In the animal kingdom, cannibalism is rare but not unheard of – several species have been known to eat their young, as a gene-control strategy – but among humans the practice carried cultural taboos since the earliest human times. Or so it was thought, anyway. Archaeological and anthropological evidence has complicated the picture somewhat: the neurological condition kuru that caused trembling and eventually death among the New Guinean people was thought to be caused by cannibalism. And a discovery of a 7,000 year-old bone pit in Germany showed signs the humans may have been on the menu.

On this day, December 6, in 2009, scientists examining bones from the excavation sites found bite marks and incisions similar to those left on prey animals, suggesting the humans may have been eaten there.

William Arents, a 20th-century author, who wrote the influential treatise on cannibalism The Man Eating Myth, credits Christopher Columbus for popularization of the concept. Columbus’s encounter with natives in the Caribbean West Indians who ritually consumed one another’s flesh led to their name “canibs,” a mispronunciation of “caribs” but a word that in Spanish meant thirsty and cruel.