Climate change has forced Neanderthals to cannibalism

French scientists have come to such conclusions after thoroughly exploring the Moula-Guercy cave - one of the few places that still holds information on the Eemian Interglacial.

It was an interglacial preceding the last glaciation in Europe. This is also the period in which the climate warmed up very quickly. Researchers say the change was very violent - Earth warmed up from the temperatures from the glacial period to a climate very similar to today's in a few human generations. It was a very difficult time for our ancestors.

Cannibalism was a must for Neanderthals

But let's go back to what the French scientists found in Moula-Guercy, or the remains of 6 Neanderthals, on the skeletons of which they observed the same incisions as on the bones of other mammals uncovered in the same cave. Alban R. Defleur and Emmanuel Desclaux believe that the presence of these traces indicates that the Neanderthal bodies were slaughtered. In a word: some stronger group killed them and ate them. The French decided to find out the reasons for doing so.

To this end, they began to look at the next archaeological layers of the cave, which - if anyone knows how to read them - are quite a large collection of information about the era in which they arose. In this case, we are talking about the period between two glaciations, in which the climate warmed up very quickly, which obviously had a huge impact on the earth's flora and fauna. You see, our Neanderthal ancestors were more used to the steppe landscape, where you could come across a larger animal that could be hunted down and eaten.

Nothing of this landscape has begun to change at an alarmingly rapid pace by which the place of reindeer and hairy mammoths has been occupied by smaller rodents, turtles and snakes that migrated to the present-day France from the Mediterranean. It's hard to eat a rat ...

" Because the animals that lived in this climate have disappeared, some Neanderthals ate what they could find, including their neighbors," says Desclaux .

The authors of the latest study emphasize that the cannibalism of our ancestors was caused by the lack of other food. The proof of this theory is the enamel analysis in the teeth of Neandertals. Long cracks discovered on it, according to Desclaux and Moula-Guercy, suggest long periods of malnutrition in their owners.

This means more or less that the rapidly progressing climate change has led many Neanderthal tribes to the brink of desperation. Unable to secure another source of food, they were forced to kill and eat their brothers and sisters. At least in some cases. The French duo of scientists does not exclude that the cannibalism of our ancestors could also have a ritual character.

We can not do anything like that, of course

This is not a text in which I try to prove that the rapid warming of the climate will bring back the dark times in which we will eat each other. Our species is safe, because we have long finished the chapter in which hunting and gathering were the main ways to get food. Today, thanks to the development of science, we have farms controlled by artificial intelligence and quite well-developed methods of animal husbandry.

The projected increase in average temperatures on our planet will of course cause food production costs to rise, and some regions will suffer long-term drought and limited access to drinking water. In addition, there are climate migrations and a few other details, but cannibalism will not happen. If anything, we will sooner decide to give up eating meat, which for some will probably be equally drastic.

For now, however, we are not in a hurry to introduce any changes that would stop the ongoing climate warming, so the above scenarios are for the time being scientists.

Climate change has forced Neanderthals to cannibalism