Overview
- An international team reanalyzed remains from Belgium’s Goyet cave, identifying at least six Neanderthals with extensive cut marks and fresh fractures consistent with butchery.
- The victims comprise four small-bodied adult or young females and two children, including a newborn, with at least one child bearing clear cut marks.
- Genetic data, bone morphology and isotopic signatures indicate the individuals were not local to the cave’s resident population, and statistical modeling argues against a random assemblage.
- The authors interpret the pattern as intergroup violence and exocannibalism, with proposed drivers such as undermining a rival group’s reproductive potential or starvation, though intent remains unresolved.
- The events are dated to roughly 45,500–40,500 years ago, and the team attributes the killings to other Neanderthals given the lack of contemporaneous Homo sapiens evidence at the site.