Cannibalism Practices of the Ancient Homo Neanderthalis

I hope you’re not too hungry as you read this, because it’s time to talk about cannibalism. Dear readers, although we might recoil now at the thought of consuming human flesh, it turns out that this practice is extremely ancient: cases among Homo Neanderthalis, another early human species called Homo Antecessor, and Homo Sapiens have all been documented. The earliest confirmed instance comes from the Atapuerca Caves in northern Spain, which 800,000 years ago were the ghastly final depository for many human bones that scientists have found overwhelming evidence of having been cannibalized (you can tell by the cut marks left on the bones, apparently). Although the reality of humans-eating- humans is not in dispute, excited scientific debate (the calm and rational kind: unlikely to result in any sort of flesh-eating behavior) continues around some ancillary topics. For instance, was the cannibalism done for ritualistic or nutritional purposes? Recent studies published in 2017 and 2019 come to different conclusions. Regardless, we have engaged in cannibalism enough in our history to have our genetic makeup affected: in the early part of this century, a team of researchers discovered that humans almost worldwide have a special gene that provides protection from infection from a type of prion protein that thrives when humans consume other humans. One theory is that when a supervolcano on the island of Sumatra from 75,000 years ago erupted, many species went extinct, and humans might have been close to it, with our numbers worldwide plummeting to under 10,000 survivors. Were we desparate? Faced with nuclear-winter conditions that might have temporarily ended agricultural output, maybe we turned to our neighbors. A shoulder to eat, rather than to lean on, might have looked more enticing . . .