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Tag: Cannibalism

  • New Evidence Suggests Neanderthals Cannibalized Outsider Women and Children

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    Anthropologists have spent centuries piecing together the story of human history. For every fascinating detail they unearth, there are others that are rather, uh, unsavory. A new analysis of human bone fragments paints a particularly gruesome picture of our Neanderthal cousins.

    The study, published November 19 in the journal Nature Scientific Reports, suggests that these remains belonged to six women and children who were slaughtered, butchered, and cannibalized by other Neanderthals. The bone fragments were found inside the Goyet cave system in modern-day Belgium, and they appear to be between 41,000 and 45,000 years old.

    The findings point to targeted predatory behavior toward slender, short-statured females and children from other Neanderthal groups, according to the researchers.

    Neanderthal remains from the Troisième caverne of Goyet in Belgium © Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences/Scientific Reports

    Unearthing cannibalistic context

    Back when Neanderthals roamed the Earth, cannibalism wasn’t all that uncommon. Researchers have been digging up evidence of this grisly practice for years, with instances occurring over extended time periods and across distant geographic regions.

    Neanderthal cannibalism appears to stem from a broad range of motivations, from sustenance and survival to potential rituals. However, piecing together the context surrounding individual occurrences has proved difficult largely due to the fragmented condition of most skeletal remains and a lack of preserved cultural clues.

    With that being said, the assemblage of Neanderthal remains recovered from the Goyet caves offers some of the clearest insight into Neanderthal cannibalism during the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition. This collection of 101 bone fragments is the largest assemblage of Neanderthal remains in Northern Europe with clear evidence of human-made modifications.

    Investigating an ancient crime scene

    For this study, a team of researchers led by Quentin Cosnefroy, a biological anthropologist at the University of Bordeaux in France, reassembled the bone fragments as much as possible and conducted a genetic analysis. The results indicated that the bones belonged to four adult women and two male children and that the women were shorter and more slender than the average female Neanderthal.

    Forensic investigation and microscopic analysis of the remains revealed clear signs of butchery, such as cut marks and notches. This is evidence of nutritional cannibalism, according to the researchers.

    When they combined their findings with a previous isotopic analysis of the remains, they concluded that the cannibalized Neanderthals came from a completely different region than the one they died in. This indicated that they were victims of exocannibalism—the practice of eating a person from outside of one’s own community—possibly as a result of intergroup conflict, territoriality, or cultural treatment of outsiders.

    “At a minimum, it suggests that weaker members of one or multiple groups from a single neighbouring region were deliberately targeted,” the researchers wrote in the study. They hypothesize that exocannibalism may have served as a selection strategy aimed at undermining the reproductive potential of one or more competing groups.

    The study’s findings, while stomach-turning, are a window into our distant past. They illustrate how subtle clues from ancient human remains can expose the complex social tensions and selective violence that shaped Neanderthal lives and, ultimately, our own.

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    Ellyn Lapointe

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  • Archaeologists Identify Franklin Expedition Captain Who Became Food for His Crew

    Archaeologists Identify Franklin Expedition Captain Who Became Food for His Crew

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    On May 19, 1845, two ships set sail from Kent, England. The crew and officers of the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, under the command of Sir John Franklin, were to carry out a mapping mission of the Canadian Arctic’s Northwest Passage. The trip, to put it mildly, would not go well.

    Before they reached their destination, five crew members left the ship due to sickness. They would be the lucky ones, as both ships would end up trapped in Arctic ice. While some died before abandoning the ship, 105 of them eventually left the vessels behind and set out to find help overland. In total, 129 sailors lost their lives.

    Recollections from Inuit who saw the sailors, and marks discovered on some of the remains, tell a grisly tale, in which those who lived the longest were forced to eat the remains of the dead. Now, almost 180 years after the expedition began, the remains of one of those unfortunate men subjected to posthumous cannibalism has been identified as belonging to James Fitzjames, captain of the Erebus.

    Researchers have found human bones and teeth on several trips to King William Island, dating back to the mid-19th century. That’s where over 100 survivors of the ill fated voyage had fled after abandoning their stuck ships, and ultimately, where they died. At one location, 451 bones, belonging to at least 13 sailors, were found. Who those bones belonged to remained a mystery, until anthropologists and DNA experts at Canada’s University of Waterloo and Lakehead University began analyzing them several years ago. They published some of their findings in a recent edition of the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports. After examining 17 bone and tooth samples, collected from one of the King William Island camps, the DNA was compared to samples taken from living relatives of some of the doomed sailors.

    Cut marks on the jaw bone of James Fitzjames indicate his body was used as food by his fellow sailors. © University of Waterloo

    “We worked with a good quality sample that allowed us to generate a Y-chromosome profile, and we were lucky enough to obtain a match,” said Stephen Fratpietro of Lakehead University’s Paleo-DNA lab.

    Fitzjames was a senior member of the expedition. In fact, he was the one who wrote the report declaring Franklin’s death. His rank didn’t prevent his remains from being used for survival; cut marks on his jaw bone indicate some of those still living had at least tried to eat him.

    Photo of James Fitzjames
    A portrait of James Fitzjames, captain of the HMS Erebus. © University of Waterloo

    “This shows that he predeceased at least some of the other sailors who perished, and that neither rank nor status was the governing principle in the final desperate days of the expedition as they strove to save themselves,” said Douglas Stenton, an adjunct professor of anthropology at Waterloo, in a statement.

    Fitzjames is only the second member of the expedition whose remains have been identified. In 2021, some of the same scientists used a similar technique to determine some tooth and bone had once belonged to John Gregory, a warrant officer who served on the Erebus. Scientists rediscovered the Erebus in 2014, while the Terror was found in 2016.

    The archaeologists aren’t done. They’ve asked other distant family members of sailors who were on the Franklin expedition to contact them, hoping they, too, will generate matches that allow more remains to be identified.

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    Adam Kovac

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