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Ancient Cannibals Didn't Turn To Cannibalism Just For the Calories, Study Suggests (sciencemag.org)
sciencehabit quotes a report from Science Magazine: A new, slightly morbid study based on the calorie counts of average humans suggests that man-eating was mostly ritualistic, not dietary, in nature among hominins including Homo erectus, H. antecessor, Neandertals, and early modern humans. On average, an adult male human contains 125,822 calories of fat and protein, enough to meet the 1-day dietary requirements of more than 60 people. The numbers represent a lower limit, as Neandertals and other extinct hominins likely had more muscle mass than modern humans. Still, when compared with other animals widely available to ancient man like mammoths (3,600,000 calories), wooly rhinoceroses (1,260,000 calories), and aurochs (979,200 calories), it hardly seems worthwhile to hunt hominins that are just as wily and dangerous as the hunters, the researchers conclude. Some instances of cannibalism from nine Paleolithic sites, which date from 936,000 to 14,700 years ago, might be chalked up to starvation or not wanting to waste a perfectly good body that died from natural causes.
A friend of mine is a paleoanthropologist (I hope that's the word in English too for "the guy that digs human bones from the ground that have been there a million years and tries to make sense of them"). According to him "ritualistic" and "religious" has become some sort of in-joke for everything that makes no sense. If they find something and can't really see any purpose of the ancient human for doing it, it's for "ritual" or "religious" reasons, because that doesn't have to make sense and it's as good an excuse as any for finding bones and other stuff in odd places, odd settings or arranged in some particular fashion for no apparent reason.
In other words, whenever you get to hear one of them talk about "ritual" reasons for something, it basically means "we really have no good idea why the heck they did that".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
True, but in the end it's basically them saying "We have no idea what that shit is about."
And, let's be honest here, that's what religions look like. Imagine there is no written word. We haven't invented writing yet. And you unearth the ruins of a Catholic church. What will you find? Well, if you do it in Europe, chances are good that you will notice that this building was taller than many of the buildings around, giving you the idea that it was some important building. You will also probably find the altar and notice that this table played some central role in this building. Usually it's not big enough to serve as a table where everyone who was there could sit and eat, so it wasn't the dinner table for the congregation. You might find some of the wood used for the benches and notice that they were arranged in such a way to face that altar, and you would probably deduce that some sort of ritual or religious background is likely.
What else will you find? You will probably find the tabernacle (where the hosts are stored), and you might even find that the (usually) richly decorated bowl inside he (usually also quite lavishly decorated) tabernacle contained an edible substance. It is also usually offset to a side (unless you're dealing with Gothic cathedrals, where it can as well be present near or even on the altar), so you would probably deduce that food still played a key role in the rituals that were held there. Also, food was somehow sacred, because it was stored in such a lavishly decorated box, and it was obviously considered valuable because the box can usually be locked. Usually the ornaments also contain angels that appear as guards for the contents, so you would probably come to the conclusion that this food was also supernaturally guarded against evil spirits or that the congregation was supposed to fear the retaliation of supernatural forces should they somehow act "wrongly" towards food.
Your first conclusion would probably be that the cult celebrating there was either one celebrating food or a cult with sacrificing food as a central element. You will find that the food in that special place is of a single kind (usually host wafers), which suggests that the bread was distributed from there rather than everyone bringing something to the celebration and the food of the believers being stored there. So people congregated to eat together. Which will probably puzzle you because, as stated before, the table, the altar, is by no means big enough to allow everyone fitting into the church to sit around it and have a meal.
What else will you find? Well, invariably, you'll find a cross. Actually, usually you will find multiple ones. The cross as a central element of the faith will be emblazoned on pretty much every sacred item, sometimes multiple times, so you will easily identify it as the most important symbol of the religion. You will quickly also find out that this isn't just some pretty symbol but that the cross is something where someone gets nailed onto and that this is also critical to the religion, i.e. that someone is tortured by being nailed to the cross. You will find paintings, both on canvas as well as on walls, and stained glass, that tell the story of someone being nailed to a cross. This is very obviously a central element of the faith, and you can somehow deduce that the person being nailed to the cross is revered and that it is in some way connected to the divine, that the god or gods these people believe in shine upon the crucified.
So you could deduce that people in this religion either wanted to be nailed to crosses to be considered divine, or that they do it onto others in an attempt to "save" them for their religion. One could also ponder that nailing someone to the cross is some kind of fertility rite (remember the food in the special box off to the side), and that the people of this cult praise and deify the person sacrificing himself in such a manner.
And so on. You see the problem here, that it is virtually impossible to accurately identify and follow the idea of a religion just by the stuff you find in the ground. You can at best make some guesses, but as soon as metaphysical shit gets mixed into the fold, you're usually completely off.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
In the end, it would. What we usually do when we deal with ancient religions and trying to understand them is that we compare them to contemporary religions. We find idols carved out of wood and assume that they are gods or spirits. What we don't assume is that they were toys.
Imagine some "alien" civilization (not necessary coming from out of this planet but having no connection to us today) comes down to earth and finds only part of what we wrote. Imagine they find a book giving the details of the D&D pantheon but nothing else concerning role playing games.
I can SO see people create some sort of future SCO and try to reenact masses for the greater glory of Torm and Sune.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.