anthropologists such as tim white suggest that cannibalism was common in human societies prior to the beginning of the upper paleolithic, based on the large amount of “butchered human" bones found in neanderthal and other lower/middle paleolithic sites. cannibalism in the lower and middle paleolithic may have occurred because of food shortages. however, it may have been for religious reasons, and would coincide with the development of religious practices thought to have occurred during the upper paleolithic. nonetheless, it remains possible that paleolithic societies never practiced cannibalism, and that the damage to recovered human bones was either the result of ritual post-mortem bone cleaning or predation by carnivores such as saber tooth cats, lions and hyenas.