. Cannibalism would have been a good way of removing groups competing with you and getting food for yourself. There was also a feeling that if you ate your enemy you gained some of his power," said Prof Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum.
At the time Britain was just emerging from the Ice Age and the cavemen — believed to be Cro Magnons originally from France — would have come to Britain from the Netherlands in summer, probably following animal herds migrating across land that is now the North Sea. Just a few hundred strong, the hunter gatherers would have mainly lived off reindeer and horses but when times got tough it is believed they would have fought and eaten competing groups.
Prof Stringer said they were not savages and knew exactly what they were doing. "What is more sinister is that these were quite sophisticated hunter gatherers — very like us," he said. "They could make tools and painted cave art. They also had quite complex burials for the people they were not eating, treating the dead with reverence." he added. PTI
FIGHT FOR FOOD: At the time, Britain was just emerging from the Ice Age, and cannibalism would have been a good way of removing groups competing for food, say experts
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