A Meal Among Men
Deep inside the Gran Dolina cave in northern Spain, a layer of earth known as TD6 holds a dark record of prehistoric life. Here, archaeologists have unearthed over 170 human fossil fragments from approximately 800,000 years ago. These are the remains of Homo antecessor, one of the earliest known human species in Europe. The fossils belong to at least 11 individuals, most of whom were children or adolescents.
The bones tell a grim story. They are covered in cut marks, percussion fractures, and peeling marks identical to those found on the butchered remains of deer, bison, and other animals in the same sediment layer. This indicates the hominins were systematically defleshed, dismembered, and their bones cracked open to extract the marrow. The skulls were also broken to access the brain. The evidence points not to ritual sacrifice or starvation-induced cannibalism, but to "gastronomic cannibalism"—Homo antecessor was a regular part of the local diet, treated just like any other prey animal. The remains were found mixed randomly with animal bones, suggesting they were discarded as food waste.
Meet the Pioneer Man
The species identified at Gran Dolina, Homo antecessor, was formally named in 1997. Its name means "Pioneer Man" in Latin, for its status as one of the first hominins to inhabit Western Europe. The species has a mix of features, some primitive and others surprisingly modern. Its brain capacity was over 1,000 cubic centimeters, within the lower range of modern humans. The face of Homo antecessor, reconstructed from a 10-year-old individual, is unexpectedly flat and similar to our own, different from the faces of archaic humans like Neanderthals.
The cannibals and their victims used a simple stone tool technology known as Mode 1, or Oldowan. These toolkits consisted of basic pebble tools and sharp flakes, effective enough for butchering both animals and fellow hominins. The discovery of Homo antecessor has led to a proposal that it could be the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. The environment they inhabited was not a harsh, icy temperate woodland, full of resources, which makes the evidence for routine cannibalism even more confounding.