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butthurt [soylentnews.org] writes:

A press release [eurekalert.org] by the University of the Basque Country promotes a paper published in Scientific Reports (DOI: 10.1038/srep29005). The paper concerns Neanderthal bones found in a cave near the hamlet of Goyet [wikipedia.org] in Belgium. Archaeologists found that some of the bones had been crushed or showed cuts. Bones of horses and reindeer found in the same cave had received the same treatment. The authors surmise that Neanderthals "ate the meat and broke the bones of their fellow Neanderthals for food."

Mitochondrial DNA was recovered from the Neanderthals' bones, and was found to be similar to that from sites in Germany, Croatia and Spain, from which the authors conclude that "the Neanderthal population that inhabited Europe was small."

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