Posted on 02/28/2008 6:52:33 PM PST by blam
Cannibalism May Have Wiped Out Neanderthals
Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News
Unhealthy Diets?
Feb. 27, 2008 -- A Neanderthal-eat-Neanderthal world may have spread a mad cow-like disease that weakened and reduced populations of the large Eurasian human, thereby contributing to its extinction, according to a new theory based on cannibalism that took place in more recent history.
Aside from illustrating that consumption of one's own species isn't exactly a healthy way to eat, the new theoretical model could resolve the longstanding mystery as to what caused Neanderthals, which emerged around 250,000 years ago, to disappear off the face of the Earth about 30,000 years ago.
"The story of Neanderthal extinction is one of the most intriguing in all of human evolution," author Simon Underdown told Discovery News. "Why did a large-brained, intelligent hominid that shared so many traits with us disappear?"
To resolve that question, Underdown, a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at Oxford Brookes University, studied a well-documented tribal group, the Fore of Papua New Guinea, who practiced ritualistic cannibalism.
Gory evidence uncovered in a French cave in 1999 revealed Neanderthals likely practiced cannibalism. The 100,000-120,000 year-old bones discovered at the cave site of Moula-Guercy near the west bank of the Rhone river suggested a group of Neanderthals defleshed the bones of at least six other individuals and then broke the bones apart with a hammerstone and anvil to remove the marrow and brains.
Although it's not clear why Neanderthals may have eaten each other, research on the Fore determined that maternal kin of certain deceased Fore individuals used to dismember corpses and regarded some human flesh as a valuable food source.
Beginning in the early 1900's, anthropologists additionally began to take note of an affliction named Kuru among the Fore. By the 1960's, Kuru reached epidemic levels and killed over 1,100 people.
Subsequent investigations determined that Kuru was related to the Fore's cannibalistic activities and was a form of Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy, or TSE. This is a class of disease that includes mad cow disease. Underdown said TSE's have been in existence for possibly millions of years.
According to his new paper, published in the journal Medical Hypotheses, TSE's "cause brain tissue to take on an almost sponge-like appearance, caused by the formation of small holes during the development of the disease."
The disease's latter stages often result in severe mental impairment, loss of speech and an inability to move.
He created a model, based on the Kuru findings, to figure out how the spread of such a disease via cannibalism could reduce a population's size. For example, he calculated that within a hypothetical group of 15,000 individuals, such a disease could reduce the population to non-viable levels within 250 years. When added to other pressures, this type of disease could therefore have wiped out the Neanderthals, Underdown believes.
"TSE's could have thinned the population, reducing numbers and contributing to their extinction in combination with other factors (such as climate change and the emergence of modern humans)," he said.
Such diseases have very long incubation periods, he further explained, so affected individuals may not show symptoms for a very long time. Similarly, people who consume TSE victims may not exhibit signs of illness immediately after eating.
"Neanderthals would have been unlikely to spot any causal relationship between cannibalism and TSE symptoms," Underdown said.
Since modern clinical tests show that medical instruments can carry infectious prions, which spread TSE's, even after such tools have been sterilized, it's also possible that sharing of stone tools could have additionally spread the disease among Neanderthals, even those that did not practice cannibalism.
Nick Barton, Director of the Institute of Archaeology at the University of Oxford, told Discovery News that he thinks the new paper presents "an extremely novel and very interesting theory."
"Most scholars now believe that the demise of the Neanderthals was not down to a single causal factor," Barton said. "However, if genetic studies eventually show that Neanderthals were susceptible to TSE, or other empirical evidence emerges for persistent cannibalism and consumption of brain tissues in late Neanderthal populations, then we may have to rethink our ideas on extinction."
The last two ate each other (by mutual consent, of course).
Hey, wee-man! It was me!
Ick.
*****************
I know, I know.
Stop dissing my ancestors! :)
Wow!!
Pretty big conclusions (Kuru, Cannibalism) from a few bones in a single cave, and a tribe in New Guinea.
It is possible that, like the Donners, the Neanderthals were driven to Cannibalism due to food shortages brought on by severe weather, volcanic activity, aliens from Uranus, etc....
I would like to know if Neanderthal bones from other areas of Europe show the same butchering marks before I buy into this.
Cannibalism is the exception, and not the rule in nature. Very few higher species practice it. Social cultures that are based on it usually don’t survive for long periods. Certainly not as long as the Neanderthals did.
Nope. I don’t like it.
Ask the Chichimecas. They cooked their friends and ate their enemies raw.
It was in the late 60s and early 70s. Frank Perdue was referring to packages of chicken parts.
Two cannibals are eating a clown they killed and cooked up.
First one turns to the second one and asks “Does this taste funny to you?”
I'm not going to dispute that, because that is what I was always taught. I read a study (on the Kuru) that suggests that certain tribal populations certainly practiced it either ritualistically or when faced with starvation. This leads some to conclude that while cannibalism is universally prohibited now, it was not always thus. IOW's the religious prohibitions grew out of an earlier period where the practice was more common.
Long pork and human beans. It’s what’s for dinner.
LOL: I can only imagine the cartoon that went along with poem.
I disagree. I don't think that religion has anything to do with it. I think it goes against nature. Even the Incas, Aztecs, Mayans, etc were brutal (decapitations and ripping hearts out of thousands every year), there is almost no evidence of cannibalism.
Only on certain Polynesian and Pacific islands was it practiced for any great length of time, and that (it is believed) is because of isolation. On the continents, there is very little evidence of cannibalism.
One professor had the theory that it caused family units to draw closer, only eating outsiders. This let to in-breeding, which will destroy a civilization pretty quickly.
It almost never happens in the natural world, at least with mammals.
ping
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