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Were Neanderthals Devoured By Humans?
Hugh Pickens writes "The Guardian reports that a Neanderthal jawbone covered in cut marks similar to those left behind when flesh is stripped from deer provides crucial evidence that humans attacked Neanderthals, and sometimes killed them, bringing back their bodies to caves to eat or to use their skulls or teeth as trophies. 'For years, people have tried to hide away from the evidence of cannibalism, but I think we have to accept it took place,' says Fernando Rozzi, of Paris's Centre National de la Récherche Scientifique. According to Rozzi, a discovery at Les Rois in south-west France provides compelling support for that argument. Previous excavations revealed bones that were thought to be exclusively human. But Rozzi's team re-examined them and found one they concluded was Neanderthal." (Continued, below.)
"Importantly, it was covered in cut marks similar to those left behind when flesh is stripped using stone tools. Not every team member agrees. 'One set of cut marks does not make a complete case for cannibalism,' says Francesco d'Errico, of the Institute of Prehistory in Bordeaux. It was also possible that the jawbone had been found by humans and its teeth used to make a necklace, he said. 'This is a very important investigation,' said Professor Chris Stringer, of the Natural History Museum, London. 'This does not prove we systematically eradicated the Neanderthals or that we regularly ate their flesh. But it does add to the evidence that competition from modern humans probably contributed to Neanderthal extinction.'"
Cannibalism: The act or practice of eating human flesh by mankind
H. neanderthalensis != H. sapiens
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Misleading title...
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Neanderthals are not the same species, eating them is on par with eating a great ape.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Her cave show offered coupons for free grilled neanderthal, and well, humans went crazy for it.
Come on down to Jones' Good Ass Neanderthal BBQ & Foot Massage!
Only in France would a Scientist subvert his own work due to culinary objections!
-Peter
It's the new bread!
go to any number of african towns and you'll find guys coming back from the jungle with monkey parts to eat. its called bushmeat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushmeat#Effect_on_Great_Apes
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
William Golding wrote a fictional account of the Neanderthals' extinction at the hands of Homo sapiens:
The Inheritors.
Scary, but beautifully written.
CJ
Ah, arrogance and stupidity, all in the same package. How efficient of you. -- Londo Mollari
First?
no.
Anybody want my mod points?
The Other Other Other White Meat.
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
That robust frame of theirs was probably good for endurance, but those tasty suckers sure couldn't run fast!
Poor neanderthals. Probably thought they were the top of the food chain too, until H.s.s. came along.
Loose lips lose spit.
My office is evidence that neanderthals appear to have got the upper hand in some cases. Present company included.
Well, let's think about your question. sapiens and neanderthals are like cousins, so it would be like eating a cousin... would you eat your cousin? Would you call that cannibalism? You know, since we are using spacious reasoning for now, I would also like to propose that neanderthals were major geeks. As I imagine it, this is how it went down. Joe Sapien and Richard M.S. Neanderthal were hanging out one day like they always did. rich was helping joe with a abacus virus he caught while placing the beeds in suggestive positions. The cave collapses and now Rich is trapped with Joe and some of his frat brothers. They can't get out. They get hungry. Heck - Rich isn't even the same species... who do you kill - THE GEEK. Its the only explanation that makes sense. The neanderthal was one major geek. Thank you. Thank you. I do take requests.
When all else fails, try.
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=geiko%20caveman&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi
Geiko Caveman.
This new finding could've been an instance where enhanced interrogation techniques were being used.
Clearly, the only decent thing to do is to resurrect the Neanderthal species as soon as we can reconstruct their DNA, then pass the Earth into their custody, along with a bashful apology etched as the introductory paragraph of our Rosetta stones.
CAN I HAZ WISHBONE?
Where do you draw the line? Neanderthals were pretty close to modern humans, and as far as we can tell, they were mostly "other tribes we're competing/fighting with", which were the typical target of cannibalism in most human societies that practiced it regularly (as opposed to starvation situations like the Donner Party or that airplane crash.) They may look a little funny, but they're basically the neighbors, not just wildlife.
There are other reasons for it - some of the South Pacific islanders in Vanuatu have explained their motivation for cannibalism as "people are tasty", and that's pretty much why some Africans eat our near cousins like chimps and bonobos, which are about 98% like us. And there are occasional societies that practice it for magical reasons (it's currently a bad time to be albino in some parts of Africa, although the practitioners-of-traditional-medicine don't tend to actually eat the victims.) And we're certainly close enough cousins that eating undercooked apes and even monkeys is a really bad idea - seems to be where AIDS and a few other diseases have gotten to human populations from.
That's not to say that chimps are peace-loving hippies themselves - one of the more vicious things I've seen on TV nature channels was a gang of half a dozen chimps hunting and killing a monkey.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
don't stray from mom and dad and go in the woods or the crazy lady will eat you
its a kids story, with a useful function, and also probably an oral historical memory of when this was real
"long pig" is the name in the south pacific for human meat. because, obviously, we taste like pig
which, as a lover of bacon, makes me a little nervous: i'd probably like the taste
i would wager that every single eyeball reading these words is the offspring, some great-great-great-ancestor, ate human flesh at some point
you can feel morally repulsed by that diea, but the human stomach outweighs your moral compass when push comes to shove, and famine was not an uncommon thing in human history
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
After (stupidly)sending all of their high tech and rations into the sun, the Galactica crew had to dine on something.
An ancient fossilized variety of soylent was found perfectly preserved!
Scientists reached the conclusion that:
SOYLENT GREEN WAS NEANDERTHAL!
Cannibalism, although culturally repugnant to us, is fact of carnivorous history. Dogs eat their own, mice eat their own, fish eat their own, and sharks eat their own; is it so surprising that our ancestors ate their neighbors when food was scarce?
Furthermore, consider the existence (or eradication as proof thereof) of cannibalistic societies: they didn't just randomly choose to eat what they do/did, they were taught to do so by someone.
There are no perfect answers, only the right questions. More questions at http://foresightandhindsight.blogspot.com/
Could someone please tag this with 'nomnomnom'?
Lots of comments say "not cannibalism!" And they have a point. But...
The root of this semantic impasse is that there is no good definition of species, and I don't think there ever will be.
The one usually taught in undergrad bio -- ability to make viable offspring -- has problems. To name a few:
* Two same-gendered humans can't make a viable offspring.
* Prepubescent children, post-menopausal women, and many other humans are sterile.
* Sometimes two "species" could create viable offspring, but they don't. (E.g., different mating dances preclude them mating, but in a lab, sperm A and egg B make a viable offspring.)
* Sometimes A can mate with B, and B with C, but A cannot mate with C directly. (A Chihuahua cannot mate with a Great Dane. It's physically impossible.)
* The nontransitivity above (A, B, and C) is generally true of ALL creatures if you're allowed to go back in time. Go back far enough, and our ancestors could mate with chimp ancestors. A little farther and we share ancestors!
* What about the poor asexual creatures? How do they have "species"?
So whether or not this is 'cannibalism' relies on whether the fossil H. sapiens are conspecific with the fossil H. neanderwhatever. And that's a semantic question with no answer.
But cannibalism or not, our ancestors apparently ate them some neanderthals!
The truth is out... the existence of early Wall Street traders now confirmed.
christians practice ritualistic cannibalism every sunday, body of christ, blood of christ, etc.
http://www.warriors.egympie.com.au/cannibalism.html
West of Cooktown, Chinese were roasted in clay white-ant ovens, smelling and looking ... the blacks suspected the flesh of
exactly like roast pork, even the yellow skin crinkled like that of pork they have
declined to eat white men who were tobacco eaters
being poisoned, knowing the odor was not that of clean, healthy human flesh." In
Castletown, 1895, another report stated, "Once I asked Joci what he liked best to
eat. He replied Talgoro (human flesh)
... Neanderthals taste like chicken.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
As I was reading this I wondered if this is perhaps the origin of the "Cain and Abel" myth?
Tastes like chicken!!!
All these replies of people saying 'but but No! Our ancestors weren't cannibals!' reminds me of a Science/Nat Geo/Discovery Channel show I saw recently about those Cannibal Druids and all the evidence of that happening. Lots and lots of dolts went on camera to mouth a ton of excuses and 'buts' rather than admit that the Druids as Mother Earth loving, New Age darlings were bloodthirsty, life hating, human sacrificing cannibals. I particularly liked when one of the 'professors' said that their cannibalism and human sacrifice was perfectly understandable when you consider that the Roman Army was marching on them and you know how much pressure people are under when those scary Romans are marching. Human sacrifice, cannibalism, savagery, pillaging, raping, - that's who we are folks. It's our heritage, just acknowledge our darker past (and present) and let's try to do better.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
just ask these rugby players in a plane crash
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruguayan_Air_Force_Flight_571
and make sure you get invited to a dinner party, not a donner party
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donner_Party
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
was i the only one who read that as "were netherlanders devoured by humans"? i gotta start watching the news more.
What? Why is everyone looking at me like that?
Wait until someone clones it. It'll be the next craze in restaurants!
Imagine the menu...
Neanderthal Ribs
Slow roasted to perfection, covered in thick Neanderthal broth, fries, and a side.
Well, "cannibalism" still occurs in "modern" times. The most infamous incidents of cannibalism occurred in China from 1966 until 1976. According to a report by the "New York Times" in 1993, "At some high schools, students killed their principals in the school courtyard and then cooked and ate the bodies to celebrate a triumph over 'counterrevolutionaries,' the documents report. Government-run cafeterias are said to have displayed bodies dangling on meat hooks and to have served human flesh to employees.
'There are many varieties of cannibalism,' declares one report, 'and among them are these: killing someone and making a late dinner of it, slicing off the meat and having a big party, dividing up the flesh so each person takes a large chunk home to boil, roasting the liver and eating it for its medicinal properties, and so on.'
The documents suggest that at least 137 people, and probably hundreds more, were eaten in Guangxi Province in southern China in the late 1960's. In most cases, many people ate the flesh of one corpse, so the number of cannibals may have numbered in the thousands."
According to a report by "Time Magazine" in 2001, "The atrocities took many forms, according to documents. One report refers to 'eating people as an after-dinner snack . . .barbecuing people's livers . . .banqueting on human meat.' The same document matter-of-factly relates specific tales of depravity. 'On May 14, 1968,' it says, 'a group of 11, led by the Wei brothers, captured a man named Chen Guorong and killed him with a big knife before cutting out his liver. They shared the human meat with 20 participants.' The same month Wu Shufang, a teacher at the Wuxuan Middle School, was beaten to death; her liver was roasted and eaten. During 1968, 91 members of the Communist Party in Guangxi were expelled on charges that they were involved in cannibalism, but none was severely punished."
To this day, some of the cannibals still hold political power in the Chinese government.
I'm sick of this kind of story, and I'm not sure if the problem is in the press, or with the anthropologists, but its a big leap from the evidence to concluding that its cannibalism. The evidence is interesting and consists of cutmarks on a neanderthal jawbone, cutmarks consistent with defleshing of the jawbone using stone tools. Now why would someone want to do that? To eat lips and cheeks? Really? Sure its possible, but there are other explanations that are just as likely. What would show cannibalism conclusively would be neanderthal dna in homo sapiens sapiens coprolites. I haven't heard of anyone doing any such testing, though someone recently found australopithecine hair in hyena dung from Sterkfontein cave in South Africa, indicating they were eating early hominids at least occassionally.
Humans have a long history of curating bones (especially skulls and jawbones) from others. Some of these are manually defleshed, while others are left to deflesh by natural means. These can be bones of ancestors, relatives, or people killed in warfare. So, cut marks, for me, are much more likely to indicate defleshing for curation.
were they eaten with fava beans and a nice Chianti?
First, the fact that early humans were cannibalistic is no surprise, no further proof is needed other than even in modern day humans (secluded tribes) the practice cannibalism has been handed down through hundreds of generations. Secondly finding a piece of a skull with tool marks on it is not crucial evidence of cannibalism, in fact there is no evidence of what really happened to the fragment of bone or when the tool marks were made.
"tina's here we're getting back together!" "hey, give us a moment!"
Re-read the few verses of Genesis about Cain and Abel. Cain did not eat his brother.
And we're certainly close enough cousins that eating undercooked apes and even monkeys is a really bad idea - seems to be where AIDS and a few other diseases have gotten to human populations from.
= = = = = = = = = = = =
Yeah, Id be willing to bet that a couple of horny guys screwed some monkeys (I mean, they are 98% like we are) is more likely than AIDS contaminated meat.
Im not even sure if contagion can be carried through this way but I know from watching filthy german films that people will f*** anything.
I also worked in a bar bck in college.
Ive seen many a 3h30am closing time when the pickings are slim and 98% human seems like a pretty good option compared to some of the flotsam youd find at that time.
I haven't seen anyone mention this possibility, yet.
"Previous excavations revealed bones that were thought to be exclusively human. But Rozzi's team re-examined them and found one they concluded was Neanderthal."
So, most of these flesh-stripped bones were human, and one was Neanderthal? Maybe it was the Neanderthals eating humans? Are were _sure_ they weren't tool-using?
It was only the cylons that ate them.
I don't see the big deal here. People were always living on the edge of starvation. Why would anything be off the menu? The existence of kuru http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease) certainly suggests that it was not at all unusual. Particularly when it was likely a case of simply seeing the neatherthals as another animal.
Brett
To draw the conclusion that 'humans' were eating neanderthal from one isolated finding is just terribly scientific analysis. We have plenty of instances in modern times where there have been isolated instances of cannibalism. Some cases out of starvation, others out of ritual. But it would not be accurate to take those and say "Humans are cannibals."
Were they around with the neanderthals?
This kind of thing is a minefield, and very hard to prove. To see what I mean, do a google search on "cannibalism anasazi." People get emotional about certain scientific issues, and often the reason they're so emotional is that there's painful history involved, and/or a history of the misuse of science. For instance, it's theoretically a reasonable scientific topic to look for correlations between race and intelligence -- but if you try study it, you'll unleash such a shitstorm that you'll wish you hadn't. Part of this is because the topic isn't PC, but part is also because of history (eugenics, Nazism, Cyril Burt).
Cannibalism has historically been one of these scientific issues that are just hard to study because emotions run too high. For instance, you have the history of Europeans portraying Africans as savage cannibals (which made it easier for Americans to justify slavery, and for the Belgians to justify cutting people's arms off in Congo).
Some archaeologists and anthropologists have gone so far as to claim that cannibalism simply doesn't exist, and never has. Others have found physical evidence that they interpret as evidence of widespread cannibalism in certain societies. Still others say that it exists, but only in a ritualized form.
I'm not convinced that the chances are very good of coming to a definite conclusion about cannibalism that might have happened hundreds of thousands of years ago, when we can't even study the more recent cases.
Find free books.
In my (humble) opinion, it is no concidence that the explosion of cave art about 40,000 years ago in Europe shortly preceded the extinction of the Neanderthals 35,000 years ago. The subject of cave art was mostly hunting scenes, where the modern humans could teach each other what to do during the hunt and learn vocabulary etc. The Neanderthals apparently did not have cave art. So they would not have been anywhere near as skilled in hunting in groups.
So into Europe come these humans which have very highly trained group-hunters against Neanderthals who could not hunt anywhere near as effectively. So first, the modern humans would out-compete the Neanderthals for resources. But secondly, the Neanderthals would not be recognized as fully human because they could not speak in such a sophisticated way. So the Neanderthals would seem like animals.
The reason cave art is mostly about hunting scenes is that teaching vocabulary for static objects can be done with the objects themselves. For fast moving objects like prey, you need to have drawings, and caves are the only places where the drawings survived for us to find.
Some people are perplexed that modern humans make war (not love). The reason is clear. The modern human species gained its ascendancy through genocide and cannibalism tens of thousands of years ago. It's programmed into the genes.
I still have some steaming Republican ass on a plate left over from the last election if you want some.
...more like a sweeter, juicier version of pork.
Neanderthal brrrraaaainz!
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Is simply a pirk of civilization.
I think even most civilized people will choose
cannibalism of non-family over death.
Tastes like chicken!!
Cannibalism. Homosexuality. Abortion. Incest. Animals do it, humans do it; those are Mother Nature's inventions, and who are we to try and remove them from the natural order of things? I call for an international effort to form ARCHAIC (Advisory and Regulatory body for the Conservation of Homosexuality, Abortion, Incest and Cannibalism)!
Srsly now, you guys in funny skirts, let's stop pretending like you are above the Nature and stop destroying its fine inventions. =)
What is this sleeping with females thing you keep reffering to? I slept with my sister all the time, with my mother too. They in their rooms, me in mine. Don't see what is so evil about that.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Logic failure detected.
Dogs are adapt at running all day? Bet you never owned a dog.
And if that is the reason dogs do so well with human beings, please explain everyother domesticated animal to me. From cats to cattle.
Sorry, does NOT compute. You are making a huge leap here based on wrong assumptions about dogs and ignoring that said assumption doesn't apply to other animals that had the same result.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Alternative hypothesis: the neanderthals ate themselves to death.
We don't actually know if Neanderthal were a separate species. Whether they were still genetically compatible with humans or is still a subject of debate.
even a caveman could do it! /my karma, watch it go down.
"Human" is a term applicable to all members of the genus "Homo", just like "Chimpanzee" is the word for all members of "Pan" - the biological genus, that is, not the club (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Club_Copenhagen). As a note of interest, some biologists even argue that chimpanzees are biologically so close to us that they should be included in the same genus.
I suspect the idea that humans are somehow special and "more" than animals stems from the kind of religion we have traditionally practised here in the West, which is in many ways still a "famer- and shepherd religion". To most hunter/gatherers this distinction is unknown - the animals you hunt are seen as persons you have to respect; when we became farmers, animals became mere items that the Creator had made for our convenience.
And of, it isn't hard to see this traditional prejudice reflected in the constantly repeated "Humans vs Neanderthal" nonsense - something that continues despite the ever growing body of evidence that shows the Neanderthal Human to be a sophisticated creature with culture on par with our own at the time - there is evidence that they took care of their elderly and sick, such as the remains of a person who was clearly disabled, yet lived to adulthood, as well as eg. the "Divje Babe" flute (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal_flute) which may be evidence that they practised music. They were clearly very clever hunters, possibly more so than Homo sapiens - a recent study suggests they hunted large prey actively rather than simply scavenging.
I'm not weighing in on whether or not various human cultures have focused on cannibalism; I'm sure they did. I am just concerned about a conclusion based off this evidence. Striping meat off a body for food doesn't mean you plan on eating it yourself, or using it to feed other people. It could be bait, or used for feeding ancient puppies... not less gruesome, but a reasonable use for the Neander-nibbles.
Remember that movie? A "myth" if you like. Made up as you say. EXCEPT the inspiration for the alien was taken from a real wasp that does exactly what the alien does.
No, the killer wasp does NOT lay dormant for ages in ancient space craft and the tarantulla (its prey) is not betrayed by its own species to explore the wasps resting place and take an egg home for research. That part is made up. Or is it? Is the whole movie perhaps an collection of ideas and thought the author has picked up from stories/impressions during his life? Those stories in turn made up by other people who in turn got theirs from other people?
You seem to think that the story of cannablism would have to pass as a indentifiable story from 30.000 years ago to the moment the "modern" old testament was written. Nobody knows exactly how the old testament got put together (except the god-botherers who insist it was dictated by god to... well who knows).
I find a link unlikely as well, but that is because you wouldn't need to go back in time to find canabalism. It was practised in Africa until recently so no resaon to believe it did not happen back then as well and that those who wrote the old testament knew about it.
If of course Cane ate Abel, can't exactly recall that bit but unwilling to go either way on that claim.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Three letters for you: KFC
You're right and the mental gymnastics that so many people perform to back date their extremely modern cultural mores to 99.9999% of humanities existence is almost depressing.
No kids, people haven't always sat in indulgent comfort all day pushing buttons in front of computer screens, never seeing a wild animal and picking food up from the building full of food that's been 'humanely' killed and packaged by people who you would prefer to not think about doing jobs that you couldn't stomach seeing.
There was a long long time where we *were* out there just like all the other animals. And sometimes we were even on the menu for other animals as well.
I think people just don't like thinking about what they may be capable of.
I read an essay by Martin Gardner in one of his books on cannibalism, asking whether it really happened. The essay was really a discussion of a book, which made the claims:
The book claimed that all evidence of customary [1] cannibalism effectively boiled down to a tribe / people / whatever saying: "Those guys who live over there, they are cannibals!" So anthropology students have been taught for ages that various primitive tribes engaged in cannibalism, but there is seemingly no proof of this statement. This was controversial and a few years ago (10, perhaps?) so I'm not sure what the current state of the art is.
[1] There are obvious one-off examples, like recently those rugby players down in South America, and in (pre)history perhaps eating mighty chiefs/warriors to try to absorb some of their strength or mana. This is, rather, looking at the idea of tribes that eat people on a regular basis.
Repton.
They say that only an experienced wizard can do the tengu shuffle.
Ask an african about slavery, do they EVER mention that the majority of slaves shipped to europe and america were SOLD by black slavers?
Ask a german wether he/she "es gewust habe". "Nein, ich habe es nicht". 12+ million people rounded up and slaughtered by volunteers and special units that nobody had ever heard about.
Ask a ROMAN catholic who killed Jesus Christ, bet you none of them make a direct link between ROMANS and ROMAN catholics.
Ask an american to explain the difference between conquering the west and the final solution/lebensraum. Making proper use of land illused by the lesser natives who are to be concentrated into special places where they would be more happy? Nah, no link.
Ask a dutch person why one of the most hated words, "apartheid" needs no translation. Ask them why in their colonies in the america's, the natives are BLACK.
The list goes on and on. Human history ain't nice but we like to pretend that we are nice even while we are butchering millions.
Ask why millions are starving from lack of food and water, while we are getting fat arguing on slashdot. But hey, I am nice, it wasn't me. And you better agree, or it is you too.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
"Lots and lots of dolts went on camera to mouth a ton of excuses and 'buts' rather than admit that the Druids as Mother Earth loving, New Age darlings were bloodthirsty, life hating, human sacrificing cannibals."
Very little is known about the Druids since they had no written language, most of what is known was written by the Romans who were not above using propoganda on their enemies. This is the main reason why historians doubt the written (by the winner) accounts. The written accounts (and the arguments) have been around for centuries and I suspect you just pulled the "Mother Earth loving, New Age darlings" bit out of your arse because it suits your own worldview rather than anything to do with the content of the documentary.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Why don't they just search twitter?
"I luvs bbq boneheads!"
"Homo" is latin for "human."
How do we know that this wasn't just a bad case of the zombies??
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
The story was recently recounted on PBS's Frontline. I was quite surprised that modern blood feuds would lead to cannibalism, but I guess they are called blood feuds for a reason.
Think global, act loco
Maybe it was just the French who were eating the Neanderthals. That would go a long way towards explaining that certain 'je ne sais quois' difference between them and all the rest of humanity.
but we know they were DELICIOUS apparently.
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
Stop trolling and just admit you're gay, already.
Seriously? Come on!
Why would people be shocked about this? meat is meat. We eat cow, pig, horse(on this side of the pond that is), chicken, ... and why wouldn't we eat cat or dog, or in this case neanderthal ? People would then start to object about how cats, dogs (or neaderthal) are much 'smarter' animals. Truth be said, we're not that much smarter than all those animals. And if they say we have feelings, I say : those animals have too.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
...some of the South Pacific islanders in Vanuatu have explained their motivation for cannibalism as "people are tasty",
Vanuatu, isn't that where Kazaa was incorporated? Do you think that this might be the real reason why they disappeared so suddenly?
Huh?
It is pitch black, you are likely to be eaten by a human.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Welcome our new Homo sapiens sapiens overlords
I now know why obesity is a problem in the modern world.
It's not been brains or an opposable thumb that got us to the top, it's just been a good appetite.
Humanity has eaten its way to the top of the simian evolutionary tree.
Nah - it was just confirmed that the French will eat anything and that it started early.
Ewwwww... you know what beef tastes like when you take it from a milk cow that got too old to give any milk anymore so it was slaughtered?
Yuck.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Nah, she's ugly.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Actually just about nothing in palaeoanthropology has a "real foundation in facts". I qualified my number by the words "about" and "probably". I think that is a sufficient indication of the lack of confidence and precision. Don't you think so? Otherwise you have to just give and say we know nothing.
The number 250,000 is not far from the median of what people think of as the beginning of language, I think. And remember that we could also argue that chimps and lemurs have language. By this definitions, humans got language 6 million or more years ago (probably). If you ask for something a bit more like modern language, you might have to say about 100,000 or less years ago (probably). I don't think a slashdot item is the best place to expound all the theories of palaeolinguistics.
Did our ancestors serve the neanderthals with Chianti and some Fava beams?
like nature does: could you mate with it and raise off-spring?
Quack, quack.
rather than admit that the Druids as Mother Earth loving, New Age darlings were bloodthirsty, life hating, human sacrificing cannibals.
How's your own bias any less dolt-like?
Quack, quack.
To draw the conclusion that 'humans' were eating neanderthal from one isolated finding is just terribly scientific analysis.
;-)
Cha-ching! I smell grant money.
Quack, quack.
I know it's all the rage nowadays to troll in the name of racism and stuff, but at least you could try to use your brain first. At all. Propaganda doesn't work well if it's that incredibly stupid and unbelievable, you know?
1. Raping a chimp is a horribly bad idea. They are fast, have incredible upper body strength (they use their arms for locomotion, you don't), good reach with those arms, and don't have hangups about killing a human in self-defense. (You're not even the same species, so their mirror neurons won't even fire to prevent deadly injury.)
Briefly, it's only one notch less dangerous than trying to rape a tiger.
So the thought of an african raping one... damn, if they could do something like that, I'm starting to have serious respect for them.
2. The virus can actually be transmitted by _any_ kind of contact between infected blood/flesh/membranes and mucous membranes or unprotected flesh. E.g., probably more humans got infected with AIDS from reusing syringes, than from actual sex. Also, roll it a bit in your head that oral sex can also get you infected with AIDS: the virus _can_ enter your blood stream through the mouth.
What I'm getting at is that eating that meat raw (including smoked, as salami, etc) can get enough viruses in your mouth to run the risk of infection. It won't happen every time, but get a few million people doing it regularly, and someone will hit the jackpot.
Also, look at that "unprotected flesh" bit. Simply cutting yourself while preparing infected meat, can get _any_ infection into your bloodstream. That's in fact one risk that surgeons face every day: if you cut yourself while operating on someone with an infection, you can get infected too. (As a bit of trivia: doctors finally started washing their hands only after one operated after having dissected a corpse, and managed to kill himself by septic shock too, not just his patient.)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Civilised behaviour is not required to "win" at evolution.
We just had to kill more of them and make babies faster than they did.
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/2682654/idiocracy_opening_sequence/
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
Human sacrifice, cannibalism, savagery, pillaging, raping, - ... let's try to do better.
Try? Try? The law courts would like you to do better than "try".
"There is no 'try'. Do - or do not." (Yoda)
I am anarch of all I survey.
Yes and no.
Chimps have been well documented to have tribes no larger than a hundred or so. Aiello and Dunbar published studies showing a strong positive correlation between the range of vocalizations and the size of social groups in a wide range of species of monkeys.
The point here is that it is difficult to know who is "us" and who is "them" if you don't have language. It is difficult to identify so many individuals. (By comparison, humans need team uniforms to distinguish teams when there are more than 2 or so on each team.) But language permits you to very quickly identify an outsider from your group. Therefore language capability enables super-tribes or clans of thousands to be formed. That was really my point, that _big_ tribes can be formed when you've got language, and the incoming homo sapiens had that sort of language, and almost certainly that kind of large-tribe bonding.
Elephants for example are well known to walk literally hundreds of miles to watering holes - some even through the namibian desert. Other migrating heard animals such as wildebeast do the same on a lesser scale.
I know all of you English speakers envy our accents (paté, attaché-case), but there is no need for one in "Recherche", however cool it may seem.
But it is perfectly OK for Klingons to eat Gagh.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
We blame AIDS on African Africans love for bush meat because them getting raped by Bonobos wouldn't be seen as politically correct. Getting raped by a chimp is a horrifying[1] idea. They are fast, have incredible upper body strength (they use their arms for locomotion, you don't), pig penes, and don't have hangups about killing a human in self-defense. (You're not even the same species, so their mirror neurons won't even fire to prevent deadly injury.) So the thought of an bonobo raping one... damn, if they could do something like that, I'm starting to have serious respect for them. [1] Yes, even for slashdotters. I dearly hope even for slashdotters.
IF you are starving - pork is just fine.
Qur'an 16:115.
He has only forbidden you dead meat, and blood, and the flesh of swine, and any (food) over which the name of other than Allah has been invoked. But if one is forced by necessity, without willful disobedience, nor transgressing due limits,- then Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.
Qur'an 2:173.
He hath only forbidden you dead meat, and blood, and the flesh of swine, and that on which any other name hath been invoked besides that of Allah. But if one is forced by necessity, without wilful disobedience, nor transgressing due limits,- then is he guiltless. For Allah is Oft-forgiving Most Merciful.
Not sure about Jewish religious laws but I'm a bit inclined to believe that Jehovah (I'm not a Jew, not blasphemy, can't stone me. Jehovah, Jehovah...) would look more kindly upon a pig eater than on a man eater.
Particularly if you have to chose between hurting/killing a man and hurting/killing a pig.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
While these findings certainly indicate that it is likely that the two species co-existed, possibly warred with each other, and likely took trophies (true still today), there is absolutely nothing to indicate actual cannabilism. That's still pure speculation. I don't have a vested interest either way, but I'm not jumping on that cannabilism train without some actual evidence.
FTA: But not every team member agrees. "One set of cut marks does not make a complete case for cannibalism," said Francesco d'Errico, of the Institute of Prehistory in Bordeaux.
How about taking a piece of some other country, giving it to them as their historically and culturally inherited lands and then arming them with modern weaponry including but not limited to nuclear weapons?
What?
Jews and Indians are somehow fundamentally different just because Jew reservations had furnaces and Germans had an actual (and efficient) plan how to get rid of them and weren't squeamish about it?
Well, OK... Yes...
Indians were actually robbed out of an entire continent quite recently, while Jews lost only a strip of desert ages ago.
Point taken, but that's orthogonal to what I was really trying to say. The point isn't whether that biceps would make someone less horny for hot chimp booty, but whether you could survive trying to rape that chimp. They'd use those strong arms to inflict some hideous blows or can even tear you apart, if they wanted to. Plus, we're talking a species intelligent enough to use tools. Any item that can be swung around like a club, a chimp can actually use it like that. They use rocks, branches or even sharpened sticks routinely in their own habitat too. Unless you try to rape that chimp in a padded room, they can brain you with a chair, umbrella, branch, or a few other things that your human mind wouldn't even register as a potential weapon. And again, they'll have some mighty arm muscles and length (for momentum) to put some serious strength behind such a blunt impact.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Neanderthal-burgers...
OK, that is actually two words.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
There is no such thing as molecules to man evolution. Neanderthals were men who lived before the flood of Noah, when men lived longer. If you lived hundreds of extra years, your libs would be larger and your head would continue to slope. And you would look like a Neanderthal too.
He preserved him to eat later. Cain smoked Abel, right?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
FTFY.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Tastes like chicken.
This is why it was a bad idea for the BSG crew to abandon technology.
So what? The guys with little brains eat the guys with big brains. What is new about that? A quick google search of "RIAA vs." returns sufficient results to prove that case.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
No anthropologist / explorer had ever witnessed cannabilism.
No tribe had ever admitted to it.
Well, sometimes cannibalism is about more than just filling your belly (as can be food in general). It can also have spiritual or other cultural significance, thus not something you're going to necessarily discuss with outsiders, and certainly not demonstrate for them.
I know someone whose family still practices the ritual consumption of deceased family members. They consume various organs both as a way of honoring the dead and to carry on part of their physical being in the family. Obviously this is a very intimate thing, and I'm one of the few outside of the family who knows. I'm sure this isn't an isolated case, but it would be very difficult to discover how often it occurs.
I would think it's basically a given that some 'primitive tribes' engaged in cannibalism. I think it's the automatic association with barbarism and the absence of any kind of cultural sophistication that is unwarranted.
Finding cut marks on a human bone does not automatically lead to the conclusion that cannibalism had taken place. Many cultures (both relatively recent and old) engaged in a form of ancester worship that involved stripping the flesh off of the remains of the deceased and the displaying of the bones. There is also the possibility (as the article mentions) that trophy taking took place just as headhunters in New Guinea and elsewhere engaged in.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
I mean, they were "ruder times". How do we know they weren't taking their body and blood literally? (Seriously, consider Stranger in a Strange Land.)
mark "or were the homo saps early funnymentalists?"
If this is true, it proves humans and Neanderthals were interacting at a high level. So it's almost certain that some interbreeding occurred as well and it's likely those genes are still out there. It's possible that if it was happening enough, even with incompatible genomes, this could happen.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Without social programming, we still feel hostile towards people who are "different", whether those are individuals from our own social group ore another race.
And we're not that special, other species do it also. It probably served the purpose of "cleaning up the gene pool" 300.000 years ago.
Wether people feel comfortable with it or not, we still carry along with us many of the emotional responses out ancestors developed, and even species from which we evolved.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
I am 99% sure i have watched documentaries, 10 years ago, that had the same findings for actual cannibalism back then.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Okay, okay! I admit it! My people ate them all! We kept saying one more couldn't hurt, and then they were gone! We're sorry!
Moderators: Before moderating a comment Insightful/Informative, check to see if a child post has already refuted it.
Animals further apart than human and chimps DNA-wise can produce offspring: Ligers and mules.
Neandertal was probably more like a strong racial difference.
Druids ... were bloodthirsty, life hating, human sacrificing cannibals
Bloodthirstiness, hate of life and human sacrifice have no cause-effect relationships between them. Love of life much more likely leads to bloodthirstiness and human sacrifice than hate of life, bloodthirstiness do not necessary lead to human sacrifice or imply hate of life and human sacrifice do not imply hate of life or bloodthirstiness in general or in particular. Cannibalism do not imply or is not being implied by any of the other attributes.
Of course, I wouldn't argue blindly against any evidence based characterization of these violent pagan gods worshiping heathens representing the true inner spirit of modern Europeans.
There is a bunch of sadhus in India called the Aghoris, who live near crematoriums around the river Ganga. Their staple food includes remnants of cremated bodies.
Food (I know :P) for thought:
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2005/10/28/documentary-takes-a-bite-out-of-cannibals/
http://venom-mylife.blogspot.com/2008/05/aghori-sadhus-in-india-practise.html
Reading the top part of the story summary gave a completely different meaning to the "read more 734 more bytes" link.
We should bring Neanderthals back to life to see how good they taste... anyone got any recipes?
It is fairly well established by now, if one studies psychology and anthropology, that the human brain is not just culturally but neurologically capable of designating any other social group outside of the self as "them", and that anyone who is "them" instead of "us" is automatically NOT HUMAN. There is a reason that so many cultural self-names throughout history all over the world translate literally to "the people". If you are not "us" then you are not human, and obviously you can be not just killed but killed and eaten.
It should then come as no surprise to anyone who really looks at anthropology that cannibalism has been common (under certain circumstances) in nearly all cultures and still occurs to this day (under certain circumstances). It will always happen whenever people allow themselves to get into that neurological state of mind where they designate any other group as "them" instead of "us", because the idea of "them" really means to our brains quite literally "not human like us".
It should therefore be encouraged that all levels of social groups starting with the the self and moving outward should consider all humans in existence as "us" to help keep things like cannibalism from occurring in the future. People who are capable of viewing any other humans as "them" should be looked upon with great suspicion, since they are fully capable of doing anything they feel like. Unfortunately this describes 99.999% of humanity and probably always will. So watch your back. Anytime you do anything that could trigger the "us vs. them" neurological response in another social grouping, you are in grave danger.
None of this is intended as a joke in any way. I am being very literal. Any human being you ever meet is fully capable of picking up a heavy stick and beating you to death without a second thought, given the right set of neurological inputs. It is only through extensive life-long social conditioning that this happens as seldom as it does today. Which is to say, not quite as often as it used to happen.
There is a second neurological function of the human brain that explains why it is always so difficult to obtain evidence to prove atrocities like cannibalism. Our brains basically have two different modes. In one mode, we can go out and kill our neighbor and eat his liver (under the right circumstances), and in the other mode we act like modern, civilized human beings. The two modes never meet, and the more primitive mode knows that the civilized mode thinks things like cannibalism are bad, so we automatically hide things from the civilized mode of our brains (or the civilized mode has coping mechanisms that allow us to clean up evidence of bad things the primitive mode has done, without noticing what we see). The human brain is chock full of this kind of disconnect between what we do or witness and what we remember. Especially when it has to do with something we did ourselves.
This kind of behavior has been witnessed and documented in pretty much every culture. People commit unimaginable atrocities during one time period (like a war) and then when things calm down they all act like they've always been civilized people and never really did anything wrong (or at least find it difficult to comprehend how they committed the atrocities). We only find things like cannibalism "impossible" today because we somehow manage to keep ourselves in civilized brain mode most of the time these days.
We've fooled ourselves into thinking that primitive brain mode has disappeared, but anyone who actually studies human behavior will notice that the primitive brain mode still exists in every single human being alive today and can come out any moment for any reason. Ted Bundy? Charles Manson? Their primitive brain modes were just a little more dominant than in most of us.
Unfortunately it's not going to be so easy to get rid of the primitive brain mode. Throughout history it has been a survival trait that allowed one group to go out and kill off its neighbors and take over their territory, or to su
Did homo sapien tribes have their own pet neanderthals?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091498/
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
In Mexico we eat them, they are delicious (gusanos de maguey, for your reference).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Ritualistic cannibalism pretty well documented in the Aztec Empire and other Mesoamerican cultures.
I will not even bother to google for it.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Reading that synopsis of that movie, that sounds like pretty much the worst possible idea.
See, _male_ chimps are even worse even if you treat them nicely. Eventually they get ideas that they want to be the alpha, _especially_ against women. And if the signs aren't properly understood and the proper chimp submission signals given, they _will_ escalate it to some rather nasty violence. Bear in mind that even against a submissive chimp female, the chimps can be violent at times. Against one who doesn't accept the proper hierarchy? Ooer.
Sorta like how male dogs start giving signs that they want to challenge you for alpha around two years of age. Except against most dogs you have the size advantage, so they generally don't push it too far. Plus, with dogs you can do tricks like grabbing their throat and pinning them to the ground, which is accepted by dog standards to be the "I win because I could tear your throat off now if I wanted to" situation. (With another dog it would be a pair of jaws around the throat, not a hand.) With a chimp they have the strength advantage and the brains to know it, and if you're in range to reach for his throat, so is he for your throat. And, really, their conflicts and challenges are solved only by beating or intimidating the other into submission anyway.
Now maybe with a bonobo you could get along better. Those guys don't sound like they'd resort to violence if they're well fed and generally if they don't have to fight for limited resources. And they like to solve almost any social situation via sex (heck, even as a greeting), so the plot would sound sorta believable if you're willing to not think much about it. But the movie sounds like it has a common chimp, and with those a chimp-and-lone-woman scenario is a recipe for grievous injury in the long run.
On the other hand, humans have huge genitals compared to any other primate I know of. So that women (of any race) would actually want an ape as a lover (except maybe as part of some severe schizophrenia), that's IMHO very unlikely. I may rant against the obsession with huge penises that some people have, but ridiculously undersized is a whole other dish altogether, and that's really what you'd get from an ape. I'm only saying that as a way of saying: no, I don't expect that HIV was propagated via some endemic male-chimp-on-female-human scenarios either.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"No tribe had ever admitted to it."
:(
Talk to any west papuan highlander, I have seen many readily admit to it on Australian TV claiming it's part of their traditional legal system. For example; say someone in the tribe dies unexpectedly(heart attck, stroke), the "cause" is determined to be an evil spirt, the tribal elders get together and name the person who is inhabited by the spirit (usually the nerdy kid or someone from another tribe that's been sniffing around). It's then up to the males of the tribe to carry out the "sentencing" and kill the person, then destroy the evil spirit by some grotesque ritual such as the proverbial "eating brains". They also ritualistically eat the brains of monkeys for some spiritual reason that I can't recall. Most tribes understand killing a lumberjack or a miner is asking for trouble but they fight with each other as they always have done.
OTOH, These people and most of the forest they have lived in for 10,000yrs will be gone by 2030.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
http://www.isita-org.com/jass/Contents/2009%20vol87/PDF/On-Line_bassa/JASs2009_06_RamirezRozi.pdf
It's open access.
The subject is trying to resolve evidence of interaction between Neandertal and AMH (Anatomically Modern Human). Little material is unequivocally associated with the Neanderthals.
First of all, the attribution of one of the mandibles to "Neandertal" is on a probabilistic basis, there being no uniquely diagnostic characters.
What age is this deposit? Well, at least 5 layer (units) were reported from the excavation (implying 5 different ages), 2 containing human remains. The types of stone/ bone artefacts recovered are not definitive ; there are similarities to Advanced Aurignacian, but with elements similar to the Early and/ or Archaic Aurignacian. Radio-carbon ages are reasonably robust at "between ca. 27.3 kyr and 30.4 14C kyr BP (1 kyr = 1,000 years) for both units." These ages are reasonably robust, but
As, indeed, always.
i.e., the cut is on the tongue side of the lower jaw (not on the outside) as if someone were cutting out flesh around the tongue. It's not a position that would be accessible until the owner was completely incapacitated, if not dead. Similar marks are seen in comparable positions on 23% of the associated finds of reindeer mandibles.
"May" is an important word.
Which is typically cautious scientific wording. It's not impossible that these cut marks indicate cannibalism, but there are other non-cannibalistic interpretations that are just as plausible.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
What I don't understand is that made Cro Magnons good at killing Neanderthals which where definitely much stronger and probably similarly intelligent (bigger brains).
The problem with this article is that it is a prime example of a technical article, with one off-hand comment from one of the researcher (these marks may have indicated cannibalism by homo sapien sapien) the press grabs it, and the point is taken as fact.
Generally, we (HSS) do not consider ourselves cannibals, but specific and localized groups have practiced cannibalism. Under severe conditions modern individuals have resorted to cannibalism for survival. I would believe that if cannibalism was a significant source of nutrition of early modern man, we would have found significantly more evidence in other excavations than this single discovery.
You use the word 'Mana' so are obviously aware of Maori. I would have thought that Maori would have been an obvious example that there was at least some cultures at some times in which cannibalism occurred more than occasionally. The Wikipedia article is good on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/ /wiki/Cannibalism as it does address the argument that cannibalism is almost certainly overstated as slander against other races. Certainly I have personally heard pakeha making racist remarks about Maori being 'primitive cannibals'.
But if you look at the references cited by the Wiki article, there appears to really be tribes that did admit to engaging in cannibalism and evidence that it was relatively common. Not that it occurred that often or that humans were a quick easy alternative to chicken or pig.
Seems you must have pissed off a moderator along the way; everything along the end of this trail was "un-modded", except for yours, all down to "0". Some may have been a bit flippant, but your point about whether you can make the just to the jaw-bone scratches indicating cannibalism is dead-on (this was one of your comments a couple after this one).
My favorite start of a headline in a tabloid is; "Scientist Says, bhah, bhah, blah, bhah" and if you actually look at what's going on either its taken completely out of context (often in the case of the tabloids) or its simply one guy giving a completely unsubstantiated opinion, which is then presented as fact (as in this situation).
I wonder if they tasted like chicken.