Footnote 4 – When We Arrived

The theory that Neandertals were occasional cannibals first appeared in the mid-19th century. It was given some impetus by the 1899-1906 excavations at Krapina, in Croatia, where broken and burned human bones were found with animal remains. More recently, the excavator of a damaged Neandertal skull found in Guattari Cave, south of Rome, suggested that the brain had been extracted and eaten in a religious ceremony. There remains much disagreement about these interpretations of the evidence.