The Fundamental Goodness of Man; the Noble Savage

12/17/24 NBC News:

The aftermath of an “exceptionally violent” attack in early Bronze Age England suggests that at least 37 people may have been “systematically dismembered” and eaten, new research has revealed.

The attack, which took place around 4,000 years ago, reveals a case of cannibalism and “the darker side of human prehistory,” according to the study published Monday in the journal Antiquity.

Over 3,000 bones were excavated from a 50-foot pit in Charterhouse Warren, around 20 miles south of the city of Bristol in southwest England.

The bones, which were chosen for analysis because of the “sheer number of cutmarks,” were first discovered by cavers in the 1970s,  researchers said.

They had more violence inflicted on them then what would normally be seen "in a butchered animal bone assemblage,” Rick Schulting, the study's lead author, told NBC News in an email Monday.

Schulting, a professor of scientific and prehistoric archaeology at Britain's University of Oxford, said that the archeology at the site is “exceptional.”

“The most surprising thing is the sheer extent of the violence carried out on the bodies," he said. "They were killed with blows to the head, and then systematically dismembered, defleshed, bones smashed apart."