Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by cmn32480 on Monday October 17 2016, @07:52AM   Printer-friendly
from the kids-are-like-veal dept.

About 15,000 years ago in Gough's Cave, near Bristol in the UK, a group of people ate parts of each other.

They de-fleshed and disarticulated the bones, then chewed and crushed them. They may also have cracked the bones to extract the marrow inside.

It was not only adults that showed signs of being eaten. A three-year-old child and two adolescents all had the tell-tale marks of being nibbled on.

Some of their skulls were even modified into ornaments called "skull cups", which may have been used to drink out of.

What was going on in Gough's Cave? Was this an example of human violence between rivals, a strange kind of ritual behaviour, or simply a desperate bid for survival?

Article: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20161011-the-people-who-ate-each-other
Archived: https://archive.fo/JeZdl
Archived: https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20161011-the-people-who-ate-each-other


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Tuesday October 18 2016, @03:57AM

    by stormwyrm (717) on Tuesday October 18 2016, @03:57AM (#415526) Journal
    A gene designated G127V was discovered among the Papua New Guinea tribes that still practised mortuary cannibalism, and it protects against the deadly CJD-like prion disease kuru. It was found to be widespread only among peoples where kuru was prevalent, and it is rare in the general human population. This suggests that cannibalism, mortuary or otherwise, was never a very common practice in human societies since prehistory, or else G127V would have to be much more common by evolutionary necessity. Either that, or there may have once been other, similar prion diseases spread by cannibalism long ago whose protective genes still exist in the general human population (and now have no use), and that kuru is only the most recent variant.
    --
    Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2