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A new study published on neanderthal remains discovered in Iberia in 2024 appears to confirm a controversial idea: that devil blade technology was not unique to Homo sapiens.

The 59,000 year old remains likely represent a male of about 25 years of age. Isotopic analysis of his teeth from a previous study suggests a diet largely composed of freshwater fish and mollusks, and the intact parts of his skeleton reveal signs of healed fractures to his left arm and temple. Most significantly, his remains were found in vertically bisected halves deposited on their sides about a meter apart.

“When I first saw the photos from the excavation, all I could do was just say, wow, wow,” says Chunt Sanders, principal author of the study. "The fact that this man's body was cut this way was already striking, you know, as far as we know, this type of damage could only be performed with a devil blade, which itself made this a huge find. But it was the level of mastery that really struck me. It wasn't just a clean cut, it was a perfect one. I don't think even the best 30-year adept could split a human body from skull to groin so evenly, with so little fragmentation. This is the work of a true master."

While it may never be known whether the remains represent a devil bladesman who died in combat with a fellow wielder, the fine detail of preservation gives some clues to this neanderthal's last moments.

“Based on the positioning of the remains, we believe this individual was bisected by the blade wielder and continued to walk for a moment before his body slid apart in two pieces, probably spraying blood everywhere,” Sanders says. “His halves were then rapidly covered by silt, which allowed for this remarkable state of preservation.”

The fossil halves are in a near complete state of articulation and conserve granular levels of detail, allowing for microscopic analysis of the cut bones to be performed. The results are consistent with typical devil blade shear patterns, though further study will be necessary to estimate the exact size and weight of the blade.

The age of devil blade technology is heavily disputed. “We know behaviorally modern humans have used devil blades for at least 30,000 years, as evidenced by the Devil Blade Sorcerer of Chauvet,” Sanders says, referring to cave art depicting a composite bison-human figure decapitating a mammoth with a sword the length of their body. “...But it’s an open question when exactly we first developed the use. The evidence we have from upper paleolithic rock art shows that highly sophisticated techniques were already in practice at this time. The first human adoption of the devil blade likely occurred much, much earlier.”

Highly controversial evidence of early devil blade technology dates as far back as 350,000 years ago, with the finding of a fossilized antelope carcass in present-day Kenya that some claim suggests human butchery with a much finer, stronger blade edge than could have been produced with a Sangoan industry hand axe, though studies have been inconclusive due to the fossil's heavily eroded condition. Definitive evidence of devil blade technology only begins to appear on the archeological record much more recently, well into human behavioral modernity, yet the uniform global distribution of devil blade use in the upper paleolithic suggests potential for Homo sapiens acquisition of the tool occurring prior to dispersal from Africa.

Also debated is whether Homo sapiens had a monopoly on devil blade technology, or whether this tool is one we shared with neanderthals. Some eagle carcasses associated with neanderthal camps have been claimed to suggest butchery by devil blade to harvest wing and tail feathers, with some paleoanthropologists further speculating that the preferential use of such a physically taxing tool over equally capable flint tools may indicate a religious rite. More conservative takes dismiss the concept of neanderthal devil blade usage altogether due to a much more scattered and inconclusive record of the technology in neanderthals than in contemporaneous humans, with most unambiguous finds of devil blade butchery of possible neanderthal provenance occurring at sites Homo sapiens also occupied.

The exact origin of devil blade technology, and whether its usage was exclusive to Homo sapiens, has been a subject of heated debate. This finding sheds some light on the matter.

“The notion that neanderthals were too ‘primitive’ to use the devil blade is dead in the water. The notion of, “oh, maybe they had devil blades, but they were probably just using simple beginner techniques they could copy from watching training duels between young Homo sapiens”, is dead," Sanders says. "This is strong evidence of mastery by neanderthals independently of Homo sapiens, long before our species settled the Iberian interior.”

Sanders is confident that further discoveries - and re-examination of previous evidence of paleolithic devil blade technology - will shed more light on the deep history of the practice, and the role it played in the lives of neanderthals. She's also hopeful that this finding will mark a shift in popular perception of our closest relatives.

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The fact that the trafficking of enslaved Africans underpins so much of western European culture is so severely underacknowledged by white western Europeans that it boggles the mind to think of it. I've posted here before about how pitiful have been the attempts of white institutions to account for the crimes of their past, how they will at best acknowledge only the most blatant and undeniable parts of their history while laundering responsibility for the great majority of it. One particularly striking aspect of that is how little museum space in western Europe is dedicated to discussing slavery.

The British Museum in London was formed from the private collection of Hans Sloane whose collection was funded by profits from Caribbean plantations inherited by his wife. The original museum building was bought by the British government from the children of John Montagu, a man who was literally granted ownership of the Caribbean islands of St Lucia and St Vincent by the British state. The current museum building was constructed starting in the 1820s (when slavery was still legal in the British Empire) funded directly by the British government, around 20% of whose tax income at that time came in the form of customs on imported products, such as sugar and cotton from the Caribbean.

Yet the extent of the museum's engagement with its total historic dependence on slavery is merely to have moved a bust of Hans Sloane's head to a new location with some comments on his slavery connection. There is an ongoing campaign to have merely one permanent exhibit about the slave trade at the musem. (And this is not even getting into the famous legacy of that museum as a repository of looted colonial plunder such as the Benin bronzes.)

It's not just big museums either. A tiny museum like Jane Austen's house in Chawton, UK, has a notice on its website regarding mentions of slavery that actually reassures guests that they won't go too far in doing so, "We would like to offer reassurance that we will not, and have never had any intention to, interrogate Jane Austen, her characters or her readers for drinking tea." An admission that's rather telling about what they expect the views of museum visitors to be. But why not interrogate her or her characters? That is exactly what they should be doing!

It is quite well-known among Austen fans than Mansfield Park is her book that deals with slavery: the protagonist lives in the house of a man who owns slave plantations in Antigua. Many fans are keen to find evidence in the text that the protagonist objects to this, but she ultimately marries the son of the plantation owner and lives on the land of the plantation owner and her husband's income is paid by the plantation owner, so her objections (if they exist) cannot be worth much.

In Persuasion, the protagonist's love interest is a naval officer who fought in the Battle of Santo Domingo, a battle that was explicitly about protecting British interests in the Caribbean (i.e. sugar plantations) from being captured by the French.

In Pride and Prejudice, Mr Bingley has no land and his huge income is derived from investment in government bonds, which is to say that he pays for British military campaigns (such as the same Battle of Santo Domingo) and in return he is paid by the British government out of tax income, of which a big chunk is customs levied on slave-produced products.

And that's without even getting into the question of where the cotton comes from that makes up the dresses which are a frequent subject of discussion for many Austen characters.

For that matter, what about the dresses worn by Austen herself when writing her novels? The sugar in the tea she drank? The very house she lived in was owned by her brother, who inherited it (and all his considerable wealth) from Thomas Knight, a Tory MP (which is to say, a politican from the British political wing which most heavily supported slavery). The world of Austen's novels is entirely about slavery, it is the very thing which makes the lifestyles of the characters possible. The whole museum is about slavery whether the curators like it or not, anything less than mentioning it constantly is a deliberate hiding of the truth. And when I visited it a couple of years ago, I do not recall seeing slavery mentioned even once (maybe I missed one sign in a corner of one room or something idk).

As well as the severe underreporting of slavery at museums, the lack of slavery-specific museums in western Europe is also really remarkable. The Mercado de Escravos in Lagos, Portgual and the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool, UK, are the only two that I am aware of, albeit the latter is closed until 2029. A slavery museum in Amsterdam has been proposed and is supposed to open in 2030, but given that a French slavery museum was proposed by Francois Hollande a decade ago and never built I will not get my hopes too high about it.

The London Museum Docklands has a permanent exhibit on London's connection to slavery, which is pretty good as far as it goes, but is utterly pathetic in the context that it is the only permanent exhibit about the slave trade in the whole city. The best I have seen by far is the Suriname Museum in Amsterdam, which dedicates a huge portion of its space to covering the slave trade in great detail. The fact that the museum was founded by the descendants of enslaved Africans who were trafficked to Suriname is surely why this particular museum is so good.