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New Evidence in Historical Cannibalism Debate
An anonymous reader writes "ScienceNOW is reporting that a team of scientists led by Geneticist Jaume Bertranpetit has called into question findings from an earlier study of human prion diseases. The first study, led by John Collinge of University College London, stated that the existence of a gene that codes for prions was a result of a "balancing act" that had kept it in the gene pool for so long. The balancing act was supposedly due to widespread cannibalistic practices in human history. The new report suggests that their results were skewed because of low frequency variations known as 'ascertainment bias.'"
It doesnt really matter that much to me if my ancestors did a little canibalism, or even a lot for that matter. After all Im pretty sure that somewhere down the line some or perhaps even a lot of my ancestors engaged in equally terrible things to survive or perhaps even took part in them without "survival" really being an issue.
These thoughts dont exactly delight me.
However they dont really frighten me either.
To me all this article really says is that genetics is more complicated that we are currently able to understand and goes a lot deeper than just decoding a genome. One scientists sees some data and comes to a conclusion, another scientist looks at the same data a couple years later and reaches the opposite conclusion.
(You knew it was coming)
... is people!"
Fry: "My God! What if the secret ingredient
Leela: "No. There's already a soda like that. Soylent Cola."
Fry: "Oh. How is it?"
Leela: "It varies from person to person."
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
Every culture used to do some weird/nasty/mean things at some point.
While every culture has things in the past it's done it's not proud of, cannibalism may not be as horrid as it sounds. If for example the society becomes sustainable it would make sence that something would need be done about it. Could be no more than self-sacrifice, some form of lottery, or simply the need to waste nothing. Or it could be one fell on a tribal hunt, the beast got away, and the wish of the fallen comrade was for the tribe to survive the winter. You might think it would be less cruel to for example eject individuals from your tribe for the sake of the whole, you would have to know the conditions of the outside enviroment and their perception of it to judge whether they were being cruel or kind. If we are talking a pre-copper age culture, I think I would rather die at home quickly than being left half eaten beign picked apart by the crows. If we are talking the copper/bronze ages expelsion might have been a kinder solution. At least a person could have some basic armor and a weapon, even a horse. It's silly to put things into moral context when no one needs morality when there isn't enough to eat.
Cannibalism is a total taboo today, we are wise enough to understand it's not a typicaly healthy habbit. But in it self it's neither evil or immoral. We probally get this belief from those who discovered this age old taboo was simply unhealthy and assumed some sky-god / earth-god was punishing us.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
> LOOK
You see a lamp.
> LOVE LAMP
Do you really love the lamp, or are you just saying it because you saw it?
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
two cannibals are eating a clown. one turns to the other and says "does this taste funny to you?"
In related news Morgan Spurlock has decided to do a new documentary where he will eat nothing but MacDonalds employees for 30 days.
We should only consider to be "taboo" those practices that are taboo across all cultures everywhere.
First of all, you use the term "taboo" in your proposed definition of taboo. That never makes for a helpful definition.
Second, your statement can either be taken to mean: if it's not forbidden in all cultures, then it's ok to do. Which means if you can find one culture that did not forbid, say, rape or murder or child molestation (which you probably could do), we should change our laws so as to stop discouraging these misunderstood "non-taboo" practices.
I doubt you mean anything that dumb, right? In which case you must be trying to distinguish between "taboo" and "immoral", where "taboo" means maladaptive and forbidden across cultures, and "immoral" is questionable but non-maladaptive behavior that should still be discouraged. Otherwise you've inadvertantly made yourself a NAMBLA advocate.