Bronze age Britons were cannibalized after an ‘exceptionally violent' attack

The aftermath of an “exceptionally violent” attack in early Bronze Age England suggests that at least 37 people may have been “systematically dismembered” and eaten, new research has revealed.

The attack, which took place around 4,000 years ago, reveals a case of cannibalism and “the darker side of human prehistory,” according to the study published Monday in the journal Antiquity.

Over 3,000 bones were excavated from a 50-foot pit in Charterhouse Warren, around 20 miles south of the city of Bristol in southwest England.

The bones, which were chosen for analysis because of the “sheer number of cutmarks,” were first discovered by cavers in the 1970s,  researchers said.

They had more violence inflicted on them then what would normally be seen "in a butchered animal bone assemblage,” Rick Schulting, the study's lead author, told NBC News in an email Monday.

Schulting, a professor of scientific and prehistoric archaeology at Britain's University of Oxford, said that the archeology at the site is “exceptional.”

“The most surprising thing is the sheer extent of the violence carried out on the bodies," he said. "They were killed with blows to the head, and then systematically dismembered, defleshed, bones smashed apart."

The violence took place “probably in a single event between” 2210 B.C. and 2010 B.C., researchers suggest, adding that it's a unique example of extreme violence in Early Bronze Age Britain and that "nothing else on this scale” has been recorded in Britain.

However, Schulting said the extreme violence was unlikely to have been an isolated incident in the U.K. at the time. “There would have been repercussions, as the relatives and friends of the victims sought revenge, and this could have led to cycles of violence in the region,” he added.

Schulting said that determining the motive behind such as an attack is “one of the hardest things to do in archaeology.” But together with his fellow authors, he concluded in the study that the massacre was likely driven by a furious “spiraling cycle of revenge” within or between Early Bronze Age communities.

“Tensions may have built up from relatively innocuous beginnings such as theft or accusations of witchcraft and then escalated out of control,” Schulting said in his email.

The victims might have been eaten to “dehumanize” them and “treat them like animals,” Schulting said, emphasizing that this was not the action of just a few individuals. “The number of victims and the time it would have taken to dismember the victims tells us that there must have been a large number of aggressors involved.” 

The bones were found with faunal assemblage, or animal fossils, that also showed initial “evidence of butchery,” although they have not been fully examined yet, the paper said.

The authors do not believe that the attackers were driven to eat the human remains because of hunger, as the bone fragments were found alongside these animal bones, indicating there was sufficient food.

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com.  More from NBC News:

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