The earliest known Europeanans weren't just hunter-gatherers — they were sometimes lunch for hyenas. That's one of the most startling revelations from the archaeological record, and it barely scratches the surface.
Stefan Milo makes a case that's been strangely absent from popular discourse: prehistoric Europe wasn't merely a backdrop for human history — it was a stage where violence, survival, and complex social behavior played out over millions of years. Drawing on evidence from Georgian caves to French coastal islands, Milo builds an argument that what we call "civilization" rests on a foundation of brutal adaptation.
They made very simple tools, but they must have had a certain drive and curiosity — the first hominins to expand out of Africa and really push the boundaries of humanity.
The First Europeans
The green valleys of modern Georgia were home to some of Europe's earliest human ancestors. These individuals — classified as early Homo erectus — stood about five feet tall with brains half the size of ours. They made simple stone tools, flakes and choppers, the bare minimum for survival.
But they weren't just surviving. Evidence suggests these hominins had something crucial: cooperation. One specimen, known as D228, lived long enough that all its teeth fell out — a sign it had community support. The skull shows four big depressions across the cranium. Researchers believe blunt force trauma explains at least three of these dents. Whether from accident or violent conflict over resources, these injuries weren't fatal — D228 survived for a bit after each blow.
The underside of the cranium reveals two large perforations around the time of death. The gaps between the holes match the jaws of hyenas and big cats known to inhabit the region. Losing your jaw was common side effects of having your face eaten, apparently. These hominins were on the cusp of that first human expansion — but they weren't enough to avoid becoming hyena prey.
Critics might note that interpreting violence from skeletal evidence alone is notoriously difficult. Blunt force trauma can also be caused by disease or cancer, and the authors themselves acknowledge this uncertainty.
The Last Neanderthals
Moving further west in time brings us to Goyet Cave in Belgium, where some of the last Neanderthals walked the earth around 40,000 to 45,000 years ago. By this point, anatomically modern humans had spread across the entire world, absorbing and replacing other human groups wherever they went.
The Neanderthals in Goyet certainly had no concept that they were the last of their kind — but they did have a taste for human flesh. A study of 99 Neanderthal remains found in the cave showed nearly one-third bore signs of being butchered: cut marks on bones, long bones snapped to extract marrow. These Neanderthals were probably lunch for someone.
The evidence gets grimmer. Four long bones show what archaeologists call retouching marks — used to re-sharpen flint blades after use. The implication? After eating you, a Neanderthal might resharpen their blade on what's left of your bones. Survival in the Paleolithic meant producing everything yourself; nothing was given for free.
Mesolithic Violence
Moving forward to around 9,000 years ago, we arrive at Offarduncourt Cave in southern Germany during the Mesolithic period. The large beasts of the Ice Age were long dead. Hunters now pursued familiar animals like boar and deer. Archaeologists even found a chew made of birch pitch — with human DNA inside, they could determine this person's last meal: hazelnuts and ducks.
But for the inhabitants of Offarduncourt Cave, it was a violent time.
In 1908, archaeologist Robert Rudolph Schmidt excavated two depressions in the ground containing the heads of 34 people. All were oriented west toward the setting sun, covered in red ochre, buried alongside 215 deer teeth and 4,250 shells. This was prehistoric headhunting — something like that.
Six of the skulls showed fatal wounds to the skull. The others must have died in ways that didn't leave marks on the bone. Evidence suggests they were deposited at the time of death — this wasn't just a collection of bones people had accumulated. Many neck vertebrae were still articulated, meaning the bodies were placed with their heads and then decayed.
Grimly, 17 of the craniums belonged to children aged six or younger.
Based on radiocarbon dating, archaeologists aren't sure if this was one event or multiple repeated depositions over time. Either way, it's evidence of warlike behavior in a hunter-gatherer society — someone collecting skulls and depositing them to watch the sunset for thousands upon thousands of years.
The Brittany Burial Mystery
Also dating to the Mesolithic period are sites on islands off the Atlantic coast of France. Originally excavated in the 1920s and 30s, these shell middens — prehistoric dumps where communities threw their waste — revealed some of the most elaborate burials from prehistoric Europe.
One original photo shows people buried under a halo of enormous antlers. Another burial of two women was positioned under this roof of antlers — absolutely mind-blowing stuff.
But one description is particularly unsettling: a burial of a man was inside the rib cage of another man, like they had stacked bodies in the rib cage. What were the ancestors doing? Your last burial place is inside the rib cage of another person — what does that mean?
One woman under that roof of antlers had various blows to the skull, including a pretty nasty wound above the right eye. Another burial had a flint arrow still embedded in the spine. Not all these people came to a nice end.
The really interesting thing isn't just how elaborate these burials are — it's the timing. Some date to around 5,500 years ago when the islands were islands and the Neolithic was already in full swing across Europe. Many French Neolithic monuments were constructed during this time or even before.
But DNA analysis shows no evidence of Neolithic admixture in the remains sampled. It seems these Mesolithic communities held out against the march of farming communities — elaborate burials connected to that resistance, perhaps?
Bottom Line
Milo's core argument is compelling: archaeological evidence reveals a prehistoric Europe far more violent and complex than modern sensibilities want to acknowledge. His biggest vulnerability is interpretive — we can't know what these violent rituals meant to the people who performed them. The bones tell us what happened; they don't tell us why. That gap is where the most interesting questions lie.