“The first known human cannibal was a Neanderthal whose victims’ 100,000-year-old bones were discovered in Moula-Guercy, a cave in France.

There have been sites where the act has occurred involving the cannibalism of children leading some to speculate the act was not just done for food, but that it was done as a warning to rivals.

Some anthropologists suggest that cannibalism was common in human societies as early as the Paleolithic.”