Overview
- Researchers report at least six cannibalised individuals at Goyet—four adult or adolescent females and two male children—based on genetics, isotopes and morphology.
- Bone surfaces show cut marks, notches and percussion damage consistent with butchery and marrow extraction, with some fragments used to retouch stone tools.
- The victims were non-local to the area, and the demographic pattern points to deliberate selection interpreted as exocannibalism linked to inter-group conflict.
- The team judges Neanderthals as the most parsimonious perpetrators, though early Homo sapiens involvement cannot be completely ruled out.
- The findings, published in Scientific Reports, refine earlier Goyet evidence of cannibalism and place the events around 45,000 years ago in the late Middle Paleolithic.