Here's how pre-historic man enjoyed his barbecue!

A new study has unearthed the remains of a butchered and cooked female auroch (a pre-historic cow) and the grilling techniques used nearly 8,000 years ago.

The discovery was made from a valley near the river Tjonger in the Netherlands.

According to the study, the individuals skinned the animal and butchered it, reserving the skin and large hunks of meat for carrying back to a nearby settlement.

The chop marks left behind by the flint blade show how the meat was meticulously separated from the bones and removed.

The researchers assume that the blade, worn down from so much cutting was left behind and wound up slightly scorched in the cooking fire.

The 7,700-year-old fire pit gives an idea of how the hunters cooked the meat, eating the bone marrow first and then the ribs.

It is estimated that the grand meal occurred nearly more than 1,000 years before the first farmers with domestic cattle arrived in the region.

“The animal was either caught in a pitfall trap and then clubbed on the head or shot with a bow and arrow with flint point,” Discovery News quoted Wietske Prummel, an associate professor of archaeozoology at the University of Groningen as saying.

The researchers fitted the puzzle by studying the unearthed flint blade found near the aurochs’ bones. These showed that after the animal was killed, the hunters cut its legs off and sucked out the marrow.

“The people who killed the animal lived during the late mesolithic (the latter part of the middle stone age). They were hunter-gatherers and hunting game was an important part of their subsistence activities,” said Marcel Niekus, from the University of Groningen.