Were Neanderthals Devoured By Humans? 502
Hugh Pickens writes "The Guardian reports that a Neanderthal jawbone covered in cut marks similar to those left behind when flesh is stripped from deer provides crucial evidence that humans attacked Neanderthals, and sometimes killed them, bringing back their bodies to caves to eat or to use their skulls or teeth as trophies. 'For years, people have tried to hide away from the evidence of cannibalism, but I think we have to accept it took place,' says Fernando Rozzi, of Paris's Centre National de la Récherche Scientifique. According to Rozzi, a discovery at Les Rois in south-west France provides compelling support for that argument. Previous excavations revealed bones that were thought to be exclusively human. But Rozzi's team re-examined them and found one they concluded was Neanderthal." (Continued, below.)
"Importantly, it was covered in cut marks similar to those left behind when flesh is stripped using stone tools. Not every team member agrees. 'One set of cut marks does not make a complete case for cannibalism,' says Francesco d'Errico, of the Institute of Prehistory in Bordeaux. It was also possible that the jawbone had been found by humans and its teeth used to make a necklace, he said. 'This is a very important investigation,' said Professor Chris Stringer, of the Natural History Museum, London. 'This does not prove we systematically eradicated the Neanderthals or that we regularly ate their flesh. But it does add to the evidence that competition from modern humans probably contributed to Neanderthal extinction.'"
Not cannabilisim (Score:4, Informative)
yeah, its called bushmeat (Score:3, Informative)
go to any number of african towns and you'll find guys coming back from the jungle with monkey parts to eat. its called bushmeat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushmeat#Effect_on_Great_Apes [wikipedia.org]
"The Inheritors" (Score:4, Informative)
William Golding wrote a fictional account of the Neanderthals' extinction at the hands of Homo sapiens:
The Inheritors [wikipedia.org].
Scary, but beautifully written.
CJ
Re:Not cannabilisim (Score:4, Informative)
The taboo against cannibalism, like the taboo against eating, say, pigs comes from the risk of cross infection. Any virus that infects a piece of meat of a prey can also infect a predator of the same species. To minimize this risk predators tend to eat outside of the species. OTOH, as we have seen, there can be across family, order, or even class, but the risk of infection does seem to decrease we move up the taxonomic classification. So we may have a specific taboo against eating within the family or genus, but that taboo is not cannibalism.
exactly (Score:3, Informative)
just ask these rugby players in a plane crash
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruguayan_Air_Force_Flight_571 [wikipedia.org]
and make sure you get invited to a dinner party, not a donner party
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donner_Party [wikipedia.org]
Re:how is it cannibalism? (Score:5, Informative)
Yep.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_meat [wikipedia.org]
Being eaten by humans is the single greatest threat to Bonobos, arguably the closest primate relative we humans have.
Re:there is no good definition of "species" (Score:3, Informative)
* Two same-gendered humans can't make a viable offspring.
* Prepubescent children, post-menopausal women, and many other humans are sterile.
* Sometimes two "species" could create viable offspring, but they don't. (E.g., different mating dances preclude them mating, but in a lab, sperm A and egg B make a viable offspring.)
* Sometimes A can mate with B, and B with C, but A cannot mate with C directly. (A Chihuahua cannot mate with a Great Dane. It's physically impossible.)
3 and 4 are essentially the same, since what is preventing offspring between A and C is a physical problem. Generally, none of these reasons are considered valid for determining species.
* The nontransitivity above (A, B, and C) is generally true of ALL creatures if you're allowed to go back in time. Go back far enough, and our ancestors could mate with chimp ancestors. A little farther and we share ancestors!
Yes, that's what we call "speciation". It's a single species differentiating into two species. I hope you can see why going back in time is not reasonable for determining species.
* What about the poor asexual creatures? How do they have "species"?
Obviously, it's a more complicated problem.
Ability to produce viable offspring is actually only one measure of whether two species are separate, but it's a fairly useful one.
Re:how is it cannibalism? (Score:5, Informative)
Of course the problem with bush meat is it is theorized that we as a species may have had various nasty diseases passed to us by eating bush meat, including possibly AIDS and a scary variant:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/file_on_4/3954963.stm [bbc.co.uk]
Re:Eating apes is pretty close to cannibalisim (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is that modern biology shows that that line is arbitrary; common descent means that what appear to be separate "species" are just pairs of ring species [wikipedia.org] where the intermediate populations have died off. And in particular, whether Neanderthals could or did breed with us is a controversial topic; the "did not breed" is the leading theory right now, but it hasn't killed the "did breed" one just yet.
Neanderthal may merely be a subset of humans. (Score:1, Informative)
We don't actually know if Neanderthal were a separate species. Whether they were still genetically compatible with humans or is still a subject of debate.
Humans and other animals (Score:5, Informative)
"Human" is a term applicable to all members of the genus "Homo", just like "Chimpanzee" is the word for all members of "Pan" - the biological genus, that is, not the club (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Club_Copenhagen). As a note of interest, some biologists even argue that chimpanzees are biologically so close to us that they should be included in the same genus.
I suspect the idea that humans are somehow special and "more" than animals stems from the kind of religion we have traditionally practised here in the West, which is in many ways still a "famer- and shepherd religion". To most hunter/gatherers this distinction is unknown - the animals you hunt are seen as persons you have to respect; when we became farmers, animals became mere items that the Creator had made for our convenience.
And of, it isn't hard to see this traditional prejudice reflected in the constantly repeated "Humans vs Neanderthal" nonsense - something that continues despite the ever growing body of evidence that shows the Neanderthal Human to be a sophisticated creature with culture on par with our own at the time - there is evidence that they took care of their elderly and sick, such as the remains of a person who was clearly disabled, yet lived to adulthood, as well as eg. the "Divje Babe" flute (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal_flute) which may be evidence that they practised music. They were clearly very clever hunters, possibly more so than Homo sapiens - a recent study suggests they hunted large prey actively rather than simply scavenging.
Re:how is it cannibalism? (Score:3, Informative)
Do humans eat chimps or gorillas? Or is the similarity too much for us to stomach (pun partially intended)?
Yes. Do a search on bush meat. Not so common outside the areas where the other primates are not indigenous. But meat is meat. Just about any animal that lives near humans and isn't toxic has been eaten at some point, and often comes to be a regular item on the menu.
Cannibalism has never been a nutritional thing though. Usually last ditch attempt for survival in extreme conditions or ceremonial. This finding just suggests it went on earlier than previously thought
Re:Denial - Not Just a River - Also Druids Canniba (Score:4, Informative)
Very little is known about the Druids since they had no written language, most of what is known was written by the Romans who were not above using propoganda on their enemies. This is the main reason why historians doubt the written (by the winner) accounts. The written accounts (and the arguments) have been around for centuries and I suspect you just pulled the "Mother Earth loving, New Age darlings" bit out of your arse because it suits your own worldview rather than anything to do with the content of the documentary.
Re:how is it cannibalism? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Reparations (Score:3, Informative)
There's a lot of other variables besides culture that are involved in why Europeans and Asians consistently dominated the new world in warfare. Geography and biodiversity, for example. See Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs & Steel" for an interesting discussion on the reasons behind the course of history.
But yeah, apologizing for defeating an enemy is pretty lame. Of course, we committed mass genocide on those who surrendered by forcing them on mass migrations into small, infertile reservations where they died of starvation, as in the "Trail of Tears." That's pretty lame too.
Re:hansel and gretel: (Score:4, Informative)
I believe the "eating" in fairy tales isn't to be taken literally. The story of little red riding hood, for example, was told to warn girls for being raped: the verb "to eat", or in french "manger" could be interpreted both by eating or slang for fornication.
Re:how is it cannibalism? (Score:5, Informative)
It's called "bushmeat". African tribes are often driven to hunt it, due to famine. It's though that HIV may have transferred to humans via undercooked chimpanzee.
Re:Get a brain, dude (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.viceland.com/int/v14n10/htdocs/yo1.php?country=us&bettertitle [viceland.com]
If some villagers in Borneo can keep an orangutan as a prostitute is it really that far fetched that at some point someone has fucked a chimp? Not that I think that's a more feasible way for the spread of disease, just that it's not exactly unheard of. And have you considered consensual chimp sex?