NEANDERTHALS WERE PREDATORY CANNIBALS. Neanderthal cannibalism was relatively common, with Nobel-Prize-winning paleogeneticist, Svante Paabo saying that evidence of it is "typical of many, even most, sites where Neanderthal bones are found." But there has been disagreement about the cause of the cannibalism, with these two main theories: 1) It was ritualistic, or 2) It was predatory.
If done ritualistically, the cannibalism may have been for a wide variety of reasons - anything from wanting to honor your loved ones and keep them close to wanting to insult your enemies or extract their good attributes. But many researchers think most of the cannibalism was predatory with the El Sidron, Spain site, for instance, best explained by murderous cannibalism where humans were treated like prey. At El Sidron, thirteen individuals of one clan were eaten over a short stretch - probably by a marauding neighboring clan. Evidence such as cranial trauma indicates that violence was involved.
And now, Cosnefroy and others (2025) have documented that the cannibalism found at Goyet Cave in Belgium was also likely predatory in nature. There, 45,000 years ago, Neanderthals cannibalized six outsiders, deliberately targeting women and children. The treatment of the human remains was indistinguishable from butchery evidence found on other faunal bones. Many are calling this cannibalism the most compelling evidence for inter-group competition among Late Pleistocene Neanderthal populations.
Slimak et al. (2024) sequenced the genome of a roughly 50k-year-old Neanderthal ("Thorin") and found that he was part of a small group that had been genetically isolated from other, nearby Neanderthals for a staggering 50k years. Could it be that such insularity was prompted in part by one group's fear of cannibalism by another?
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