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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.'"
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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.
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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
christians practice ritualistic cannibalism every sunday, body of christ, blood of christ, etc.
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.
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You seem to be implying that myth tends to have no reasoning or value.
I'd suggest that attempting to explain the universe based on observable phenomenon is one of the most important traits of humanity: it's the foundation of culture, and usually where science begins, for example.
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.
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How do you know the Neanderthals weren't the aggressors? But Humans being more intelligent were able to beat them into submission?
You frame your post like the big bad humans came in and exterminated the poor gentle defenseless Neanderthals because Humans are just so awful.
The swan song of the self deprececating urban 'intellectual'.
Nature's produced a hell of a lot worse and more blood thirsty killers than Humans.
I suspect you might be able to train pigs to play pacman.
Pigs are quite smart.
Just get one of those brain interfaces for them to make it easier for them to control stuff.
But meat is meat. Just about any animal that lives near humans and isn't toxic has been eaten at some point, and often comes to be a regular item on the menu.
I thought about that Twilight Zone episode where the twist was that "To Serve Man" was actually a cookbook. I figured this was totally backward after watching a lot of Andrew Zimmern's Bizarre Foods show. There seems to be almost no living thing (an isn't deadly toxic) that humans won't eat. I think it's actually the aliens out there that would have to worry about us eating them, we've already tried everything edible on this planet.
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