Narrator: This is Science Today. Over the years, there's been great debate among archaeologists and anthropologists about digging up traces of cannibalism. Tim White, a professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley says one way cannibalism can be traced is by finding bones with cut marks similar to those used in the butchering of animals.

White: What you find when you look at butchery practices and people, whether it is our own butchers in the supermarket or butchers in a hunting and gathering society, they will with sharp implements, either stone tools or steel knives, butcher animals in the same manner. And that manner is controlled by the anatomy.

Narrator: White and his French colleagues found such tell-tale signs on the bones of six Neanderthals, including a child, hose remains were found scattered on the floor of a cave site along with those of red deer.

White: We can study those red deer skeletons and learn about the way they butchered those. And in fact, we present a photograph of the child's jaw next to a photograph of a deer jaw that has matching marks.

Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.