Spain’s Stone Age Cannibalism Was Not One Story: Three Granada Caves Tell Three

For decades, archaeologists have tended to treat prehistoric cannibalism as one kind of behavior with one kind of explanation. A new study of nearly 1,000 human bones from three caves near Granada in southern Spain argues the opposite. The bones suggest that people ate other people in at least three different ways, at different times, over roughly 1,500 years of the Neolithic.

Three caves, one region

The caves are Malalmuerzo, Carigüela and Majolicas (also spelled Majólicas), all in the province of Granada. A team led by Palmira Saladié and Antonio Rodríguez-Hidalgo, with Miguel C. Botella and colleagues from institutions in Spain and beyond, re-examined the remains. They published the work in 2026 in the Journal of Archaeological Science. The researchers studied cut marks, fractures, blunt impacts and tooth marks under the microscope. They combined that with statistical analysis, machine learning and direct radiocarbon dating.

Press coverage describes the assemblage as “almost 1,000” or “close to a thousand” bones and teeth. The outlets I could read do not give one exact total for all three caves, so treat any precise figure with care.

Malalmuerzo: a possible massacre

The oldest episode comes from Malalmuerzo Cave, dated to about 5300 to 4950 BCE, in the Early Neolithic. One report says researchers identified 714 bone fragments there, representing at least 36 people. The group included infants, children and adults. At least two skulls show blunt-force injuries, and one report says more than half of the individuals show signs of boiling.

The team reads this as a short episode of interpersonal violence. A group may have died together, and the bodies were then processed and eaten. One outlet summed up the interpretation as “a massacre, not a meal.” The researchers present this as a likely reading of the evidence, not a settled fact, and the Euronews report calls it a “possible” episode of collective violence.

Carigüela: repeated episodes

Carigüela Cave tells a longer story. Its bones span several Neolithic phases, and two radiocarbon dates support repeated episodes of body processing. Almost all the bones show butchery marks. The team also found two skulls modified into cups, which they interpret as deliberate, symbolic treatment after death, possibly linked to taking trophies. One date in the cave is much older than the rest and remains harder to interpret.

Majolicas: something closer to ritual

The youngest episode comes from Majolicas Cave, dated to about 3950 to 3760 BCE, in the Late Neolithic. Here the evidence points away from violence. The long bones show less intense breakage than at the other sites, and some remains carry red staining, most likely from cinnabar. Researchers link cinnabar to ritual and mortuary practice in other contexts. The team suggests this episode may reflect funerary or ritual treatment, though that remains an interpretation. One adult skull from the cave shows cut marks on the cheekbone.

Not just hunger

The Smithsonian headline frames the finding as proof that Neolithic cannibalism “wasn’t an act of desperation.” The study itself is more cautious. Reports say the researchers found no single cause for these episodes. Saladié told reporters, “We cannot say that all these episodes had a common cause.” Coverage of the paper links the practices to possible shifts in social organization, relations between groups, and how communities understood death and violence. Gizmodo’s summary says the reasons were “not all related to survival.” The articles I could read do not discuss famine at these sites, so the evidence rules out a famine explanation only in the sense that no source here argues for one.

The study also places these Spanish episodes in a wider European pattern. Cannibalism in Europe appears to cluster in three windows: the late sixth millennium BCE, the middle fifth millennium BCE and the late third millennium BCE.

Caveats and open questions

Cut marks and broken bones show that people processed bodies. They cannot reveal motive on their own, which is why the researchers lean on context, such as injury patterns, the age mix of the dead and the cinnabar staining. Several details in circulation remain unconfirmed in the sources I could access, including an exact combined count of fragments and individuals across all three caves, and the specific numbers of child victims. Some summaries mention human tooth marks on children’s bones, but the coverage I read gives no counts, so that detail deserves caution until readers check the paper.

The central point still holds. Neolithic people in this part of Spain did not follow one script. A killing may have preceded a meal at one cave, repeated processing of the dead happened at another, and a ritual treatment may have shaped the last. That diversity is what the authors want other archaeologists to take seriously.

Image credit: Antonio Rodríguez-Hidalgo / IAM-CSIC (skull cup from Carigüela Cave, as credited by Archaeology magazine).

Sources

• Saladié P., Rodríguez-Hidalgo A., Marginedas F., Solari A., Botella M. C. (2026), Journal of Archaeological Science 194, 106666. DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2026.106666
• Smithsonian Magazine
• Archaeology Magazine (archaeologymag.com)
• Archaeology magazine (archaeology.org)
• Euronews
• Popular Science
• La Brújula Verde