Prehistoric People Ate Each Other, Bones Show

THE GIST

• Human gnawing and chewing marks have been identified on human and other hominid bones.

• The findings support the idea that some prehistoric humans practiced nutritional cannibalism.

• The newly identified signature for human bone chewing is also helping to determine what animals early hominids ate.

Prehistoric humans, along with Neanderthals and Homo antecessor, made meals of each other, suggests new research on probable human teeth marks found on prehistoric human bones.


The findings, which will be published in the January issue of The Journal of Human Evolution, support prior theories that the first humans to re-colonize Britain after the last ice age practiced nutritional cannibalism 12,000 years ago at a site called Gough's Cave in what is now Somerset, England.

It was a survival strategy, according to authors Yolanda Fernandez-Jalvo and Peter Andrews.

"Think that a member of your group dies," Fernandez-Jalvo told Discovery News. "The body can give one day off from hunting, which was always dangerous at that time, and what to do with the dead body that may attract other dangerous carnivores that may attack the group."


"This could be a good solution," she added, reminding that cannibalism does not always mean the cannibal killed the consumed individual.

To determine what patterns humans leave behind when they chew or gnaw on bones, the researchers had four different groups of European people chew raw and cooked meat bones from various animals.

The scientists also studied bones, now in a museum, which were chewed in the 1960's by the Koi people of Namibia. The Koi tended not to cook food as much as the Europeans did, so the researchers wanted to see what kind of damage they left behind on discarded bones.

The scientists also analyzed fossilized bone collections from ancient hominid sites in Spain, the U.K. and the Caucasus region.


They determined that when humans chew and gnaw bones, a distinctive pattern is left behind. It includes bent ends of bones, puncture marks, superficial linear marks, peeling, crenulated ends and double arch punctures on the chewed edge. Not all of these features are unique to human chewing, but in combination, the researchers believe the features provide evidence for human eating.

Since bone chewing usually occurs when the consumer is trying to get at marrow and the last bit of meat, the marks can help to distinguish nutritional cannibalism from ritual de-fleshing. The findings can also reveal which animals prehistoric humans and human ancestors ate.

"Indications of Homo habilis eating hedgehog and using tools to eat them" has already been identified, Fernandez-Jalvo said.

She also said evidence suggests Neanderthals consumed marine mammals shortly after these animals gave birth, "chasing the youngest as an easy and clever strategy and avoiding the adults that were quite dangerous."

There is also evidence for an older man in China using stones to bang down on meat so it would be easier to chew.

Charles Egeland, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, told Discovery News that "distinguishing human chewing damage from other agents (carnivores, non-human primates, non-biological processes) is extremely important."




"One of the more interesting implications of this study -- and there are many -- is that we may now have a useful set of criteria to identify meat-eating among early, pre-stone tool-using, hominids," he said.

"Somewhat ironically, this then raises the question of whether modern human chewing damage is actually the best analog for these early hominids," Egeland added. "Would chimpanzee chewing damage make a better analog?"

By Jennifer Viegas

Prehistoric People Ate Each Other, Bones Show

THE GIST

• Human gnawing and chewing marks have been identified on human and other hominid bones.

• The findings support the idea that some prehistoric humans practiced nutritional cannibalism.

• The newly identified signature for human bone chewing is also helping to determine what animals early hominids ate.

Prehistoric humans, along with Neanderthals and Homo antecessor, made meals of each other, suggests new research on probable human teeth marks found on prehistoric human bones.


The findings, which will be published in the January issue of The Journal of Human Evolution, support prior theories that the first humans to re-colonize Britain after the last ice age practiced nutritional cannibalism 12,000 years ago at a site called Gough's Cave in what is now Somerset, England.

It was a survival strategy, according to authors Yolanda Fernandez-Jalvo and Peter Andrews.

"Think that a member of your group dies," Fernandez-Jalvo told Discovery News. "The body can give one day off from hunting, which was always dangerous at that time, and what to do with the dead body that may attract other dangerous carnivores that may attack the group."


"This could be a good solution," she added, reminding that cannibalism does not always mean the cannibal killed the consumed individual.

To determine what patterns humans leave behind when they chew or gnaw on bones, the researchers had four different groups of European people chew raw and cooked meat bones from various animals.

The scientists also studied bones, now in a museum, which were chewed in the 1960's by the Koi people of Namibia. The Koi tended not to cook food as much as the Europeans did, so the researchers wanted to see what kind of damage they left behind on discarded bones.

The scientists also analyzed fossilized bone collections from ancient hominid sites in Spain, the U.K. and the Caucasus region.


They determined that when humans chew and gnaw bones, a distinctive pattern is left behind. It includes bent ends of bones, puncture marks, superficial linear marks, peeling, crenulated ends and double arch punctures on the chewed edge. Not all of these features are unique to human chewing, but in combination, the researchers believe the features provide evidence for human eating.

Since bone chewing usually occurs when the consumer is trying to get at marrow and the last bit of meat, the marks can help to distinguish nutritional cannibalism from ritual de-fleshing. The findings can also reveal which animals prehistoric humans and human ancestors ate.

"Indications of Homo habilis eating hedgehog and using tools to eat them" has already been identified, Fernandez-Jalvo said.

She also said evidence suggests Neanderthals consumed marine mammals shortly after these animals gave birth, "chasing the youngest as an easy and clever strategy and avoiding the adults that were quite dangerous."

There is also evidence for an older man in China using stones to bang down on meat so it would be easier to chew.

Charles Egeland, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, told Discovery News that "distinguishing human chewing damage from other agents (carnivores, non-human primates, non-biological processes) is extremely important."




"One of the more interesting implications of this study -- and there are many -- is that we may now have a useful set of criteria to identify meat-eating among early, pre-stone tool-using, hominids," he said.

"Somewhat ironically, this then raises the question of whether modern human chewing damage is actually the best analog for these early hominids," Egeland added. "Would chimpanzee chewing damage make a better analog?"

By Jennifer Viegas

Ancient site reveals signs of mass cannibalism

Sunday, 6 December 2009

By Victoria Gill
Science reporter, BBC News

Archaeologists have found evidence of mass cannibalism at a 7,000-year-old human burial site in south-west Germany, the journal Antiquity reports.

The authors say their findings provide rare evidence of cannibalism in Europe's early Neolithic period.

Up to 500 human remains unearthed near the village of Herxheim may have been cannibalised.

The "intentionally mutilated" remains included children and even unborn babies, the researchers say.

The German site was first excavated in 1996 and then explored again between 2005 and 2008.

Team leader Bruno Boulestin, from the University of Bordeaux in France, told BBC News that he and his colleagues had found evidence the human bones were deliberately cut and broken - an indication of cannibalism.

"We see patterns on the bones of animals indicating that they have been spit-roasted," he said. "We have seen some of these same patterns on the human bones [at this site]."

But Dr Boulestin stressed it was difficult to prove that these bones had been deliberately cooked.

Some scientists have rejected the cannibalism theory, suggesting that the removal of flesh could have been part of a burial ritual.

But Dr Boulestin said the human remains had been "intentionally mutilated" and that there was evidence many of them had been chewed.

The early Neolithic was the period when farming first spread in central Europe and the team believes that cannibalism in Europe was likely to have been exceptional - possibly carried out during periods of famine.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8394802.stm

(Submitted by Tim Chapman)

Ancient site reveals signs of mass cannibalism

Sunday, 6 December 2009

By Victoria Gill
Science reporter, BBC News

Archaeologists have found evidence of mass cannibalism at a 7,000-year-old human burial site in south-west Germany, the journal Antiquity reports.

The authors say their findings provide rare evidence of cannibalism in Europe's early Neolithic period.

Up to 500 human remains unearthed near the village of Herxheim may have been cannibalised.

The "intentionally mutilated" remains included children and even unborn babies, the researchers say.

The German site was first excavated in 1996 and then explored again between 2005 and 2008.

Team leader Bruno Boulestin, from the University of Bordeaux in France, told BBC News that he and his colleagues had found evidence the human bones were deliberately cut and broken - an indication of cannibalism.

"We see patterns on the bones of animals indicating that they have been spit-roasted," he said. "We have seen some of these same patterns on the human bones [at this site]."

But Dr Boulestin stressed it was difficult to prove that these bones had been deliberately cooked.

Some scientists have rejected the cannibalism theory, suggesting that the removal of flesh could have been part of a burial ritual.

But Dr Boulestin said the human remains had been "intentionally mutilated" and that there was evidence many of them had been chewed.

The early Neolithic was the period when farming first spread in central Europe and the team believes that cannibalism in Europe was likely to have been exceptional - possibly carried out during periods of famine.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8394802.stm

(Submitted by Tim Chapman)

Orangutans cannibalise own babies

Two female orangutans have been seen cannibalising the bodies of their recently deceased babies.

Such behaviour has never before been recorded in any great ape species.

The two incidences occurred just one month apart in the same region of forest in Indonesia.

The conservationist who witnessed both incidences suspects they were examples of aberrant behaviour, triggered by stressful living conditions suffered by both mothers.

Humans aside, chimpanzees were the only great apes known to engage in cannabilism, the eating of members of the same species. The behaviour had also been inferred but not seen in gorillas, after the remains of infants were found in the faeces of two adults.

But until now, no ape has been recorded eating its own offspring.

"Cannibalism has been documented in chimpanzees and reported in gorillas. Never before has any ape species been seen treating its own offspring as a consumable resource," says David Dellatore of Oxford Brookes University, in Oxford, UK.

That was until Dellatore begun tracking orangutans living in Bukit Lawang, an area of forest within the Gunung Leuser National Park in Sumatra, Indonesia.

Dellatore, who now works with the Sumatran Orangutan Society based in Medan, Sumatra, initially monitored the physical health of once captive orangutans that have been rehabilitated and released back into the wild.

But soon he noticed that tourists in the area were interacting closely with the apes. Despite a ban on doing so, some tourists would feed or touch the semi-wild apes. So Dellatore switched his research to monitoring the behavioural health of the orangutans, following them from dawn till dusk.

During this research he twice witnessed female apes he recognised eating the corpses of their recently deceased babies.

"While following Edita, whose infant had just died in the forest, on the eighth day myself and my assistant Tumino saw her begin to consume the corpse," Dellatore says.

"At first we did not believe it, but there was no mistaking it. Edita was engaging in filial, or mother-infant cannibalism."

"Then a month later I was following Ratna by myself, whose infant had also just died, and observed her also cannibalising her dead infant."

Seeing the first instance surprised Dellatore, while he found the second even more shocking.

"Such behaviour had never been seen before in more than four decades of orangutan research. Surely it's not happening here twice in a one month period?" Dellatore recalls asking himself.

But Dellatore managed to collect further evidence of the second event. "I recovered a fallen piece of the infant's skeleton that Ratna spat out, as well as rather clear video footage of the event."

Grieving mothers

Dellatore is unsure why the orangutans behaved so. "It makes little evolutionary sense for orangutan females to kill their infants, nor is there any evidence that this happened here," he reports in the journal Primates.

But he points out that it is not uncommon for orangutans and other nonhuman primate mothers to carry their deceased infants. "It may be part of a grieving process," he says.

Indeed, Edita, a 23 year old female, carried and protected the body of her one year old infant for seven days, occasionally inspecting it while vocalising a whimper. Only on the eighth day did she start to consume it, when it was already heavily decomposed. Twenty year old Ratna's seven month old infant appeared unwell a few days before death.

Dellatore is reluctant to make any definitive claims as to why the behaviour occurred. But he suspects that the mothers' stressed upbringing may have triggered their later actions.

"Semi-wild orangutans are all exposed to considerable traumas, such as witnessing the deaths of their own mothers," he says. To feed the pet trade, an orangutan is often captured from the wild as an infant, with its mother being killed as she would not otherwise let her baby go. Captive orangutans also suffer long periods of social isolation.

"Studies have shown that early social deprivation can have deleterious effects on later levels of cognitive ability. It is possible that the cannibalism events are an extension of these effects," he says.

Although rare, mothers have been recorded cannibalising their infants in a few species of monkey. In galagoes, another primate species also known as bushbabies, the behaviour has been linked to stressful living conditions.

The presence of tourists may also be stressing the apes.

Dellatore supports proper ecotourism in the area, which can bring in important funds that can help conserve the great apes. But he says too many tourists visit and interact with the apes without a sense of environmental or social responsibility.

His organisation is running an ecotourism development programme in Bukit Lawang to try and mitigate these problems.

See video footage at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8058000/8058365.stm

Germany's Stone Age Cannibalism

Tens of thousands of ancient human bones found in Germany suggest that victims were not killed just to satisfy hunger, writes Pierre Le Hir in Le Monde

The German city of Speyer, in Rheinland-Palatinate, well known for its ­Romanesque cathedral, also boasts some much more macabre relics. A collection of skulls, shin bones and vertebrae might not seem unusual in an archaeology museum, but these particular remains are special. They all show signs of having been cut, scraped or broken, indicating that their owners were cannibalised.

"Look at these grooves, running from the base of the nose to the back of the neck, or here on the temples," says Andrea Zeeb-Lanz, the regional head of archaeology, holding up a skull. "The grooves show, beyond all possible doubt, that the flesh was torn off." It takes good eyesight to catch the fine parallel incisions made by the cutting edge of the flint stone. She then shows me a piece of thigh-bone the end of which has been crushed. Judging by the state of the bone tissue, it was smashed shortly after the victim was killed.

All these human remains were found at the stone-age site at Herxheim, near Speyer. About 7,000 years ago farmers, who grew wheat and barley, raised pigs, sheep and cattle, settled here, building a village of four to 12 houses, the post holes of which have survived. At the time the first farmer-stockherders were moving into Europe, supplanting their hunter-gatherer predecessors. The Herxheim settlers came from the north (between 5,400 and 4,950BC) and belonged to the Linear Pottery culture.

Two lines of ditches were dug around the settlement. They can't have been defensive because they weren't continuous. Nor were they intended for use as an ossuary, as the Linear Pottery people generally buried or burned their dead. However, during a rescue dig just before the area was developed as an industrial estate, in some of the ditches archaeologists uncovered tens of thousands of ­human bones.

During the first series of excavations, at the end of the 1990s, the numerous injuries visible on the skeletons were taken as evidence that the victims had been massacred. But in 2008 Bruno Boulestin, an anthropologist at Bordeaux University, examined the fragments recovered from one of the trenches, pointing out that nearly 2,000 samples belonged to fewer than 10 individuals.

"It is impossible to establish direct proof of cannibalism. But here we have systematic, repetitive gestures, which suggest that the bodies were eaten," says Boulestin. The marks of breaking, cutting, scraping and crushing indicate that the bodies were dismembered, the tendons and ligaments severed, the flesh torn off, the bones smashed. The vertebra were cut up to remove the ribs, just as butchers do today with loin chops. The tops of skulls were opened to extract the brains. Another telling clue is that there are proportionately fewer bones containing marrow, particularly vertebrae and short bones, suggesting they were set aside.

A quick investigation of the bones in neighbouring ditches showed that they had suffered the same fate. Extrapolating to the whole site, only half of which was excavated, about 1,000 people must have been butchered. There is no other example in prehistory of a mass grave of this size. "We are dealing with an exceptional event," says Zeeb-Lanz. Other cases of neolithic cannibalism have certainly been identified, in particular in France, at the caves at Fontbrégoua and Adaouste, near the south coast, or at Les Perrats, further west, but never on this scale.

What can this bloodbath mean? The potsherds found among the human remains suggest it must have occurred over a period of no longer than 50 years. There is nothing to imply the victims were killed for food. Only under extreme conditions would 100 or so farmers have been able to overcome about 10 times their number. The archaeologists have therefore concluded that this was some form of ritual killing. In some cases the tops of skulls were arranged to form a nest, scattered with pottery fragments, broken adzes, jewellery made of shells, the paws and jawbones of dogs.

There are two main types of ritual cannibalism, as the historian Jean Guilaine and palaeopathologist Jean Zammit explain in The Origins of War: Violence in Prehistory. Exocannibalism targets people outside the community: by eating a conquered enemy the aim was not so much to feed on their body as to make them disappear for ever, appropriating their strength, energy and valour.

Endocannibalism, within a community, was a token of affection, the recognition of a bond that needed to be maintained. The scientists have also excluded this possibility, given the small size of the village. But wartime exocannibalism also seems unlikely, as it would have involved raids on remote communities to bring back hordes of prisoners and their pottery.

The team that discovered the site have come up with another hypothesis. Members of the Linear Pottery culture deliberately gathered here, with their prisoners and pottery, to take part in sacrificial cere­monies.

"At this time, the Linear Pottery culture was undergoing a crisis, which led to its disappearance," says Zeeb-Lanz. "Perhaps they hoped to prevent the end of their world through some ceremony, of which cannibalism was just a part."

http://www.guardianweekly.co.uk/?page=editorial&id=1000&catID=17