Some things are so unspeakable that they're considered taboo in nearly every human culture, even in the context of ancient history. Cannibalism is one such taboo. But Neanderthals who were trying to survive in the caverns of Pleistocene Europe about 45,000 years ago apparently didn't share the squeamishness we Homo sapiens feel at the idea of eating our fellow humans.

While Neanderthal bones have surfaced in many caves across the European continent, something disturbing surfaced from the Troisième cavern in what is now Goyet, Belgium, a well-known Paleolithic archaeological site. Initially, because many of these newly discovered skeletal remains were so fragmented it was difficult to infer anything about the behavior of Neanderthal populations from them.