The ancestors of modern humans may have hunted down Neanderthals and used them as a food source.
The startling and violent hypothesis has been put forward by anthropologists Policarp Hortolŕ and Bienvenido Martínez-Navarro. Modern humans have already been attributed to the demise of 178 species of large prehistoric mammals, so could the Neanderthals have shared the same fate ? Both species certainly competed for food and resources so could humans have really hunted and eaten their Neanderthal cousins ?
"The only manner to test it is to find direct evidences of modern human eating marks on Neanderthal remains, such cut or broken marks on bones in ... artifacts made by modern humans," said Martínez-Navarro. If such evidence were to be found then it could rewrite the history books, introducing a new and grizzly chapter in the early history of modern man.
""We think that modern humans, who occupied (a) similar ecological niche as Neanderthals, but with more evolved technology, in their colonization of the new European territories directly competed with Neanderthals for the food and other natural resources," writes Martínez-Navarro, in an emailed response to Discovery News."
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