Posted on 01/12/2006 6:06:49 PM PST by TFFKAMM
There's no physical evidence that the family who gave the Donner Party its name had anything to do with the cannibalism the ill-fated pioneers have been associated with for a century and a half, two scientists said Thursday.
Cannibalism has been documented at the Sierra Nevada site where most of the Donner Party's 81 members were trapped during the brutal winter of 1846-47, but 21 people, including all the members of the George and Jacob Donner families, were stuck six miles away because a broken axle had delayed them.
No cooked human bones were found among the thousands of fragments of animal bones at that Alder Creek site, suggesting Donner family members did not resort to cannibalism, the archaeologists said at a conference of the Society for Historical Archaeology in Sacramento, Calif.
"The Donner family ended up getting the stigma basically because of the name," said Julie Schablitsky, one of the lead authors. "But of all the people, they were probably the least deserving of it."
The sawed and chopped animal bone fragments, recovered during an archaeological dig over the past three years, do suggest "extreme desperation and starvation," the study said. One of the animals eaten was a pet dog — presumably "Uno," mentioned in some of the children's later writings.
"The Donner Party's experience was bad, but it wasn't as bad as everybody's been told," said Schablitsky, a historical archaeologist at the University of Oregon's Museum of Natural and Cultural History.
The findings by Schablitsky and Kelly Dixon, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Montana, don't necessarily disprove the accounts of cannibalism told by rescuers and survivors stranded in a fierce winter storm in the mountains southwest of Reno and north of Truckee, Calif...
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
The German guy -- one of the best and most sparingly written characters in any film. His entire personality revealed in about 1/2 second.
Won't even ask about the catering.......but I bet ribs are on the menu.....
We've been Netflix customers since mid 2000. We love the service, and it got even better when they opened a distribution center in Worcester, the town next door. Now, if we put a DVD in the mail on Wed., they receive it on Thurs., ship out a new one to us that afternoon, and we usually receive it on Friday! It's great!
They say the same thing about the grounds of the Kennedy Compound... But I'm not satisfied!
Mark Twain did a hilarious short story on a group of stranded Senators on a train, "Cannibalism in the Cars". Worth reading.
Good actor too. He was Tupolev, the Sov Alfa captain in Hunt for Red October.
We switched to Netflix vs. renting at Blockbuster.....and haven't looked back. Superb service, and SO fast in getting you your movies it is unbelievable. I am dying to study their logistics/distribution model to see how they do it.
Lassie. Irish girl/woman. Diminutive of Lass.
I *know* what it means- I happen not to be one.
Really? Cool!
Who is the Russian(?) actor in The Saint who plays the oligarch. The guy was great, but I haven't seen him in anything else.
"I left for an hour," Twain said, "and when I returned, there wasn't a specimen left alive!"
Stay away from the left wing?
I'm not referring to you. I'm referring to the blonde in the film with the thick Irish accent.
Re: "Mark Twain did a hilarious short story on a group of stranded Senators on a train, "Cannibalism in the Cars". Worth reading."
On line at http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/1288/
Ah- I read it as if there'd been a comma present. My gaffe.
Doing three things at once here.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0784884/
I think this is the guy.
Multitasking is good.
Yep. That's him. Good to see he's working. For reasons I don't quite understand, I have a fondness for that movie.
So they didn't find any charred bones, did they?
Perhaps the survivors ate the innards of the deceased, such as the liver, kidneys, stomach, heart, etc. In the 19th century, more so than today, such organ meat was considered a delicacy.
And they wouldn't be desecrating the dead by dismembering them.
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