Eating out the Caveman way

A compelling story in today's paper confirms that our Ice Age ancestors really did put human flesh on the menu. The bones found in Gough's Cave, Somerset, have been unmistakably cut up and defleshed deliberately.

Naturally archeologists and anthropologists will study all the evidence intensely and try to understand whether cannibalism was endemic at this time or a reaction to extreme conditions. The carvings found on the bones introduce, inevitably, the 'ritual' aspect. But there is another aspect of the whole affair that may be more relevant to the rest of us. If people were gathering to eat each other at this place, then surely they did it elsewhere, and were aware of the existence of other such places. And so they must have surely considered where was the best place to get a bellyful of the neighbours. Extensive and original research conducted for Ramblings has unearthed the following document, believed to have been nailed to a tree as part of the TravelCounsellor oracle much used in the early Stone Age.