Clearly, then, blade marks and other damage inflicted on Neanderthals by conspecifics and other ancient human groups may have been caused by a variety of actions. Archaeologists now consider this type of osteological damage to be strong evidence for cannibalistic behavior only when it can be matched to similar damage found on the bones of game animals uncovered at the same site. The implication is that if animal and human bodies were processed in the same manner, and if the remains were discarded together, it is reasonably certain that cannibalism took place.
This appears to have been precisely what happened at a Neanderthal cave site known as Moula-Guercy in southeastern France. An excavation begun there in 1991 revealed the remains of six Neanderthals and at least five red deer (Cervus elaphus) dating to approximately 100,000 years before the present. The bones were distributed together and butchered in a similar fashion. The long bones and skulls were smashed, and telltale cut marks on the sides of the skulls indicated that the large jaw closure muscles had been filleted. There were also characteristic patterns of modification on the lower jaws, providing evidence that the tongues had been removed. Both Neanderthal and deer bones also exhibited peeling and percussion pits. Lastly, there were distinctive patterns of cuts indicating that bodies from both species had been disarticulated at the shoulder, a process that would have made carrying and handling them easier. According to Tim White, “The circumstantial forensic evidence [for cannibalism at Moula-Guercy] is excellent.”
Of course there is always the possibility that this type of damage to the animal bones took place during butchery, but that the same types of stone tools were also used to deflesh and disarticulate human remains during non-cannibalistic mortuary practices. Echoing what Mark Norell would have considered “the smoking gun” for dinosaur cannibalism, anthropology writer Paul Bahn wrote that, “The only definitive evidence for prehistoric cannibalism would be the discovery of human remains inside fossil faeces or inside a human stomach.”
But among anthropologists, even this type of evidence sparked a controversy.
In 2000, researchers working in the Four Corners region of the American Southwest reported that human myoglobin (a form of hemoglobin found in muscles) had been identified from a single fossilized coprolite described as being “consistent with human origin.” The petrified poop had evidently been deposited onto a cooking hearth belonging to prehistoric Puebloans (Anasazi) sometime around 1150 CE. Together with defleshed human bones and butchering tools coated with human blood residue, the 30-gram fecal fossil was used to support the claim that cannibalism had taken place at the southwestern Colorado site known as Cowboy Wash. It is a finding that has been the subject of considerable debate, with some researchers insisting that the bone and blood evidence could also have resulted from corpse mutilation, ritualized executions, or funerary practices.
These scientists also point out that while the myoglobin in the coprolite was certainly human in origin, the animal that produced the feces was never positively identified. This raises the possibility that a coyote or wolf consumed part of a corpse and subsequently defecated in the abandoned cooking hearth.
Even with a set of paleoanthropological safeguards in place, mistakes can still occur. Some of these have been the result of bad writing, while in other instances, further research led to the discovery of additional non-cannibalism-related alternatives, these having nothing to do with animal or human interactions.
“In many cases you’re finding bones in the normal paleontological environment,” Ian Tattersall explained. “That is to say, they’ve all been scattered and they’ve been concentrated by water or whatever’s happened to them, which had nothing to do with the actual human activities that may or may not have been carried out after they were deceased.”
To envision how this “scattering” or concentration of fossils can occur, picture a stream cutting through a fossil-containing layer of rock. As the stream walls gradually wear away, fossils are exposed, washed out, and deposited into the stream bed randomly and over time. Similarly, different parts from the same organism might be exposed at different times, which can also lead to fragments from a single individual being scattered across a wide area.