Cannibalism at Gran Dolina
Human bones butchered exactly like the deer beside them, 800,000 years ago.
- When
- Known to
- ± 50 thousand years
- Era
- Early Pleistocene, Quaternary
The Gran Dolina assemblage includes the remains of at least eleven individuals, mostly children and adolescents, bearing cut marks, percussion fractures for marrow, and peeling — processed in the same way, with the same tools, and discarded in the same deposit as butchered red deer and bison. There is no sign of ritual treatment. The excavators interpret it as nutritional cannibalism, possibly directed at members of rival groups. It is the oldest well-documented case in the human record.