“There’s no doubt it’s a case of cannibalism.” Combined with evidence from other sites, the find shows cannibalism may have been a widespread practice among these early Europeans.

A handful of Magdalenian sites far to the west have also yielded hints of cannibalism. But what explains the practice?

Ethnographers have recorded more recent societies where family members consume their relatives after death to absorb their wisdom or spare them from decomposing in the ground. So-called “funerary cannibalism” wasn’t necessarily “a symbol of violence.”