Posted on 12/04/2006 5:01:47 PM PST by blam
Did starving Neanderthals eat each other?
22:00 04 December 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Rowan Hooper
Neanderthals lived a desperately tough life, sometimes so close to starvation that when one of them died their compatriots would fall upon the body and devour it, according to new research.
Scorned as clumsy, idiotic brutes with little in the way of developed culture, our pitiless modern view of Neanderthals may be tempered by new findings that provide insight into the terrible life our evolutionary cousins faced.
Antonio Rosas, of the National Museum for Natural Sciences in Madrid, Spain, and colleagues studied 43,000-year-old Neanderthal remains found in the El Sidrón cave in the north of the Iberian peninsula.
The cave is extraordinarily rich in Neanderthal remains. About 1300 Neanderthal fossils have been excavated since its accidental discovery in 1994. And the picture emerging from analysis of the remains is now enriching our understanding of the much-maligned species.
Spiritual life
Rosas and colleagues examined the teeth of eight individuals found in the cave and found hypoplasia lines – evidence that during growth, the individuals had probably gone through a period of starvation. Moreover, cuts discovered on some of the bones suggest that cannibalism was practiced by the group.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
Taste like chicken?
Only when the grub got low.
Is this about politics?
I don't know why not. Modern humans turn to cannibalism fairly quickly during times of starvation.
I always new Democrats were like Neanderthals, When times get tough they eat their own.
I don't want to talk about what Garry Studds and Barney Frank do!!
I don`t think they did that. Islam wasn`t invented yet.
So did the Uruguayan rugby team.
Scorned as clumsy, idiotic brutes with little in the way of developed culture
From that it could be about the Clinton years in the WH.
Donner, Party of 8 and less?
GGG Ping.
"Modern humans turn to cannibalism fairly quickly during times of starvation."
_____________________________________________________
yeah--i went to the frig, and nothin' was there, so i ate some people.
i HAD to--i wuz starvin!!!
Nah!
I'll take the duck in mango sauce!
I'll have the roast Oog with magno salsa.
"They tasted like chicken..."
Geez.
Now who do we apologize to? And who gets the reparations windfall?
You gotta love this stuff. Human beings can't even get the basic facts straight about current events, let alone report them accurately. Yet, our experts are frightfully sure about what transpired 43,000 years ago. Uh, yuh.
Lighten up.
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