Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Science News

New Evidence in Historical Cannibalism Debate 165

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the with-a-light-chianti dept.
An anonymous reader writes "ScienceNOW is reporting that a team of scientists led by Geneticist Jaume Bertranpetit has called into question findings from an earlier study of human prion diseases. The first study, led by John Collinge of University College London, stated that the existence of a gene that codes for prions was a result of a "balancing act" that had kept it in the gene pool for so long. The balancing act was supposedly due to widespread cannibalistic practices in human history. The new report suggests that their results were skewed because of low frequency variations known as 'ascertainment bias.'"
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

New Evidence in Historical Cannibalism Debate More

New Evidence in Historical Cannibalism Debate

Comments Filter:

  • ok... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Unknown_monkey ( 938642 )
    so we were cannibal's children, now we're not.
    Let's throw both research teams into the pot!
    It's really the only way to test this theory.
    • -- so we were cannibal's children, now we're not. -- and why does those become ready for violence shank of children ever more largely?

      best Regards
      domain [domainunion.de]

  • that's 'ascertainmanet' (Score:4, Insightful)

    by KeeghanMacAllan ( 842985 ) on Sunday January 08, 2006 @03:37AM (#14420610)
    ...but the mainstream news media will continue to utilize the cannabalism story due to their 'entertainment' bias
    • mainstream media?

      I think its much more likely that the right-wing media will pick this story up...

      I mean, after all, it's an established fact that right-wingers eat their children.

      With Freedom Fries.

    • While others in the media will do the opposite... (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      ...because they consider the idea of human cannibalism to be "distasteful" (pardon the pun).

      I don't know if cannibalism was as widespread as has been claimed, but I do know that many people will continue to deny that it ever happened, simply because they don't like the ideas of it.

      What next: we are descended from apes? When will tese outrageous and shameful claims ever cease?
    • we humans are not the only ones who have, as claimed, shown cannibalistic behaviour. Many animal species, even today exhibit cannibalism. Snakes for eg. eat their own eggs. Cannibalism evolves when indiscriminate elimination of animals results in the weakening of food chain. Thus, survival of the fittest leads to cannibalism.

  • Another /usr/{games,bin}/fortune wisdom (Score:5, Funny)

    by fionbio ( 799217 ) on Sunday January 08, 2006 @03:46AM (#14420628)
    "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup."

  • Zork (Score:5, Funny)

    by quokkapox ( 847798 ) <quokkapox@gmail.com> on Sunday January 08, 2006 @03:49AM (#14420640)
    I was in fourth grade when I first played with the Zork triology of text-adventure games on the C-64.

    An innocent kid and budding geek, I tried feeding novel combinations of nouns and verbs to the primitive parser.

    I tried "EAT LAMP"... got back "You can't eat the lamp." "EAT BREAD"... "That was delicious."... Etc.

    I tried "EAT ME". I couldn't comprehend why my dad, who had just bought the game for me and was supervising over my shoulder, started laughing so hard.

    Several years later I finally understood why he laughed even harder when the computer responded:

    "Auto-cannibalism is not the answer."

    You can mod this offtopic, but those 1983 game designers had a real sense of humor and subtly implemented it in 64KB.

    • Re:Zork (Score:5, Funny)

      by zephc ( 225327 ) on Sunday January 08, 2006 @04:50AM (#14420793)
      > LOOK
      You see a lamp.
      > LOVE LAMP
      Do you really love the lamp, or are you just saying it because you saw it?

    • Re:Zork (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Edward Kmett ( 123105 ) on Sunday January 08, 2006 @08:22AM (#14421225) Homepage
      Infocom managed to implement it to run in such tight memory constraints because they designed all their games to run in a virtual machine (the Z-machine), and provided it with the ability to page in and out sectors of data from disk. They then compiled the code from a high level language Lisp-ish language on a nice big mainframe, and only had to code directly on the various microcomputer platforms enough code to run the virtual machine. Thats why Infocom games can consistently across so many platforms, despite widely varying architectures and space contraints.

      They didn't view themselves as having 64k to work with which in the C-64 case they had to share with 16k of roms and a display buffer, etc. They viewed themselves as simply paging data out of a much larger virtual machine. Even Zork 1 images weigh in between 94k and 123k IIRC. Some later Z-machine images were considerable larger.

      This is also why all those silly little 'write your own Zork in BASIC' games that people published in Compute's Gazette, etc. never were as cool as Zork. They just didn't have the architecture to scale that well.

      Yes, this is off-topic.

    • Re:Zork (Score:4, Funny)

      by Reverend528 ( 585549 ) on Sunday January 08, 2006 @10:27AM (#14421560) Homepage
      Several years later I finally understood why he laughed even harder when the computer responded

      That's pretty slow. Even by Commodore standards.

    • Eat shit and die.
      There is no die here.
      Fuck OFF!
      There is no OFF here.

  • The other white meat (Score:5, Interesting)

    by i_should_be_working ( 720372 ) on Sunday January 08, 2006 @03:51AM (#14420646)
    Few taboos are stronger than cannibalism. It's no surprise then that a study published 2 years ago created quite a stir by claiming that modern humans harbor a genetic signature suggesting our ancestors engaged heavily in the practice.

    I don't see why. Just because something is taboo now doesn't mean it always was. I wouldn't be bothered too much if I found out for certain that my ancestors were cannibals. It's not like that reflects poorly on me or my society. Every culture used to do some weird/nasty/mean things at some point.
    • Yeah. And it's not even culture. This was so long ago that it was just the history of the species.

    • Re:The other white meat (Score:5, Funny)

      by Lucas Membrane ( 524640 ) on Sunday January 08, 2006 @04:17AM (#14420714)
      There's enough evidence from diverse places to support a guess that human cannibilism has persistently been more than an occasional or incidental vice -- evidence like human proteins found in petrified human feces. It's now clear that many of those pictures of early men and beasts found on cave walls were actually fast-food menus.

    • Re:The other white meat (Score:5, Insightful)

      by quokkapox ( 847798 ) <quokkapox@gmail.com> on Sunday January 08, 2006 @04:20AM (#14420722)
      Every culture used to do some weird/nasty/mean things at some point.

      Exactly. We should only consider to be "taboo" those practices that are taboo across all cultures everywhere. Anything taboo that can be generalized is probably really worth avoiding, because if most every human is averse to it, it's likely to be bad for our survival. We should pay attention to our universal instincts.

      • Because taboos are mostly irrational attitudes, the ways each culture chooses to be irrational are different and varied.

        That is not to say that some taboos may not be rooted in some practical fact, but more often than not they are nonsense.
      • Taboo is a cultural term anyway, it you want a non subjective term, make a new word up for it. In the mean time, canibalism is taboo for wikipedia's target audience. Wikipedia link to taboo [wikipedia.org]
      • having your mother in law for dinner is unacceptable in all cultures

      • Re:The other white meat (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Randall_Jones ( 849846 ) on Sunday January 08, 2006 @10:47AM (#14421660)
        We should only consider to be "taboo" those practices that are taboo across all cultures everywhere.

        First of all, you use the term "taboo" in your proposed definition of taboo. That never makes for a helpful definition.

        Second, your statement can either be taken to mean: if it's not forbidden in all cultures, then it's ok to do. Which means if you can find one culture that did not forbid, say, rape or murder or child molestation (which you probably could do), we should change our laws so as to stop discouraging these misunderstood "non-taboo" practices.

        I doubt you mean anything that dumb, right? In which case you must be trying to distinguish between "taboo" and "immoral", where "taboo" means maladaptive and forbidden across cultures, and "immoral" is questionable but non-maladaptive behavior that should still be discouraged. Otherwise you've inadvertantly made yourself a NAMBLA advocate.
        • Second, your statement can either be taken to mean: if it's not forbidden in all cultures, then it's ok to do

          First, you should take a class in logic.

          Second, here's why you're wrong.

          If a statement is true, it doesn't nessecarily follow that its inverse is true.

          P -> Q, can not be logically transformed to mean ~P -> ~Q


      • We should only consider to be "taboo" those practices that are taboo across all cultures everywhere.

        Eating one's own I think would be generally regarded as a "bad" thing. That doesn't stop some in the animal kingdom from doing so.

        Homosexuality also would seem to go against nature (yes, some species do it...so?) because if it became predominant the species would not survive in the long run.
      • > Every culture used to do some weird/nasty/mean things at some point.

        "Used to?"

        Take just about any weird/nasty/mean practice that we discover our ancestors did, and you find out modern, "civilized" people have been doing similar stuff within recent memory. How about genocide in Rwanda, or massacres in China during WWII? Napalming populated jungle areas? Or body-piercing? Jonestown? At least every 10 years right up to the present day, there's documented evidence that humans are absolutely barbaric, alw

    • Re:The other white meat (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Especially since some societies like the Polynesians, Hawaiians, and the Maori of New Zealand all practiced cannibalism with no taboo. Papua New Guinea also engaged in cannibalism, though with some more ritualistic overtones (women and children ate of the flesh and brains of fallen warriors of a tribe), compared to the Maori etc. who just used it as another food source.
      • Farnsworth: Now be careful, Fry. And if you kill anyone, make sure to eat their heart, to gain their courage. Their rich, tasty courage.a

        [licks lips]

        I would think the heartburn alone would be sufficient cause to avoid this, forget the gross factor.... :-D

      • Especially since some societies like the Polynesians, Hawaiians, and the Maori of New Zealand all practiced cannibalism with no taboo.

        "Polynesian" is not a specific nationality, but a supranational cultural/ethnic group. As the name implies, it encompasses many widespread Pacific islands and their related languages and cultures. Hawaiians and Maoris are both subsets of the Polynesians. So are the original inhabitants of Tahiti, Samoa, Fiji, Easter Island, the Marquesas, Tonga, Niue, Tuvalu, and about 1

    • Re:The other white meat (Score:5, Interesting)

      by zakezuke ( 229119 ) on Sunday January 08, 2006 @04:39AM (#14420765)
      Every culture used to do some weird/nasty/mean things at some point.

      While every culture has things in the past it's done it's not proud of, cannibalism may not be as horrid as it sounds. If for example the society becomes sustainable it would make sence that something would need be done about it. Could be no more than self-sacrifice, some form of lottery, or simply the need to waste nothing. Or it could be one fell on a tribal hunt, the beast got away, and the wish of the fallen comrade was for the tribe to survive the winter. You might think it would be less cruel to for example eject individuals from your tribe for the sake of the whole, you would have to know the conditions of the outside enviroment and their perception of it to judge whether they were being cruel or kind. If we are talking a pre-copper age culture, I think I would rather die at home quickly than being left half eaten beign picked apart by the crows. If we are talking the copper/bronze ages expelsion might have been a kinder solution. At least a person could have some basic armor and a weapon, even a horse. It's silly to put things into moral context when no one needs morality when there isn't enough to eat.

      Cannibalism is a total taboo today, we are wise enough to understand it's not a typicaly healthy habbit. But in it self it's neither evil or immoral. We probally get this belief from those who discovered this age old taboo was simply unhealthy and assumed some sky-god / earth-god was punishing us.
      • People had tools and also hunting weapons way before the bronze age. Those were made of stone and wood, but quite effective.

        The two main advantages of metal tools are weight and durability.

        Stone tools however can be made easily by a single person, while you more or less need 2 people in order to refine ore and melt metal and forge a metal tool using pre-historic technology (try to get the fire hot enough alone, it can be done probably, but it is going to be pretty difficult, and this assumes that the right
        • if an outcast would be provided with some basic weapon and tools, he might initially be off better during the bronze age, but as soon as his blade gets damaged he'll have to fall back on stone tools anyway, and may well lack the experience to make them efficiently.

          I see where you are comming from, but you are not totally screwed with a broken blade. While it's true a single person would have a hard time finding the things needed to make copper or bronze, both stone and copper/bronze age people would have t
          • both stone and copper/bronze age people would have to find a nice quary to get good flint or rocks. But my vote would still be copper or bronze age..

            Well, I understand your point of view, but generally spoken, those who depend less on advanced technology have a better chance to survive without it.

            I agree that in both cases they could find the materials to make flint tools probably, but the stone age person would know a lot better what to do with it.
      • I understand that up until the last century, eating the body of a person who had died was not considered cannibalism in Siberia. However, killing someone in order to eat them was cannibalism, considered worse than plain murder, and was punishable.
    • Every culture used to do some weird/nasty/mean things at some point.

      Yup, except mine, of course.

    • Re:The other white meat (Score:2, Interesting)

      by burne ( 686114 )
      Every culture used to do some weird/nasty/mean things at some point.

      Cannibalism isn't weird/nasty/mean in many cultures. Many cultures have cannibalistic rituals for other reasons. Papuas eat the brain of their elders to keep their wisdom and experience as part of their heritage, just as an example. Others eat brains of defeated enemies to steal their warcraft. No taboo, obviously.
      • Others eat brains of defeated enemies to steal their warcraft.

        You know, this is true (this particular form of cannibalism), but when thought about logically, it doesn't make sense. Why eat the brains of an enemy who, using all the skills and knowledge he had to try and defeat you, failed in that task? What would be the point? You have already proven yourself to be the superior in both mind and body, as he is the dead one, and you are the one who is alive, correct?

        Furthermore, don't tell me that they couldn

    • Every culture used to do some weird/nasty/mean things at some point.

      In 10,000 years, our descendants will probaly think the same about us. Going to church, monogamy, having kids, practicing capitalism, driving cars, discussing politics, and reading articles on slashdot will be seen as unthinkable barbarous acts by their generation.

      Then again, if we happen to blow ourselves up any times soon with nuclear weapons between now and then, they might of course be eating each other over fire pits.
  • Two missionaries in Africa were apprehended by a tribe of very hostile cannibals who put them in a large pot of water, build a huge fire under it, and left them there. A few minutes later, one of the missionaries started to laugh uncontrollably.
    The other missionary was incredulous, and said, "What's wrong with you? We're being boiled alive! They're going to eat us! What could possibly be funny at a time like this?"
    The laughing missionary said, "I just peed in their soup!"

  • I don't care (Score:3, Funny)

    by Firehed ( 942385 ) on Sunday January 08, 2006 @03:54AM (#14420655) Homepage
    ...what the scientists tell me about my genes. If I'm hungry and you look tasty, get running, unless you have an offering of a loaded baked potato or appropriate substitute.

  • to be honest.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Combas ( 776699 ) on Sunday January 08, 2006 @03:56AM (#14420656) Homepage

    It doesnt really matter that much to me if my ancestors did a little canibalism, or even a lot for that matter. After all Im pretty sure that somewhere down the line some or perhaps even a lot of my ancestors engaged in equally terrible things to survive or perhaps even took part in them without "survival" really being an issue.

    These thoughts dont exactly delight me.

    However they dont really frighten me either.

    To me all this article really says is that genetics is more complicated that we are currently able to understand and goes a lot deeper than just decoding a genome. One scientists sees some data and comes to a conclusion, another scientist looks at the same data a couple years later and reaches the opposite conclusion.

  • obligatory futurama quote (Score:5, Funny)

    by dancingmad ( 128588 ) on Sunday January 08, 2006 @03:57AM (#14420659)
    (You knew it was coming)

    Fry: "My God! What if the secret ingredient ... is people!"
    Leela: "No. There's already a soda like that. Soylent Cola."
    Fry: "Oh. How is it?"
    Leela: "It varies from person to person."

  • Yakov Smirnoff (Score:1, Funny)

    by Combas ( 776699 )

    In 15th century Guadaloupe, cannibals eat YOU!

    Oh wait..

  • Okay but how skewed? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Sunday January 08, 2006 @04:07AM (#14420682) Journal
    The article is just a bit over my head but I don't think it says how wrong the original conclusion was just they think cannabilsm was not as common as the previous study suggested.

    But how much? Did we eat each other daily? Weekly? On special holidays? It can't have been to common anyway. If you eat more of a food source then is grown your run out. or put another way. Even if you farmed humans you would be hard put to serve baby more then once per year. Presuming of course that factory farming is really a recent invention.

    Anyway wasn't cannabilism more ritual then food source? Eat the X of a vanguished enemy to gain his X. God forbid to think what the chinese would serve after the battle.

    Oh well whatever the truth just don't accept an invitation to the donner party. Or board an airplane with an Uruguayan rugby team. Well unless you are feeling peckish.

    • Re:Okay but how skewed? (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Well, there is even better evidence for cannibalism than the mutations studied in the original report.

      Among the Fore in New Guinea, there was a disease called kuru, whose only vector seemed to be the eating of infected humans' brains. People (in that part of the world at least) had been eating each other so long and so consistently that a disease evolved to take advantage of it. For this kind of evolution, we must be talking a scale of hundreds of thousands (millions?) of years here.

      Kuru is mentioned in the

  • National Geographic Article (Score:5, Informative)

    by Quirk ( 36086 ) on Sunday January 08, 2006 @04:18AM (#14420716) Homepage Journal
    A National Geographic article from 2003 presents arguments from both sides. Cannibalism Normal For Early Humans? [nationalgeographic.com]

    Somewhere in the dusty recesses of the library stacks I came across writings that suggested many early northern european peoples practised cannibalism as was evidenced by the skulls of victims being halved to get at the brains. The National Geographic article suggests modern cannibals fed the brains to women and children as less desirable, but, for examples, grizziles feeding on migrating salmon will feed exclusivley on the brains once their initial hunger is sated.

    My culinary perversion only extended to a one time feeding on beef tartare. I kinda liked it.

    • Re:National Geographic Article (Score:4, Interesting)

      by johansalk ( 818687 ) on Sunday January 08, 2006 @04:55AM (#14420802)
      Culinary perversions? Are you saying you never ate brains? Brains are a delicacy in many cultures. Well, not human brains, but lamb and calves' brains and such. The French eat them, the Arabs do too, and many such mediterranean and mideastern cultures. I ate them when i was a kid, they tasted good, though now i wouldn't. Many cultures still preserve their rural traditions from times of ancient scarcity, for example, in England they still eat this thing made of congealed pigs' blood, called black pudding. Now that is something I could never stomach. It's part of that incredibly unhealthy, clot-inducing concoction called a Full English breakfast.
      • in England they still eat this thing made of congealed pigs' blood, called black pudding. Now that is something I could never stomach. It's part of that incredibly unhealthy, clot-inducing concoction called a Full English breakfast.

        Ah, yes, the good old Full English. Fry everything, although you can save some time by not frying the cup of tea.

        I've been in some caffs where the tea apparently was fried, if the layer of scum and grease floating on top of the tea was anything to go by.

        • I used to eat fried brains when I was kid and the stuff was served to me. (It tastes just like chicken...no, realy, tastes a lot like scrambled eggs - but brownish. It has an aftertaste that I find disgusting.)

          In real authentic Mexican taquerias, you can get 100% beef brain tacos - they call it sesos.

      • Brains are a delicacy in many cultures

        Do you mean "valued"? Given the recent amount of zombie films I'd say that they are widely available and somewhat squishy for the initial bite. After that you kind of get used to the texture and the flinging of arms and stuff.

        Woo-hoo! Research time!
      • Here you get several instances of technology changing culture.

        First is the television, which spreads corporate US culture in which animal brains are not food. Though in the "old days" if it was food, you ate it even if it was stuff like haggis or brains or black pudding.

        Second, due to the way corporate agriculture uses animal carcasses as an ingredient in livestock feed, you get an intentional feedback loop where prions can accumulate in livestock until they can cross species. Now it is simply unsafe

  • I once knew a girl who... (Score:5, Funny)

    by crazyphilman ( 609923 ) on Sunday January 08, 2006 @04:27AM (#14420737) Journal
    I once knew a girl who liked to be eaten.
    Once, twice, thrice she'd entreat me,
    Eat me, she'd say, eat me, EAT ME!
    And so I would; on the lass I'd dine.
    Now, you'd think that a strapping young girl would taste,
    Like beef, or lamb, or pork at least.
    But I tell you, this hot young lass of mine,
    always tasted like fish, each and every time.

  • Gives new meaning to (Score:3, Funny)

    by l33tlamer ( 916010 ) on Sunday January 08, 2006 @04:35AM (#14420754)
    Baby back ribs

  • You knew it was coming: part deux (Score:5, Funny)

    by todd10k ( 889348 ) on Sunday January 08, 2006 @05:10AM (#14420827)
    two cannibals are eating a clown. one turns to the other and says "does this taste funny to you?"

  • It's good to know (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ddx Christ ( 907967 ) on Sunday January 08, 2006 @05:11AM (#14420830) Homepage
    It's good to know that research was carried out and the findings were against the first team's concerning cannibalism. If anything, it'll spark a bit of competitive research to further analyze the results and perhaps bring us closer to what the genes and their variations really represent. According to the article, there could be bias present because the first team didn't analyze all 22 variations, which is fairly important in the context of evolution.

    Nevertheless, perhaps we'll see an article in the future to see the conclusion after more comparisons between the two papers and further research. It's an interesting topic, to say the least.

  • ...tonight, on Hannibal Lecter Dinner Theater, we will be running that old favorite, 'Alive'.

    A wonderously entertaining movie where the topic 'out of the frying pan and into the fire' is once again explored. Joining us for comment will be the remaining members of the 1972 Peruvian Soccer Team, looking fit as ever, of course.
  • We are shedding our skin all the time (what do you think house dust is?). If one of civilization's characteristic is living in closed spaces, then consumption of human flesh by another human is a continuous (albeit microscopic) process. At the very least you end up with proteins (and prions) generated in another person's body in your stomach. Is it any wonder we are all slowly going insane? Maybe it's just me.
    • Someday an alien archeaologist will find this post and laugh, knowing that we slowly wasted away because our extended confinement in small spaces led to severe neurological problems associated with the high nitrogen content of aerosolized urine and feces(that last part was where I'd link to studies of how much urine precipitates on toothbrushes in an average washroom, but my inadvertant coprophagia has made me sluggish tonight).
  • Johnny, eat your Steven. It's good for the gene pool....or not...
  • Hufu, the vegan human flesh alternative [eathufu.com]

    As seen on the Daily Show [comedycentral.com]

  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_%22Sawney%2 2_Bean [wikipedia.org] for a infamous man-eating family. Just FYI.

    By the by sometime poeple ate people for because otherwise their diet would lack proteins and other important nutrients, ancient American tribes for instance (think Aztecs, Toltecs or Maya's)

    • Ancient Mayas ate Qinoa (Quenoa, etc - damn transliterations of glyph languages), a grain that has about 5 times the amount of protein found in corn or wheat. Furthermore, their grain and bean combination provided them the ingredients for nearly all amino acids - which means they didn't have to ingest them. Don't know about the Aztecs or the Toltecs, but I suspect that they as well didn't eat their people as a matter of regular diet. Especially the Aztecs had much more a tradition of sacrificial killings, a

  • The healthy human flesh alternative (Score:5, Funny)

    by beforewisdom ( 729725 ) on Sunday January 08, 2006 @08:00AM (#14421183)
    Now there is hufu, the healthy human flesh alternative for the ethically inclined cannibal: http://www.eathufu.com/faq.asp [eathufu.com]

  • There are no more cannibals (Score:3, Funny)

    by Solilok ( 791022 ) on Sunday January 08, 2006 @08:55AM (#14421304)
    I ate the last one

  • This story points out, once again, how the media and other Mauraders - (definition from Mark Cuban) - mis-use the word "scientific".

    More often than not - pronouncements in the staus quo media as well as the so-called alternative media - write stories about one thing or another - so that it appears to be "scientific" - but in fact is simply a - "notion"!

    Scientific is simple - means proven by the "scienific method" -and the proof replicated by others using the "scientific method". More often than not - the

  • Dear Sir,

    I am glad to hear that your readership disapprove of this article as strongly as I. As a loyal reader and paying subscriber, I abhor the implication that Slashdot.org is a haven for cannibalism.

    It is well known that we now have the problem relatively under control, and that it is Kuro5hin.org who now suffer the largest casualties in this area.

    And what do you think the Argylls ate in Aden. Arabs?

    Yours etc.
    Zontar T. Mindless (in a white wine sauce with shallots, mushrooms and garlic)

  • Given the fact that some of our distant relations, e.g. Chimpanzees, still kill and eat humans if they can, it doesn't surprise me that early humans might have done this as well. It probably was never a food of choice but was a 'meal of opportunity' so to speak. In addition, there could also be another reason behind the cannabalism: ritual. Many primitive cultures had rituals in which they eat animal parts in order to obtain some of that animal's powers and it isn't much of a stretch to assume ritualized ca

  • Cannibalism as a pretext for slavery (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mangu ( 126918 ) on Sunday January 08, 2006 @11:27AM (#14421795)
    There was a theological argument that cannibals had no souls. The reasoning went like this: since on Judgement Day everyone will arise from their graves, their body parts which have decomposed will come together again. Since cannibals' body parts come from other peoples' bodies, they won't be able to reconstitute their own bodies. Therefore, cannibals don't have souls, because they can't ressurect on Judgement Day.


    Enslaving people with no souls cannot possibly be a sin, can it? Therefore there existed an incentive to find all sorts of evidence of cannibalism among tribes in distant lands.

  • We decided to cut back on our fatty missionary intake and went vegetarian altogether - although there certainly was a time I would have eaten you. Young guy like you, not too much muscle... I'd probably marinate you in white wine for forty-five minutes... dip you in a light corn batter... wrap you in banana leaves and bury you in a pit with a hundred hot coals... let you roast overnight. Then I'd serve you on a bed of basmati rice... with a garnish of shitake mushrooms and shallots. Mmmmmmm...

  • Obligatory plug (Score:3, Funny)

    by FusionDragon2099 ( 799857 ) <fusiondragon2099@gmail.com> on Sunday January 08, 2006 @12:51PM (#14422193)
    Soylent Green! It makes its own gravy!

  • Incidentally.. (Score:3, Informative)

    by StikyPad ( 445176 ) on Sunday January 08, 2006 @05:07PM (#14423472) Homepage
    Kuru [wikipedia.org] (a common prion disease from cannibalism) is also known as Laughing Death [whyfiles.org]. That's right.. I've got my eye on you laughers and I know what you're up to. You know who you are.
    • While kuru was spread by a form of cannibalism, it must be noted that the method of cannibalism wasn't "going out, killing a neighboring village and eating the victims". In the vast majority of kuru cases, the disease occurred when a (usually) male member of the village died (of whatever cause), and then the (usually family and female) members of the village would eat parts of the body of the victim, in a form of religious ancestor worship. Of course, when a person died of kuru...

Slashdot Top Deals

The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it.

Close