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Ancient Brits made bowls out of skulls
Source: Agencies |
February 18, 2011, Friday
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ANCIENT Britons devoured their dead and created gruesome goblets from the skulls of their remains, according to a new research.
Researchers from London's Natural History Museum discovered 15,000-year-old human bones in southern England which showed signs of cannibalism and skulls made into drinking cups.
The skulls - found in Gough's Cave in the Cheddar Gorge in the southwestern English county of Somerset - had been meticulously cleaned of soft tissue, cut to remove the base and facial bones, and had their rough edges smoothed to create skull-cups or bowls, paleontologist Silvia Bello wrote in a study in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE.
"All in all it was a very painstaking process given the tools available," Bello said in a statement on Wednesday.
The researchers said the cups may have been used as containers or for some ritualistic purpose.
"It's impossible to know how the skull-cups were used back then, but in recent examples they may hold blood, wine or food during rituals," said Chris Stringer, who helped excavate one of the skull-cups in 1987.
At about 14,700 years old, the skull-cups from Gough's Cave are the oldest directly dated examples in the world, the researchers said. The circumstances behind the deaths of the Cro-Magnons (European early modern humans), whose bones they discovered, can only be guessed at.
They may have been killed, butchered and eaten - with the skull-cups just the end of this event - or may have been part of the group who died and were eaten in a crisis situation, with the skull-cups created as a tribute to the dead.
A precise cast of one of the skull-cups, with cut marks, will go on display at the Natural History Museum from March 1 for three months.
Researchers from London's Natural History Museum discovered 15,000-year-old human bones in southern England which showed signs of cannibalism and skulls made into drinking cups.
The skulls - found in Gough's Cave in the Cheddar Gorge in the southwestern English county of Somerset - had been meticulously cleaned of soft tissue, cut to remove the base and facial bones, and had their rough edges smoothed to create skull-cups or bowls, paleontologist Silvia Bello wrote in a study in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE.
"All in all it was a very painstaking process given the tools available," Bello said in a statement on Wednesday.
The researchers said the cups may have been used as containers or for some ritualistic purpose.
"It's impossible to know how the skull-cups were used back then, but in recent examples they may hold blood, wine or food during rituals," said Chris Stringer, who helped excavate one of the skull-cups in 1987.
At about 14,700 years old, the skull-cups from Gough's Cave are the oldest directly dated examples in the world, the researchers said. The circumstances behind the deaths of the Cro-Magnons (European early modern humans), whose bones they discovered, can only be guessed at.
They may have been killed, butchered and eaten - with the skull-cups just the end of this event - or may have been part of the group who died and were eaten in a crisis situation, with the skull-cups created as a tribute to the dead.
A precise cast of one of the skull-cups, with cut marks, will go on display at the Natural History Museum from March 1 for three months.
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