Prehistoric "Happy Meal"

(Atapuerca, Spain) Prehistoric sites indicate that pre-Neanderthal cave-dwellers ate children.

THE remains of the 'first Europeans' discovered at an archaeological site in northern Spain have revealed that these prehistoric men were cannibals who particularly liked the flesh of children.

'We know that they practiced cannibalism,' said Jose Maria Bermudez de Castro, one of the co-directors of the Atapuerca project, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

A study of the remains revealed that they turned to cannibalism to feed themselves and not as part of a ritual, that they ate their rivals after killing them, mostly children and adolescents.

The remains discovered in the caves 'appeared scattered, broken, fragmented, mixed with other animals such as horses, deer, rhinoceroses, all kinds of animals caught in hunting' and eaten by humans, he said.

Those remains probably correspond to the first humans who reached Europe, known as Homo antecessor, after the Latin word for pioneer or explorer.

Bon appetit!