The Cannibal Cults of Neolithic Europe

this video is sponsored by blinkist christmas day 1846 a small group of desperate pioneers are stuck in winter snow in the sierra nevada mountains seventeen had set out from the rest of the stranded donna party attempting to cross the paths in their snowshoes during a break in the weather but the blizzards returned and now they are huddled beneath their blankets and they are starting to die one by one the exhausted starving companions are faced with a terrible choice and the day after christmas averting their faces from one another and weeping they resort to cannibalism [Music] we're all familiar with the idea of starving people being forced into these kinds of terrible acts but there are other kinds of cannibalism practiced by peoples around the world not as acts of desperation but as part of their culture in 1910 a young man of the foray people of papua new guinea caught an infection while out hunting and later died in his village in the eastern highlands his people mourned him for three days and then the women of his community cut his body into pieces every part of him was processed and eventually consumed by the women of the community over the following days and weeks from his brains to his bones these funerary processes were necessary for the deceased person's soul to reach the land of the dead whilst protecting their society from impurities this is a form of what they call endo-cannibalism which means consuming people from within your own community and there's another kind too called exocannibalism in 1848 reverend richard lythe wrote of being taken to the home of a famous but thankfully deceased cannibal chief called udrae udrae on the northern coast of fiji quote revatu a son of the above prince of cannibals took me out of the town about a mile to show me the stones by which his father memorialized the number of human beings that he ate from time to time i was brought to a long line of stones placed close together in a row they lay a few paces from the path and alongside it there were 872 of them ravatu assured me that his father ate all this number of human beings he added a stone to the row for each one he received they were victims killed in war he ate them all himself he gave to none and he ate but little else very little vegetable and being an enormous eater he was able to get through a great deal this account i had from ravatu end quote now udrae udrae is remembered today by the locals because they say he ate a thousand people and that was certainly not normal however the fiji isles were once known as the cannibal isles because various peoples of the region did undertake at least occasional exo cannibalism these warrior peoples sometimes ate their enemies and it wasn't just fiji of course far from it in many societies around the world victorious warriors consumed parts of the enemies they had defeated as a ritual humiliation or to dehumanize them or to take on a portion of the enemy's power into themselves or for other reasons much of what we know about these forms of cannibalism comes from historical accounts and ethnographic studies there have been archaeological investigations too when used alongside historical and anthropological research analysis of human remains can deepen our understanding of these practices but when we're looking at human remains from pre-history it's not so easy in this video we're going to look at the evidence for cannibalism from neolithic europe were these prehistoric europeans desperate people facing starvation were they honoring their own people in complex mortuary rights or were they feasting on their enemies and were they even practicing cannibalism at all before we talk about prehistoric european cannibalism though i want to tell you about this video's sponsor i have stacks of books on my reading list i just don't have time to get to you're probably the same as me you don't have the time to read as many books as you'd like to and luckily our sponsor blinkist can help blinkist is 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free trial in addition the first 100 people will get unlimited access for one week to try it out and you'll also get 25 off if you want the full membership thank you to blinkist for sponsoring the video now let's go back in time 7 000 years to neolithic europe the sun is low in the sky as you drag your canoe up onto the riverbank beside you your brother does the same with his before sighing and stretching his back you have paddled upstream for three days but now you are here the path flies ahead of you but you hesitate to go on beyond the trees you see the smoke from the sacred fires rising into the blood red sunset you are startled as a grey shape bursts noisily from the nearby reeds and flies overhead chuffing angrily into the dusk the heron is a powerful sign and you know now it was right to come here after all from your canoe you lift the leather bag containing the decomposing head and limbs of your father and you hang it over your shoulder looking across at your brother you nod and take a deep breath together you head on into the land of the dead the archaeological site at herxheim in the rhine valley in germany near the french border was in use between about 5300 and 4950 bc this is the early neolithic in europe and this place was part of the linear pottery culture this site covered a large area about 6 hectares or 15 acres and it was a settlement but a highly unusual one in normal neolithic settlements at this time people were buried or cremated in small family cemeteries nearby or perhaps beneath the houses herxheim is not a normal neolithic settlement the enclosure looks from their diagrams to be formed by two parallel ditches but that's not what this boundary is it's actually made up of many overlapping oblong pits of varying length form and depth the deepest went down 4 meters or 13 feet beneath the neolithic ground level and these pits were dug over several centuries according to a predetermined layout new pits would intersect others which were already partially filled so that if you were standing here 7 000 years ago you would never have seen the internal area completely surrounded by continuous open ditches rather there were parallel chains of pits and their contents in various degrees of openness unfortunately erosion has destroyed most of the interior so we don't know exactly who was living here or what was going on but there's enough evidence to show there was occupation the linear pottery culture is famous for building longhouses but it's the contents of these encircling oblong pits that make this site so important because the pits were filled with the remains of over a thousand people also animal bones pottery stone and bone tools and occasionally decorative artifacts most bones are broken into pieces and each of the pits might have had up to 2 000 bits of bone and sometimes they're arranged in clusters that the researchers call nests there are a great many skulls too but most are just the very top part of the skull at the point of death or soon after the skulls were processed the soft tissue and the lower parts of the head were removed or the top was formed into shallow bowl shapes they call them callots or skull caps so what was going on here well before we dive into that let's take a minute to think about how cannibalism might be detected archaeologically this isn't an exhaustive list but previous studies looking into this have used signs such as the following to evidence prehistoric cannibalism chop marks from striking the bone with a sharp stone tool leaving a v-shaped scar which comes from cutting strong muscle attachments and from dismembering long bone breakage to get at the bone marrow within comparable butchering techniques in the human and animal remains so the incidence position and type of cut and chop marks on the human and animal bones should be directly comparable bearing in mind anatomical differences post-processing discard are the human and animal bones discarded in the same way evidence of cooking in the form of burnt boiled or heated bone and tooth marks from people gnawing on the bones now this would be a big giveaway wouldn't it but actually proving they're human rather than other medium-sized animals is extremely difficult and some might say impossible so is there any evidence of this at herxheim well there's quite a bit of research on these remains but there's just as much disagreement one paper analyzing remains from a single pit argues for widespread cannibalism and this paper got an awful lot of press attention it says the cut marks on some of the human bones are like those on the animal bones it also says long bones were broken to get at the marrow and it says there are marks that could be human teeth although they admit it's hard to say but another paper that analyzed thousands more bones from across the whole site is convinced that that isn't the case at all they say their analysis shows remains here were skinned and de-fleshed but there were none of those cannibalism signs in the 60 000 bone fragments they looked at one thing most agree on though is that there's no sign that this was a starving population you can sometimes detect periods of starvation laid down in bone growth but there's no more of that here than you'd expect from any pre-modern community but clearly there was complex ritual processing of the dead here bones were smashed into pieces before being carefully deposited and this happened many times over an extended period as these pits were dug and filled who were all these people though well one important and fascinating thing about this place is that pottery and flint tool types from miles away are found in these deposits of course objects can be traded long distances without individuals moving with them but isotope analysis of the human remains here suggests that some of these people were from far away too it's likely then that this was such an important ritual center that people came from up to 500 kilometers away to use the site when i say they used the site i mean their bones were smashed up and interred here of course but how and why did that happen perhaps people crushed up their family members at home and brought the pieces to be deposited along with broken pots tools and other objects or maybe they brought whole bones and destroyed them here at the site before digging a new pit and putting them inside because the bones seemed to have been fresh when they were broken up perhaps people were alive when they arrived was this a center of healing or somewhere sick people came to die or were they killed here in a ritual sacrifice some researchers argue that this was a period of cultural decline and increased conflict even a time of warfare perhaps this was a place where prisoners from enemy tribes were brought to be killed and maybe ritually consumed before their remains were smashed into pieces and disposed of frustratingly it's difficult to conclude anything for sure but even if they were removing flesh from bones here on the site which they were how can we know if they were consuming it once they'd removed it well we can't but the fact they made so many of these skull caps here is interesting though isn't it especially when you consider the evidence from this nearly contemporary site of about 5000 bc from a different neolithic european culture in malaga southern spain a thousand miles away the neolithic cultures of the mediterranean come from a different lineage to those in central europe although both can be traced back about 1500 years earlier to a point of divergence around the aegean and yet at el toro cave in malaga a skull cap was made that is a bit similar to those in herxheim and the remains of at least seven other individuals were processed here in this cave shortly after their death and they show features some researchers say are compatible with cannibalism this skull then was de-fleshed broken into shape and carved around the edges into this bowl shape it was also boiled we know this because when bones are bubbling around inside a boiling ceramic pot they get smoothed and polished through rubbing against the rough sides so it's clear the bones were processed but what evidence do they have that these remains were eaten well for one thing some of the long bones seemed to have been split to extract the nutritious marrow from inside they also found some bones with tooth marks however once again it's difficult to say for sure that these marks were caused by human teeth and the human bones were mixed with domestic residues suggesting the human and animal remains were treated in similar ways interestingly they found pieces that came off during the carving of the skull into its final shape which suggests that all this processing activity happened right here where they lived right where they slept and cooked and ate but again it's circumstantial and the researchers point out there may not have been a sharp delineation between daily life and ritual activity for these people processing the bodies here might have been a sign of respect rather than disregard and no whole bodies were found here just pieces of them some bones were discarded with the refuse in a corner but other parts of the body were removed elsewhere for respectful internment at a special place or to be consumed or thrown all the way out because they didn't want them inside we just don't know researchers also performed as much genetic analysis as they could on the remains two bone samples show a first degree relationship maybe mother and daughter so if there was cannibalism here it would seem to be a case of endocannibalism right well no it just shows that at least two of the dead people were related we don't know if this cave was their home before they died and they could not establish any genetic relationship between the skull cap and the other individuals at least up to the second degree perhaps that's just the limitations of the analyses performed or perhaps the skull was of an outsider in fact ethnographic studies show that most skull caps around the world are linked with aggressive cannibalism against enemies and only a few examples were for funerary practices and there are almost no people around the world who practice both endo cannibalism and exocannabilism which makes sense one practice is about honor and respect and the other is about contempt and degradation so the skull cap at el toro cave might be a trophy head that belonged to an enemy or it might be a relic of a special member of this community el toro is the most well evidenced example but actually these skull caps are found in three more caves in southern spain and at one more in northern spain where researchers have again argued for ritual consumption of human remains due to evidence of boiling cut marks and bone cracking so it seems likely that in early neolithic iberia some people carried out complex processing of the dead within the areas occupied by the living perhaps involving rights with freshly made skull caps whether it included cannibalism though is hard to say but there's another site in provence in south eastern france where some archaeologists say the evidence for neolithic cannibalism is far stronger than anywhere else and this was another cave site they believe it was repeatedly used as a temporary residential camp for hunters and shepherds there's domesticated and wild animal remains and carbonized domestic wheat and barley and the evidence suggests it was in use between about 5000 to 4000 bc the early to middle neolithic the site revealed two clusters of human remains adults and children one group of six individuals and another of seven these were found in association with the other remains and artifacts the bones here show very similar methods of processing and disposal for the human and animal remains evidence for the fracturing of long bones to get at the marrow for both human and animal remains is apparently very clear there was no sign of burial or really any respect shown at all to the human remains each cluster of human bones was produced in a single event as if on two separate occasions a family group was butchered and discarded for example one group was three adults and four children and they believed there were many more clusters from other events that were disturbed by later activity so cannibalism is better evidenced here than anywhere else in the neolithic and surely this is a case of exo-cannibalism perhaps it was for survival for nutrition in desperate times this kind of exocannibalism isn't something uncovered elsewhere in the archaeological record for the european neolithic so we don't know how widespread this was was this a part of their culture here in early neolithic provence or was it an aberration perhaps there was a community of outlaws or maniacs living around here preying on all the normal communities and marching their poor victims back here to the cave maybe i'm wrong about this but it makes me think of that cannibal chief on fiji who for some reason took an existing cultural practice to the extreme do you know anybody who keeps the ashes of a deceased loved one in their house you know like an urn on the mantelpiece apparently you can have items of jewelry with ashes incorporated in them is that something that you would do what about drinking from your great grandfather's skull every year on his birthday as a way of honoring him i wonder how easy it is for modern western people to relate to the mortuary rights of our neolithic ancestors because after the neolithic period ended there were a range of burial practices in europe but people were most often buried or cremated and that was usually the last that people would interact with the physical remains of their loved ones that's what we've been used to for thousands of years our neolithic ancestors on the other hand often continued to process remains through secondary burials and de-fleshing and other activity some neolithic peoples invested enormous effort in building a range of tomb types that were involved in these activities remains were deposited and redeposited in these tombs and reprocessed in some cases many times and for many years by generations of their descendants given the limitations of archaeology it's extremely difficult to say anything conclusive but considering the pattern of complex neolithic mortuary practices it would hardly be surprising would it if some of these people sometimes had rights that also included cannibalism thank you to my patrons for supporting the channel please hit like and also subscribe so you don't miss new videos and in the meantime be sure to watch this video on neolithic britain it's really great you'll love it thank you for watching you

Channel: Dan Davis History

Views: 163,307

Keywords: cannibalism, cannibals, neolithic europe, ancient history documentary, herxheim, prehistoric history documentary, history of europe, cannibals of Neolithic europe, cannibals of new guinea, donner party, fore people, fiji isles, cannibal isles, ancient history, history documentary, prehistoric europeans, prehistoric cultures, stone age

Id: -NFri78q4b8

Length: 22min 15sec (1335 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 14 2021