Research suggests cannibalism was a funerary rite for the Magdalenian people in northwest Europe, but others preferred to bury their dead.

Cannibalism was common in northwest Europe between 14,000 and 19,000 years ago, when a population of prehistoric people known as the Magdalenians used it in their rituals to dispose of the dead, a new study finds.

But cannibalism seems to have ended when the Magdalenians were supplanted by another group of prehistoric people known as the Epigravettians, who instead buried their dead.