Not only did the Neanderthals wage violent conflicts, they may also have practiced targeted cannibalism against women and children of competing groups. New analyzes of fossil bones from the Goyet cave in Belgium now provide evidence of this. Four Neanderthal women and two children were killed and eaten there between 41,000 and 45,000 years ago. The non-local origin of the dead and the physique of the killed women suggest that the local Neanderthals specifically selected these victims.
Although the Neanderthals were caring towards the members of their group, fossil finds also show a cruel side to these early humans, who died out around 40,000 years ago. Accordingly, some Neanderthals mutilated the corpses of the dead and there is also evidence of cannibalism. The most important evidence for this comes from the Goyet cave in Belgium. In it, paleoanthropologists have discovered 101 Neanderthal bone fragments, many of which bear traces of subsequent processing: Similar to the bones of slaughtered animals, the 41,000 to 45,000 year old bone pieces show traces of cuts, blows and deliberate removal of the bone marrow.
Four women and two children of foreign origin
“These traces of processing provide evidence of cannibalism for food,” explain Quentin Cosnefroy from the University of Bordeaux and his colleagues. Apparently these Neanderthals were killed, taken to the cave and boned and eaten there. However, it has so far remained unclear what motivated this act. “Neanderthal cannibalism could encompass a wide range of motives, from survival strategies to interspecific competition to a ritual context,” the researchers write. They therefore examined the bones from the Goyet Cave again in more detail to find out more about the victims and the possible reasons for their slaughter.
The anatomical and genetic analyzes revealed that the bone fragments came from at least four younger women, an adolescent boy and a toddler. Compared to other sites of Neanderthal corpses, this is a very one-sided, specific gender and age distribution, explain Cosnefroy and his team. “These results suggest that the Goyet dead represent a deliberate selection of individuals,” the paleoanthropologists write. Isotope analyzes also confirmed that the cannibalism victims did not come from the local environment, but were of foreign origin. This suggests exo-cannibalistic practices, according to the team. This refers to cannibalism in which only members of foreign groups are killed and eaten.
Targeted selection of victims
However, measurements of the bone fragments still revealed something unusual. Accordingly, the killed and cannibalized Neanderthal women were noticeably short and delicately built. “We can therefore speculate that Goyet’s Neanderthals were not victims of cannibalism just because of their origins, but that they were killed as part of a targeted hunt for graceful, short women and adolescents,” write Cosnefroy and his colleagues. In their opinion, this targeted selection cannot be explained by an emergency such as hunger. Because in the same layer of finds in the Goyet Cave there were also plenty of animal bones with traces of slaughter. Instead, paleoanthropologists suspect that competition and conflict between neighboring Neanderthal groups may have been the reason for exo-cannibalism. Accordingly, the women and children were kidnapped and killed in order to weaken this rival group.
It is also possible that the timing of this cannibalism event was not a coincidence. The killing of the Neanderthal women and children occurred at a time when the first groups of Homo sapiens – our ancestors – were already spreading across Europe. The presence of this competing human species may have put additional pressure on the remaining Neanderthal groups at the time. It may also have increased their conflicts with each other, as the team explains. “The Goyet cannibalism case represents the most convincing evidence to date of intergroup competition among Late Pleistocene Neanderthal populations,” the researchers write.
Source: CNRS, specialist article: Scientific Reports, doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-24460-3