Ancient Britons Drank From Skull Cups

No matter how rough English pubs gets, they'll have nothing on the ancient Britons, who researchers at London's Natural History Museum say ate the dead and turned their skulls into cups. The 15,000-year-old cups were discovered in a cave in the Cheddar Gorge in southwestern England, and are the oldest known carbon-dated skull cups, a craft practiced by Vikings, Australian Aborigines, and tantric Buddhists. The fine workmanship of the cups indicates they were used in rituals, scientists say. If the Britons had wanted only to eat brains there are easier ways to get them. The Greek historian Herodotus documented the practice in the fifth century B.C., but the cups are the first examples found in the British Isles.