Neanderthals targeted women and children for cannibalism

About 45,000 years ago, in a cave system in what is now Belgium, a group of Neanderthal women and children were killed and eaten. A new analysis of their bones shows that specific outsiders were cannibalized, rather than members of the local group.

The study points to violence between Neanderthal groups in the final millennia before they vanished from this part of Europe. It suggests that social boundaries and competition for territory could have turned some Neanderthals into targeted prey.

Neanderthal cannibalism setting

The Goyet cave complex sits in present day Belgium. It is a site where late Neanderthals shared a cold continent with expanding populations of our own species.

They lived during the Pleistocene, a long period of repeated Ice Age climates, when glaciers advanced and retreated again and again.

The new research was led by Quentin Cosnefroy, a paleoanthropologist at the PACEA research unit at the University of Bordeaux. His work focuses on how femur and pelvis structure reflect movement patterns in humans and other primates.

Around the same time, Homo sapiens were pushing into higher latitudes of Europe, as evidenced in excavations at Ilsenhöhle, Germany. 

Those excavations indicate that our species reached these steppes 45,000 years ago. They brought with them distinctive stone tools and hunted Ice Age animals.

Neanderthal groups in this corridor of northern Europe were already using different stone tool traditions and likely competing for the best hunting grounds.

In that crowded landscape, the surrounding groups could have regarded isolated outsiders as resources rather than neighbors.

Neanderthal cannibalism evidence

Archaeologists look for very specific signatures in old bones when they suspect cannibalism. Cut marks from stone tools, broken shafts that expose marrow, and human bones treated like animal carcasses all suggest people eating human bodies.

Evidence at the Moula Guercy cave in France shows that Neanderthals butchered their dead with the same care they used on deer and game. That work links the pattern there to episodes of nutritional stress rather than symbolic ritual.

Comparative work on many European sites distinguishes survival cannibalism, funerary use of bodies, and exocannibalism. This last category refers to cannibalism that is directed at outsiders rather than group members.

Exocannibalism often appears in contexts of warfare, raids, or strong hostility between neighboring communities.

At Goyet, nearly one third of the Neanderthal fragments carry cut marks, percussion scars, and clear signs of marrow extraction.

The same cave layers also hold butchered horse and reindeer remains, along with some broken human bones that were reused as tools.

Who the victims were

Cosnefroy and colleagues reexamined one hundred bone fragments from the cave. Using genetic and morphological criteria, they identified six individuals in the mix.

Their study shows that four of the Neanderthal cannibalism victims were adult or adolescent women, while two were a child and a newborn boy.

To reach those conclusions, the team extracted ancient DNA, genetic material preserved in old bones and teeth. This is how they confirmed the gender of the victims.

The DNA also showed that the adult women were not close relatives, and helped match fragments from one person.

Researchers also measured stable isotope ratios in collagen. Isotopes are versions of elements that differ in mass, and help to indicate where people lived and what they ate.

Those chemical fingerprints match each other but differ from other Neanderthals in the region, which suggests the victims formed a nonlocal group with shared lives.

Virtual models of leg bones reveal that the adult women were shorter and more lightly built than most other Neanderthals studied from Europe.

Their legs show no reinforcement that would suggest high mobility, meaning that they traveled within a home range.

Why they were targeted

Other prehistoric examples show that cannibalism can be tied directly to violent conflict between groups. At Gran Dolina, Spain, analysis of Homo antecessor fossils indicates repeated attacks where juveniles and adults were killed and eaten.

In Goyet, the victims were short, lightly built women and young individuals from one nonlocal group. That combination fits best with exocannibalism aimed at outsiders, not with desperate survival cannibalism inside a single band.

Genetic work at the El Sidrón site in Spain suggests Neanderthal groups followed patrilocal organization. This is characterised by males staying in an area while females disperse.

That study found that women carried more diverse mitochondrial lineages than men, showing that females often left their birth groups.

If women most often moved between bands, targeting captured females and their children would have been a brutal way to weaken a rival community.

In that light, choosing nonlocal women and young individuals at Goyet was likely not accidental. Instead, it suggests a more deliberate strike at a rival group’s future.

Why this matters

Findings like these complicate simple stories about Neanderthals, whom researchers have portrayed as either brutal thugs or peaceful cousins.

The Goyet case shows a society capable of strong group loyalty, harsh choices about outsiders, and violent tactics.

This project also shows the power of combining microscopic study of cut marks, chemical tracers in bone, and genetic data from the same skeletons.

Using these tools enables researchers to see who was present at a site, how people moved, what they ate, and how bodies were treated.

Lessons from Neanderthal cannibalism

Cannibalism is not rare in nature. And human history holds many cases where starvation, war, or belief systems led people to consume other people.

What stands out at Goyet is how deliberate the selection seems. Outsiders were removed from their communities and processed as if they were another species.

“Instead, the case of Goyet represents the most compelling evidence to date for inter-group competition among Late Pleistocene Neanderthal populations,” wrote Cosnefroy. 

Taken together, the evidence leads Cosnefroy to argue that the Goyet bones record intergroup violence among Neanderthals facing cultural change and new competitors.

The study is published in Scientific Reports.

Image: Fragments of Neanderthal bones from the Goyet cave. Specimens belonging to the same individual are shaded in the same colour. Credit: Q. Cosnefroy et al.

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