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Clear Evidence of Cannibalism in the Human Fossil Record Has Been Rare

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Clear Evidence of Cannibalism in the Human Fossil Record Has Been Rare ADAPTATION Clear evidence of cannibalism in Once the human fossil record has been rare, but it is now becoming Were apparent that the practice is deeply rooted in our history BY TIM D. WHITE CAN 86 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN NEW LOOK AT HUMAN EVOLUTION COPYRIGHT 2003 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC. NEANDERTAL CRANIUM from the Krapina rock-shelter in Croatia. Physical anthropologists and archaeologists have recently determined that this specimen and hundreds of other skeletal remains at this site attest to cannibalism. This cranium was smashed so the brain could be removed and consumed. NIBALS SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN 87 COPYRIGHT 2003 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC. It can shock, disgust and fascinate in equal measure, whether through tales of starved pio- methods. In the past several years, the to inherit their qualities or honor their neers or airplane crash survivors eating results of their studies have finally pro- memory. And pathological cannibalism the deceased among them or accounts of vided convincing evidence of prehistoric is generally reserved for criminals who rituals in Papua New Guinea. It is the cannibalism. consume their victims or, more often, stuff of headlines and horror films, Human cannibalism has long in- for fictional characters such as Hannibal drawing people in and mesmerizing trigued anthropologists, and they have Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. them despite their aversion. Cannibal- worked for decades to classify the phe- Despite these distinctions, however, ism represents the ultimate taboo for nomenon. Some divide the behavior ac- most anthropologists simply equate the many in Western societies—something cording to the affiliation of the con- term “cannibalism” with the regular, to relegate to other cultures, other times, sumed. Thus, endocannibalism refers to culturally encouraged consumption of other places. Yet the understanding of the consumption of individuals within a human flesh. In the age of ethnographic cannibalism derived from the past few group, exocannibalism indicates the exploration—which lasted from the time centuries of anthropological investiga- consumption of outsiders, and autocan- of Greek historian Herodotus in about tion has been too unclear and incom- nibalism covers everything from nail bit- 400 B.C. to the early 20th century—the plete to allow either a categorical rejec- ing to torture-induced self-consumption. non-Western world and its inhabitants tion of the practice or a fuller apprecia- In addition, anthropologists have come were scrutinized by travelers, mission- tion of when, where and why it might up with classifications to describe per- aries, military personnel and anthropol- have taken place. ceived or known motivations. Survival ogists. These observers told tales of hu- New scientific evidence is now bring- cannibalism is driven by starvation. His- man cannibalism in different places, from ing to light the truth about cannibalism. torically documented cases include the Mesoamerica to the Pacific islands to It has become obvious that long before Donner Party—whose members were central Africa. ) the invention of metals, before Egypt’s trapped during the harsh winter of Controversy has often accompanied pyramids were built, before the origins 1846–47 in the Sierra Nevada—and these claims. Anthropologists partici- of agriculture, before the explosion of people marooned in the Andes or the pated in only the last few waves of these opposite page Upper Paleolithic cave art, cannibalism Arctic with no other food. In contrast, cultural contacts—those that began in could be found among many different ritual cannibalism occurs when mem- the late 1800s. As a result, many of the peoples—as well as among many of our bers of a family or community consume historical accounts of cannibalism have ancestors. Broken and scattered human their dead during funerary rites in order come to be viewed skeptically. ); TIM D. WHITE ( bones, in some cases thousands of them, have been discovered from the prehis- TIM D. WHITE is co-director of the Laboratory for Human Evolutionary Studies of the Muse- toric pueblos of the American Southwest um of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a professor in to the islands of the Pacific. The osteol- Berkeley’s department of integrative biology and a member of the National Academy of Sci- preceding pages ogists and archaeologists studying these ences. White co-directs the Middle Awash research project in Ethiopia. His research interests ancient occurrences are using increas- are human paleontology, Paleolithic archaeology, and the interpretation of bone modifica- THE AUTHOR ingly sophisticated analytical tools and tion in contexts ranging from prehistoric archaeology to contemporary forensic situations. DAVID BRILL ( 88 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN Updated from the August 2001 issue COPYRIGHT 2003 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC. In 1979 anthropologist William Arens critical assessment of these conclusions of the State University of New York at appeared. Archaeologist Lewis Binford’s Stony Brook extended this theme by re- book Bones: Ancient Men and Modern viewing the ethnographic record of can- Myths argued that claims for early hom- nibalism in his book The Man-Eating inid cannibalism were unsound. He built Myth. Arens concluded that accounts of on the work of other prehistorians con- cannibalism among people from the cerned with the composition, context Aztec to the Maori to the Zulu were ei- and modifications of Paleolithic bone as- ther false or inadequately documented. semblages. Binford emphasized the need His skeptical assertion has subsequently to draw accurate inferences about past been seriously questioned, yet he none- behaviors by grounding knowledge of theless succeeded in identifying a signif- the past on experiment and observation icant gulf between these stories and evi- in the present. His influential work cou- dence of cannibalism: “Anthropology pled skepticism with a plea for meth- has not maintained the usual standards odological rigor in studies of prehistoric of documentation and intellectual rigor cannibalism. expected when other topics are being considered. Instead, it has chosen un- Standards of Evidence critically to lend its support to the col- IT WOULD BE HELPFUL if we could lective representations and thinly dis- turn to modern-day cannibals with our guised prejudices of western culture questions, but such opportunities have about others.” largely disappeared. So today’s study of The anthropologists whom Arens this intriguing behavior must be accom- was criticizing had not limited them- plished through a historical science. Ar- selves to contemporary peoples. Some chaeology has therefore become the pri- had projected their prejudices even mary means of investigating the exis- more deeply—into the archaeological tence and extent of human cannibalism. record. Interpretations of cannibalism One of the challenges facing archae- inevitably followed many discoveries of ologists, however, is the amazing variety prehistoric remains. In 1871 American of ways in which people dispose of their author Mark Twain weighed in on the dead. Bodies may be buried, burned, subject in an essay later published in placed on scaffolding, set adrift, put in Life as I Find It: “Here is a pile of bones tree trunks or fed to scavengers. Bones of primeval man and beast all mixed to- may be disinterred, washed, painted, gether, with no more damning evidence buried in bundles or scattered on stones. that the man ate the bears than that the In parts of Tibet, future archaeologists bears ate the man—yet paleontology will have difficulty recognizing any mor- holds a coroner’s inquest in the fifth ge- tuary practice at all. There most corpses ologic period on an ‘unpleasantness’ are dismembered and fed to vultures and which transpired in the quaternary, and other carnivores. The bones are then col- calmly lays it on the MAN, and then lected, ground into powder, mixed with CRUSHING adds to it what purports to be evidence barley and flour and again fed to vul- Many different types of damage can be of CANNIBALISM. I ask the candid read- tures. Given the various fates of bones seen on bones left by human cannibals. er, Does not this look like taking ad- and bodies, distinguishing cannibalism When this damage is identical to that vantage of a gentleman who has been from other mortuary practices can be seen on animal bones at the same sites, dead two million years....” quite tricky. archaeologists infer that the human In the century after Twain’s remarks, Scientists have thus set the standard remains were processed in the same archaeologists and physical anthropolo- for recognizing ancient cannibalism manner and for the same reason: for gists described the hominids Australo- very high. They confirm the activity consumption. In these metatarsal (foot) pithecus africanus, Homo erectus and H. when the processing patterns seen on bones from Mancos Canyon in Colorado, neanderthalensis as cannibalistic. Ac- human remains match those seen on the the spongy tissues at the ends were cording to some views, human prehisto- bones of other animals consumed for crushed so that fat could be removed. ry from about three million years ago un- food. Archaeologists have long argued (All the bones on the following pages are til very recently was rife with cannibalism. for such a comparison between human from the same Anasazi site in Mancos.) But in the early 1980s an important and faunal remains at a site. They rea- SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN 89 COPYRIGHT 2003 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC. son that damage to animal bones and the same culture—and checked against dry, mostly intact skulls were then han- their arrangement can clearly show that predictions embedded in ethnohistorical dled extensively, often creating a polish the animals had been slaughtered and accounts. on their projecting parts. They were eaten for food. And when human re- This comparative system of deter- sometimes painted and even mounted mains are unearthed in similar cultural mining cannibalism emphasizes multiple on poles for display and worship. Soft contexts, with similar patterns of dam- lines of osteological damage and con- tissue, including brain matter, was eaten age, discard and preservation, they may textual evidence.
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