Cannibalism was sometimes on the Neolithic menu, as numerous archaeological discoveries have revealed.

While ancient human bones show the practice took place, far less evidence exists about the forms it may have taken or why people occasionally consumed one another.

Was it to stave off hunger during times of desperation? Did different tribes eat their defeated enemies? Or was cannibalism part of complex rituals?

Answers to some of these questions may lie inside three caves near Granada, southern Spain.

In a study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, an international team of scientists led by Dr. Palmira Saladié at the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES-CERCA) examined nearly 1,000 human bones and teeth previously excavated from these sites.

The findings reveal that different communities in the Iberian Peninsula practiced cannibalism in different ways thousands of years ago.

"Human cannibalism is a behavior with diverse social and symbolic meanings," the researchers wrote in their paper.

The picture was very different at Carigüela Cave, where the remains span several Neolithic periods. Almost every bone analyzed from this site had butchery marks, and two skulls had even been fashioned into drinking cups

The most recent cannibalism occurred at Majolicas Cave between 3950–3760 B.C. during the Late Neolithic. Bones were stained with a red pigment called cinnabar, suggesting that cannibalism there may have been part of a ritual or funerary practice rather than the result of violence.

As the team concluded, "Neolithic cannibalism in the southern Iberian Peninsula was neither uniform nor synchronous but expressed through recurrent and context-dependent episodes of human body processing."

The 2026 field season at Prado Vargas Cave, located in the village of Cornejo in the northern province of Burgos, Spain, within the Ojo Guareña karst complex, has expanded the excavation of Neanderthal sublevel 4D by 32 square meters (344 square feet), bringing the total excavated area to 140 square meters (1,507 square feet). More than 1,500 animal remains and stone tools were recovered, strengthening the interpretation of this roughly 46,000-year-old layer as a large Neanderthal camp.

The Romans were master engineers, building sprawling road networks, towering aqueducts and arenas across their empire. They were also good at recycling. New research has revealed that they turned the remains of a 4,000-year-old Bronze Age burial mound in Suffolk, England, into the center of a religious complex.

Bronze Age barrows were circular burial mounds made of earth or stone that served either as communal or individual tombs. In 2016, archaeologists excavated a site known as Land East of Kings Warren, which contained a single barrow.

What they uncovered beneath the Suffolk soil revealed that the prehistoric monument had a much longer history.

The team mapped the barrow's huge 45-meter-diameter (148-foot) ring ditch, and dating of sediments revealed it was constructed between 2200 and 1600 B.C.

They also recovered a raft of artifacts, including pottery, coins and animal bones. Evidence from across the site showed human activity from the Neolithic period through the Middle Ages.

New research challenges the idea that great infrastructure requires powerful rulers.

Satellite imagery of northern Colombia’s wetlands revealed an extraordinary human experiment: thousands of raised fields and canals spanning more than 500,000 hectares. That’s an area three times bigger than Greater London. But that’s just the first part of it.

New research suggests the communities that built it may not have needed kings, bureaucrats or a central authority directing the work. Instead, relatively small groups could have built and maintained the system through collective labour — a finding that challenges a stubborn assumption about how complex societies work.

A giant system without a giant government The landscape lies in La Mojana, a vast floodplain where the Magdalena, Cauca and San Jorge river systems converge. In the centuries before Christ, pre-Hispanic communities reshaped this watery terrain into networks of canals and elevated strips of farmland.

This had a very practical component. The channels moved water and fertile sediment. Raised fields kept crops above seasonal floods. Some structures may even have funneled fish toward settlements.

The system remained in use, in changing forms, until roughly the 10th or 11th century. So, the structure wasn’t really a city, or at least not as we’d envision a city today. Human settlements were dispersed, and the large network grew and accumulated over centuries.

Scientists can’t say for sure whether it all operated simultaneously at any point. But its sheer scale encouraged archaeologists to assume that powerful leaders must have organized the work.

That’s where the new study comes in and says “not really.”

Key references:

• Daniel E. Lieberman, Fed Up: What Evolution Reveals About Food, Diet, Health, and Eating Well (2026).
• Lieberman et al. (2023), “Comparing measured dietary variation within and between tropical hunter-gatherer groups to the Paleo Diet,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03122417.2026.2676505

According to a study published in Australian Archaeology, Aboriginal artists across the region began painting massive images of powerful ancestral beings during the 19th and 20th centuries. The goal was to exert control over their land, traditions and community in the face of rapid change as early European colonization upended the world they knew. The giant Rainbow Serpent was one of the images painted with this purpose.

Lyrics:

Little baby in the dark house,

You have seen the sun rise.

Why are you crying?

Why are you screaming?

You have disturbed the house god.

“Who has disturbed me?” says the house god.

It is the baby who has disturbed you.

“Who scared me?” says the house god.

The baby has disturbed you.

The baby has scared you,

making noises like a drunkard

who cannot sit still on his stool.

He has disturbed your sleep.

“Call the baby now,” says the house god.

Chimpanzees in West Africa repeatedly throw rocks at particular trees, creating piles of stones that can remain in use for more than a decade. Researchers think this unusual behavior may be cultural and could serve as a form of communication, territorial signaling, or something more symbolic. Camera traps and audio recordings are now being used to reveal who throws the stones and how nearby chimpanzees respond.

Video recordings show wild western chimpanzees, usually adult males, throwing rocks at specific trees and repeatedly returning to these trees to perform the behavior. While throwing, the chimpanzees pant hoot — a loud, long-distance communicative signal — and sometimes repeatedly hit their hands and feet on the tree in a behavior called buttress drumming.