So the last time I brought up the possible conflict between our ancestors and their Neanderthal contemporaries, I may have done a bit of butchering to the fields of Anthopology and Evolutionary Biology.     (The increasing dischord between those two fields, is a topic for another time.)  But hey, it’s a learning process, right?  However, many of you sent in a link to a recent Guardian article discussing some grisley new findings regarding possible details of the species war.

One of science’s most puzzling mysteries – the disappearance of the Neanderthals – may have been solved. Modern humans ate them, says a leading fossil expert.

The controversial suggestion follows publication of a study in the Journal of Anthropological Sciences about a Neanderthal jawbone apparently butchered by modern humans. Now the leader of the research team says he believes the flesh had been eaten by humans, while its teeth may have been used to make a necklace.

Fernando Rozzi, of Paris’s Centre National de la Récherche Scientifique, said the jawbone had probably been cut into to remove flesh, including the tongue. Crucially, the butchery was similar to that used by humans to cut up deer carcass in the early Stone Age. “Neanderthals met a violent end at our hands and in some cases we ate them,” Rozzi said.

Now the article goes on to point out that this could have been an isolated incident, or that violence could have been but one of many reasons why “we” won and Neanderthal man exists only in museums, Geico ads, and Encino.  However, it’s yet more evidence that not only was there violent conflict, but that whatever cultural paradigm existed in that area, it was one that saw Neanderthals as sufficently “other” to be foodstufs — if perhaps only in a particular set of circumstances.