Bronze age Britons were ‘cannibals who ate their enemies’
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Bronze Age Britons were cannibals who butchered and ate their enemies, new research shows. Analysis of bones found at an archeological site in Somerset suggests that at least 37 people were killed and consumed by the ancient cannibals before their remains were tossed into a pit 50-feet deep.
Archaeologists studied more than 3,000 human bones and bone fragments found at Charterhouse Warren, the largest-scale example of interpersonal violence from British pre-history which dates back around 4,000 years. They say the treatment of the remains was likely meant to dehumanise their victims, possibly as revenge for a perceived offence, and challenges the notion that Early Bronze Age Britain was a relatively peaceful place.
There have been hundreds of human skeletons found in Britain dating between 2500BC and 1500BC, but direct evidence of violent conflict is rare. Study lead author Professor Rick Schulting, from the University of Oxford, said: ‘We actually find more evidence for injuries to skeletons dating to the Neolithic period in Britain than the Early Bronze Age, so Charterhouse Warren stands out as something very unusual.
‘It paints a considerably darker picture of the period than many would have expected.’. The scattered bones of the 37 victims were first discovered in a 15-metre deep shaft at Charterhouse Warren in Somerset in the 1970s. They were a mix of men, women, and children, which suggested they were all members of a community, but unlike most contemporary burials their skulls displayed evidence of violent death from blunt force trauma.
