Cannibal Humans Ate Neanderthals Into Extinction

Originally posted by Sonya610

Can you come up with any documented cases of NEANDERTHALS eating other Neanderthals?

Well, first you'd have to find some neanderthals that knew how to write before you could find any documentation.

As I mentioned earlier, many here seem to be making the mistake of judging very ancient pre-civilization peoples with today's morals and political correctness, such as "cannibalism is bad". Until you have as they say walked a mile in those people's shoes, how can you know what for them was bad or good, right or wrong?



[edit on 5/19/2009 by centurion1211]

Originally posted by ahnggk

Originally posted by Spartannic
Maybe one of the more educated members can explain to me how cutmarks proves that we have eaten something? And also why would we eat other humanoids if plenty of wildlife must been there?

More like "Ethnic Cleansing" or genocide perhaps...

And imagine this. They have killed a whole lot of Neanderthals and thought "what a waste" so instead of disposing their bodies, they ate them instead..

This made me think... Neanderthals must be the good guys... And more proof for my theory that Evil is the God of this world.

I can't wait for the FPS to come out

But, what kind of weapons did they have back then, stone hand axes? It's also possible that he may have been attacked by a sabretooth tiger or something.

The apparently great number of cuts probably demonstrates a lack of fine-motor control, and possibly that the head or the flesh being cut away was not held in place. It's also possible that whoever cut the head did not use a systematic method to do so. If there are lots of cut marks from a butchering, then this butchering was rather savage, and not part of a sophisticated ritual or something. It seems that the butcherer was rather unintelligent.

The Neanderthal couldn't have been slashed; a stone hand axe wouldn't be able to penetrate every layer of flesh and then precisely cut the bone with single swipes, except with a great amount of force. A human that strong -- who was a regular "cannibalist" -- would have been more intelligent and more experienced in cutting flesh away from bone than how the article makes it seem. The butcherer(s) may have taken a lot of time to do this, while enduring the stench of the dying flesh.

It's also possible that the hand axe used was crudely-sharpened, so that the sides of the blade were faceted. The edges of the facets could have happened to cut into the bone while the blade was cutting out the flesh.

But, what happened to the cranium??

Humans where alot more able to coordinate their attacks on preys the Neanderthaler could not outsmart. As far as i know the modern Human introduced "ranged" weapons into EU giving us the upper hand against alot of animals.

reply to post by Spartannic


I wish I had my copy of Guns, Germs and Steel. Why do we think Neandrathals were not as smart as modern humans? Because they had fewer tools, more basic tools and weapons? Perhaps.

Were modern humans more successful because of better weapons or because they were more aggressive and used them better? I remember Diamond making the point that extinctions of large animal species corresponded well with the arrival of humans around the world.

Australia, BTW, never was inhabited by anything other than relatively small numbers of nomadic hunter gatherers until recent history. The lack of ANY large animal species capable of being domesticated had a lot to do with this and the extinctions were apparently at the hand of modern man.
New Guinea, for instance, had the wild pig which became domesticated but because of the water seperation and lack of effective trade it never came to Australia.

I think it would be hard to eat anything into extinction.
That being said i think since neanderthals where somewhat different ( more primitive i guess, ape like)from modern man's descendants, this shouldn't be considered any more cannibalism than a modern human eating a gorilla.

Cannibalism is a result of desperation in times or scarcity, its foolish to dismiss it , or believe it never occurred and wont occur again.

reply to post by mapsurfer_


Haha, more like "Hey man, don't eat me, my mate's just ached his balls!"

Originally posted by phi1618
Cannibalism is a result of desperation in times or scarcity...

Cannibalism can be caused by desperation, but human flesh was (and still is) highly prized in some part sof the world. It has nothing to do with starvation.

All those stories about the Missionaries trying to wipe it out ARE TRUE. Some tribes truly loved human flesh, it was considered the best of all delicacies.

Originally posted by Sonya610

Originally posted by phi1618
Cannibalism is a result of desperation in times or scarcity...

Cannibalism can be caused by desperation, but human flesh was (and still is) highly prized in some part sof the world. It has nothing to do with starvation.

All those stories about the Missionaries trying to wipe it out ARE TRUE. Some tribes truly loved human flesh, it was considered the best of all delicacies.

that is also true, though highly frowned upon by most religions and western society.
Its not something i would partake in, ive also heard that the eating of human brains leads to a memory disorder called kuru which is common among some tribes who eat their dead. Which leads to the fact that most people who partake in cannibalism today do so by eating already dead humans. The OP's article suggests otherwise in respects to Neanderthals being wiped out.
heres a link to wiki

en.wikipedia.org...(disease)




[edit on 19-5-2009 by phi1618]

We simply don't have enough artifacts from Neanderthals to draw immediate conclusions. For certain some of them ate human flesh sometimes. That goes without saying. How prevalent it was - no one can say.

Primitive people eating the flesh of their enemies is a tradition that never really died out. Just less common as tribalism is disappearing.

Unlikely it was an active component of their culture. It rarely is of any. It just gets sensationalized because it's disturbing.

Anything said on this find is purely morbid speculation.


Mike

I'm not sure if there is enough information to tell without a doubt that humans ate Neanderthals out of existence. It could be that humans and others were fighting over resources. The Neanderthals may have lost in this case. Humans may have eaten some of the victims if food was scarce or if they thought they tasted like chicken.

Perhaps the Neanderthals started it by eating some of the humans they captured during a battle and then the fight was on. Humans won. Maybe it was a hundred million to one odds that recent humans would find the remains and conclude that cannibalism was widespread and this conclusion was made based on just a few bone fragments.

This case might be like humans 1,000 years in the future finding remains of several plastic cell phones with only the plastic left and concluding humans in this age highly regarded their plastic cups by having so many and routinely dipped their fingers in the water because there were many finger holes in the top of the plastic cup.

reply to post by Spartannic


We were better in hunting...we hunted them, and killed them with the tools we were better at making

Originally posted by Morningglory
Interesting thread. As far as the cut marks I believe they can compare the marks to those left on butchered animal bones found near places early humans lived.

I think bones of what is believed to be a hybrid child have been found.
[edit on 19-5-2009 by Morningglory]

Bingo

Sometimes I wonder if people blab allday knowing they dont know a dang thing about what they are talking about. Or if they really dont know theyre clueless. Occasionally I find a post on a thread that hits the mark.

Cuts / chips on bones are like a finger print. It could put you in prison today. When we get to a body thats been decomposed we dont even know if its a murder, we find out by examining the bones. For this very thing. The weapon can be identified and size of person.

In fact while comparing the cuts against other tribes of the time period you can even get tribe location / culture. I think people just dont want to admit that they live in a very evil (as they call it) world. Everyone wants to believe there is an all knowing all powerful invisible man that lives in the sky and loves you.

Cannibalism would have been popular and just fine, however this is not cannibalism. True cannibalism 'eating your own species' can cause a mad cow like disease. Weve seen it in South America where tribes would eat their dead out of respect.

In these cultures they develope a genetic fingerprint showing they once cannibalized per say. That print being a natural resistance to mad cow disease. And yes we did breed with them in northern Europe.




[edit on 19-5-2009 by Memysabu]

i didnt read the whole article, but what exactly happened to the canibals then? were their bones found?

Originally posted by Memysabu
Sometimes I wonder if people blab allday knowing they dont know a dang thing about what they are talking about. Or if they really dont know theyre clueless. Occasionally I find a post on a thread that hits the mark.

Yes on this site apparently many do just that. It particularly prevelant here too, where "everybody has an opinion and all opinions are equal". They don't have to back them up, they can just say stuff and it is equal to what everybody else says!

For some reason it seems to be getting worse on a lot of parts of ATS, probably because the people that do have a clue on a partciular topic are rare and far between and never openly support eachother enough to discourage the clueless.

Originally posted by Memysabu

Originally posted by Morningglory
Interesting thread. As far as the cut marks I believe they can compare the marks to those left on butchered animal bones found near places early humans lived.

Bingo

Sometimes I wonder if people blab allday knowing they dont know a dang thing about what they are talking about. Or if they really dont know theyre clueless. Occasionally I find a post on a thread that hits the mark.

You could try taking a look in the mirror.

Originally posted by Memysabu
Cuts / chips on bones are like a finger print. It could put you in prison today. When we get to a body thats been decomposed we dont even know if its a murder, we find out by examining the bones. For this very thing. The weapon can be identified and size of person.

In fact while comparing the cuts against other tribes of the time period you can even get tribe location / culture. I think people just dont want to admit that they live in a very evil (as they call it) world. Everyone wants to believe there is an all knowing all powerful invisible man that lives in the sky and loves you.

Cannibalism would have been popular and just fine, however this is not cannibalism. True cannibalism 'eating your own species' can cause a mad cow like disease. Weve seen it in South America where tribes would eat their dead out of respect.

That is attributing human characteristics to non-humans, which is not logically sound. There is obviously no cut signature database for any Neanderthal tribes.

And FYI, "mad cow-like diseases" are spongiform encephalopathy, which is much more common among women who have to eat the brains after the men eat the other parts of the body.

Originally posted by Memysabu
In these cultures they develope a genetic fingerprint showing they once cannibalized per say. That print being a natural resistance to mad cow disease. And yes we did breed with them in northern Europe.

That's a good point, but the article in no way ascertains any characteristics of the butcherer, much less his or her genetic makeup.

The article says that the butcherer could have been human due to circumstantial evidence, like typical human temperament, and that nearby human bones suffered less damage. Even assuming that the human bone was dated in the same period as the Neanderthal jawbone, there's the simple possibility that the two were placed together by a third person, or that the human discovered the jawbone and carried it into the cave. I also find it suspicious that the cranium wasn't submitted along with the jawbone.

reply to post by Sonya610


Maybe you believe that casual conjecture causes experts not to post their opinions?

Originally posted by vcwxvwligen

That is attributing human characteristics to non-humans, which is not logically sound. There is obviously no cut signature database for any Neanderthal tribes.

The article says that the butcherer could have been human due to circumstantial evidence, like typical human temperament, and that nearby human bones suffered less damage. Even assuming that the human bone was dated in the same period as the Neanderthal jawbone, there's the simple possibility that the two were placed together by a third person, or that the human discovered the jawbone and carried it into the cave. I also find it suspicious that the cranium wasn't submitted along with the jawbone.

Your forensic detective work is spot on. Conclusions are being drawn in an attempt to attribute something horrible to Neanderthal man that we see no evidence of.

And as I tried to point out earlier in this thread, homo sapiens neanderthalis was human, as human as we are. He shared a world with his half brother Cro-magnon man who was more aggressive and learned how to make more effective tools and weapons to provide for himself and kill his enemies.

Both would have reverted to cannibalism on those occasions when food sources were unavailable and starvation loomed. But there's nothing to indicate they did it as a choice.

Mike

Originally posted by vcwxvwligen
Maybe you believe that casual conjecture causes experts not to post their opinions?

I think it can really discourage intelligent conversation. People can say anything, and if they are challenged as to WHY they would say that they just use the "it is my opinion" excuse (in so many words). They certainly would never DREAM of stating sources to back up their "opinions" even though opinions of this type SHOULD be based on actual evidence or historical references.

It does not foster good conversation, it does not lead to quality discussion where we can learn from others. It fills threads worth of meaning jibberish and yes some will just get bored or annoyed and not bother continuing.

Originally posted by Sonya610
[
I think it can really discourage intelligent conversation. People can say anything, and if they are challenged as to WHY they would say that they just use the "it is my opinion" excuse (in so many words). They certainly would never DREAM of stating sources to back up their "opinions" even though opinions of this type SHOULD be based on actual evidence or historical references.

Good point. On a discussion forum like this I post information I consider to be based on evidence.

British psychologist Stan Gooch produced a book called "The Neanderthal Question" and a series of anthropological-cultural works by him, starting with his all-encompassing "Total Man" have explored Neanderthals, their history, and influence right up to the present day. When possible material is based on peer review studies in many fields, neurological, archeological, etc.

Gooch convincingly demonstrates earlier views of Neanderthal Man as an inferior predecessor who was wiped out do not coincide with evidence that modern man is to some degree a hybrid of the two parallel sapiens strains. This is being accepted more and more by anthropologists. Recent artifact and skull discoveries have been substantiating this once dismissed claim.

Radical revision is occurring in this field with much of the previous literature now considered to based on incorrect assumptions.


Mike

[edit on 20-5-2009 by mmiichael]

reply to post by dooper


I agree the jaw is not the most delectable part but most likely an individual with low status would not get the best portion.

The brain would probably have been a choice cut with the rest of the head thrown to the side. There is a good amount of meat to be found on the heads of cows & pigs. I think human cheek meat is suppose to be succulent.

I read that for the human brain to make such leaps in development large amounts of protein were required over time. I wonder if human flesh has a higher protein content?

If these ancient people were willing to go up against a mammoth I would say these people knew the importance of protein and were willing to do most anything to get it.

edit spelling

[edit on 20-5-2009 by Morningglory]

Originally posted by Morningglory
I agree the jaw is not the most delectable part but most likely an individual with low status would not get the best portion.

Yeah I would expect most all of it to be eaten. Plus the skull is the most likely to be kept as a trophy after, which maybe why only the jaw was found. Could have been a rare case where they held on to the skull for whatever reason, whereas usually the bones ended up in a pit.

Not sure about protein content, but human flesh is very greasy. Among human cannibals there is a lot of variety as to what body parts are most prized, some like heads/brains, some hands, other tribes will not eat those parts. Course they see it as a delicacy, and many of the tribes had human flesh fairly regularly so their choice of body parts was not necessarily based on starvation/nutrition.

[edit on 20-5-2009 by Sonya610]