What’s for dinner?
.
Old dry bones are not cadavers.
Paleo dieters will have to step up their game.
Waste not, want not.
Do it was hunters, gatherers and those that literally fed off of the productive class.
Is what happened to unsuccessful cave painters ...
Really? Who’s for dinner?
Explains the disappearance of Neanderthals. They pestered Homo Sapiens, until they finally got fed up with them.
Well that just expanded the options for paleo dieters LOL
Cannibalism is in our past. It is also in our future.
Back in the 1980’s, a respected anthropologist wrote a book refuting the vast majority of “recorded” cannibalism.
Outside of the contemptuous eating of an enemy’s heart after a battle, most accounts are unverified accusations from one tribe against another, doubled by the other tribe asserting cannibalism from the first, though both deny doing it themselves. Therefore, two cannibal tribes, without any real evidence.
There are some exceptions, such as starvation cannibalism, typically on isolated islands with few or no animals and poor fishing. But this was not cannibalism out of preference.
Of the known cases of cannibalism, such as in New Guinea, they often result in a prion disease called “Kuru”, an incurable degenerative neurological disorder endemic to tribal regions. From eating human brains and bone marrow.
(Prions are extremely hard to destroy, requiring both very harsh chemicals and extended autoclaving.)
Elsewhere, *ritualistic* cannibalism does not involve the consumption of flesh, but of ashes after cremation of an honored leader, added to some drink.
So, the bottom line is that this was likely either intermittent cannibalism, carried out in times of starvation; or ritualistic cannibalism, in which the meat was removed from the bones as part of a death ritual.
Survival cannibalism is found in hunter gathering cultures and agrarian cultures. A crop failure, or prolonged drought is all it takes.
Well, well - my neighbor’s made of meat!
Who knew Islam pre-dated MadMo?
Can’t remember the name of the book, but the authors thesis was that cannibalism, specifically cannibalism that involved eating the brains of the victim, was the cause of the sudden jump in the evolutionary path that led to homo sapiens.
Something distanced homo sapiens from the other hominid species and they believed that the brain contains additional nutrients (or whatever) that enhanced the brains of the cannibal species that evolved to homo sapiens.
At least it is an alternative to Ancient Aliens tinkering with our DNA to create us in their image. :-)
Pass the frontal lobe, please.