Cannibal theory over early Briton
By Judith Burns
Science reporter, BBC News
Kents Cavern has a long history of human occupation
A fragment of bone from a Devon cave may hint at cannibalism by early Britons, according to archaeologists.
Researchers say the 9,000-year-old bone carries cut marks made by a stone tool which are consistent with the act of dismemberment.
Scientists believe the bone is evidence that Britons from the Mesolithic period engaged in complex burial rituals and possibly cannibalism.
Human remains from this period are extremely rare in Britain.
The bone was found at Kents Cavern in the late 19th century and was being stored at Torquay museum where curator Barry Chandler noticed the cut marks on it.
He showed the bone to Dr Rick Schulting from Oxford University who concluded that it belonged a human adult.
Dr Schulting told BBC News: "The cuts are along the top of the ulna, the top of the bone of the lower arm, right at the elbow. They look like they're made by stone tools rather than metal tools."
"They're just a series of fine parallel cuts as though you're trying to dismember, to remove the lower arm."
"The person must have been already dead at this time. So you're looking at post-mortem dismemberment for some reason."
Dr Schulting says the marks could be evidence of a complex mortuary treatment. Or, he says, "the other possibility is that this is done for quite another reason, the consumption of the individual as part of cannibalism."
Fresh break
The bone is also fractured and according to scientists this probably happened when it was still fresh, which might provide some support for the cannibalism theory - but Dr Schulting urges caution.
Carbon dating put the bone in the Mesolithic period, between the end of the last Ice Age and the start of farming.
Dr Schulting hopes to resolve the cannibalism question by searching Kents Cavern for other human and animal bones remains from this period to see if they were treated in the same way.
Dr Silvia Bello, a palaeontologist at London's Natural History Museum, told BBC News: "Cannibalism amongst [Homo] sapiens and pre-sapiens humans has always been a taboo topic. Whilst the presence of cut marks on faunal remains is usually referred to as a direct manifestation of butchery activities, cut marks on human remains are not usually considered to be un-equivocal evidence of cannibalism.
"The presence of butchery cut marks on human remains is generally interpreted as ritual practice, such as de-fleshing, scalping, dismembering, without consumption of the body. However, although difficult to prove, cannibalistic practices cannot be completely dismissed."
"The newly described human remains from Kent's Cavern are clearly an important development in the reconstruction of the complex funerary behaviour of Mesolithic people in Britain."
In the UK, the only other bones with cut marks were discovered in Gough's Cave, Somerset and are 5,000 years older.
This bone was dug up by in 1866 by archaeologist and geologist William Pengelly. He discovered it in the upper levels of Kents Cavern which are less studied than the lower levels as the items here are generally more recent.
It was being stored alongside some fragments of animal bone from the same area when Barry Chandler spotted it.
He was surprised that the carbon dating showed it as being so much older than the rest of the collection which are from the Bronze Age or late Neolithic era.
(Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/devon/8188406.stm)
Historical accounts
Pre-history
Some anthropologists, such as Tim White, suggest that cannibalism was common in human societies prior to the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic period. This theory is based on the large amount of butchered human" bones found in Neanderthal and other Lower/Middle Paleolithic sites.[43] Cannibalism in the Lower and Middle Paleolithic may have occurred because of food shortages.[44]
Early history
Cannibalism is mentioned many times in early history and literature. It is reported in the Bible during the siege of Samaria (2 Kings 6:2530). Two women made a pact to eat their children; after the first mother cooked her child the second mother ate it but refused to reciprocate by cooking her own child. A similar story is reported by Flavius Josephus during the siege of Jerusalem by Rome in 70 CE, and the population of Numantia during the Roman Siege of Numantia in the second century BC was reduced to cannibalism and suicide. Cannibalism was also well-documented in Egypt during a famine caused by the failure of the Nile to flood for eight years (1073-1064 BCE).
As in modern times, though, reports of cannibalism were often told as apocryphal second and third-hand stories, with widely varying levels of accuracy. St. Jerome, in his letter Against Jovinianus, discusses how people come to their present condition as a result of their heritage, and then lists several examples of peoples and their customs. In the list, he mentions that he has heard that Atticoti eat human flesh and that Massagetae and Derbices (a people on the borders of India) kill and eat old people.(---The Tibareni crucify those whom they have loved before when they have grown old---). ; this points to likelihood that St. Jerome's writing came from rumours and does not represent the situation accurately.[45]
Researchers have found physical evidence of cannibalism in ancient times. In 2001, archaeologists at the University of Bristol found evidence of Iron Age cannibalism in Gloucestershire.[46] In Germany, Emil Carthaus and Dr. Bruno Bernhard have observed 1,891 signs of cannibalism in the caves at the Hönne (1000 - 700 BCE).[47]
Middle Ages
During the Muslim-Quray wars in the early 7th century, cases of cannibalism have been reported. Following the Muslim defeat at the Battle of Uhud in 625, it is said that after killing Hamzah ibn Abdu l-Muṭṭalib, his liver was consumed by Hind bint Utbah, the wife of Abû Sufyan ibn Harb (one of the commanders of the Quray army)[48]. Although she later converted to Islam, and was the mother of Muawiyah I, the founder of the Islamic Umayyad Caliphate, Muawiyah was later slandered to be an unacceptable leader and the son of a cannibal.
Reports of cannibalism were also recorded during the First Crusade, as Crusaders fed on the bodies of their dead opponents following the Siege of Ma'arrat al-Numan. Amin Maalouf also discusses further cannibalism incidents on the march to Jerusalem, and to the efforts made to delete mention of these from western history.[49] During Europe's Great Famine of 13151317 there were many reports of cannibalism among the starving populations. In North Africa, as in Europe, there are references to cannibalism as a last resort in times of famine.[50]
For a brief time in Europe, an unusual form of cannibalism occurred when thousands of Egyptian mummies preserved in bitumen were ground up and sold as medicine.[51] The practice developed into a wide-scale business which flourished until the late 16th century. This "fad" ended because the mummies were revealed to actually be recently killed slaves. Two centuries ago, mummies were still believed to have medicinal properties against bleeding, and were sold as pharmaceuticals in powdered form (see human mummy confection).[52]
References to cannibalizing the enemy has also been seen in poetry written when China was repressed in the Song Dynasty, though the cannibalizing sounds more like poetic symbolism to express the hatred towards the enemy. (See Man Jiang Hong)
While there is universal agreement that some Mesoamerican people practiced human sacrifice, there is a lack of scholarly consensus as to whether cannibalism in pre-Columbian America was widespread. At one extreme, anthropologist Marvin Harris, author of Cannibals and Kings, has suggested that the flesh of the victims was a part of an aristocratic diet as a reward, since the Aztec diet was lacking in proteins. While most pre-Columbian historians believe that there was ritual cannibalism related to human sacrifices, they do not support Harris's thesis that human flesh was ever a significant portion of the Aztec diet.[53][54][55]
Early modern era
European explorers and colonizers brought home many stories of cannibalism practiced by the native peoples they encountered. The friar Diego de Landa reported about Yucatán instances, Yucatan before and after the Conquest, translated from Relación de las cosas de Yucatan, 1566 (New York: Dover Publications, 1978: 4), and there have been similar reports by Purchas from Popayán, Colombia, and from the Marquesas Islands of Polynesia, where human flesh was called long-pig (Alanna King, ed., Robert Louis Stevenson in the South Seas, London: Luzac Paragon House, 1987: 4550). It is recorded about the natives of the captaincy of Sergipe in Brazil, "They eat human flesh when they can get it, and if a woman miscarries devour the abortive immediately. If she goes her time out, she herself cuts the navel-string with a shell, which she boils along with the secondine, and eats them both.'" (See E. Bowen, 1747: 532.)
Reports of cannibalism among the Texas tribes were often applied to the Karankawa and the Tonkawa.[56][57] Though cannibals, the fierce Tonkawas were great friends of the white Texas settlers, helping them against all their enemies.[58] Among the North American tribes which practiced cannibalism in some form may be mentioned the Montagnais, and some of the tribes of Maine; the Algonkin, Armouchiquois, Iroquois, and Micmac; in the South the Seminole people who built the mounds in Florida, and the Tonkawa, Attacapa, Karankawa, Kiowa, Caddo, and Comanche (?); in the Northwest and West, portions of the continent, the Thlingchadinneh and other Athapascan tribes, the Tlingit, Heiltsuk, Kwakiutl, Tsimshian, Nootka, Siksika, some of the Californian tribes, and the Ute. There is also a tradition of the practice among the Hopi, and mentions of the custom among other tribes of New Mexico and Arizona. The Mohawk, and the Attacapa, Tonkawa, and other Texas tribes were known to their neighbours as "man-eaters."[59]
As with most lurid tales of native cannibalism, these stories are treated with a great deal of scrutiny, as accusations of cannibalism were often used as justifications for the subjugation or destruction of "savages." However, there were several well-documented cultures that engaged in regular eating of the dead, such as New Zealand's Maori. In one infamous 1809 incident, 66 passengers and crew of the ship the Boyd were killed and eaten by Māori on the Whangaroa peninsula, Northland. (See also: Boyd massacre) Cannibalism was already a regular practice in Māori wars.[60] In another instance, on 11 July 1821 warriors from the Ngapuhi tribe killed 2,000 enemies and remained on the battlefield "eating the vanquished until they were driven off by the smell of decaying bodies".[61] Māori warriors fighting the New Zealand Government in Titokowaru's War in New Zealand's North Island in 186869 revived ancient rites of cannibalism as part of the radical Hauhau movement of the Pai Marire religion.[62]
Other islands in the Pacific were home to cultures that allowed cannibalism to some degree. The dense population of Marquesas Islands, Polynesia, was concentrated in the narrow valleys, and consisted of warring tribes, who sometimes cannibalized their enemies. In parts of Melanesia, cannibalism was still practiced in the early 20th century, for a variety of reasons including retaliation, to insult an enemy people, or to absorb the dead person's qualities.[63]
This period of time was also rife with instances of explorers and seafarers resorting to cannibalism for survival. The survivors of the sinking of the French ship Medusa in 1816 resorted to cannibalism after four days adrift on a raft and their plight was made famous by Théodore Géricault's painting Raft of the Medusa. The misfortunes of the Donner Party in the United States are also well-known. After the sinking of the Essex of Nantucket by a whale, on November 20, 1820, (an important source event for Herman Melville's Moby-Dick) the survivors, in three small boats, resorted, by common consent, to cannibalism in order for some to survive.[64] Sir John Franklin's lost polar expedition is another example of cannibalism out of desperation.[65]
The case of R v. Dudley and Stephens (1884) 14 QBD 273 (QB) is an English case which dealt with four crew members of an English yacht, the Mignonette, which were cast away in a storm some 1,600 miles (2,600 km) from the Cape of Good Hope. After several days one of the crew, a seventeen year old cabin boy, fell unconscious due to a combination of the famine and drinking seawater. The others (one possibly objecting) decided then to kill him and eat him. They were picked up four days later. Two of the three survivors were found guilty of murder. A significant outcome of this case was that necessity was determined to be no defence against a charge of murder.
Roger Casement writing to a consular colleague in Lisbon on 3 August 1903 from Lake Mantumba in the Congo Free State said: The people round here are all cannibals. You never saw such a weird looking lot in your life. There are also dwarfs (called Batwas) in the forest who are even worse cannibals than the taller human environment. They eat man flesh raw! Its a fact. Casement then added how assailants would bring down a dwarf on the way home, for the marital cooking pot The Dwarfs, as I say, dispense with cooking pots and eat and drink their human prey fresh cut on the battlefield while the blood is still warm and running. These are not fairy tales my dear Cowper but actual gruesome reality in the heart of this poor, benighted savage land. (National Library of Ireland, MS 36,201/3)
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannibalism)
By Judith Burns
Science reporter, BBC News
A fragment of bone from a Devon cave may hint at cannibalism by early Britons, according to archaeologists.
Researchers say the 9,000-year-old bone carries cut marks made by a stone tool which are consistent with the act of dismemberment.
Scientists believe the bone is evidence that Britons from the Mesolithic period engaged in complex burial rituals and possibly cannibalism.
Human remains from this period are extremely rare in Britain.
The bone was found at Kents Cavern in the late 19th century and was being stored at Torquay museum where curator Barry Chandler noticed the cut marks on it.
He showed the bone to Dr Rick Schulting from Oxford University who concluded that it belonged a human adult.
Dr Schulting told BBC News: "The cuts are along the top of the ulna, the top of the bone of the lower arm, right at the elbow. They look like they're made by stone tools rather than metal tools."
"They're just a series of fine parallel cuts as though you're trying to dismember, to remove the lower arm."
"The person must have been already dead at this time. So you're looking at post-mortem dismemberment for some reason."
Dr Schulting says the marks could be evidence of a complex mortuary treatment. Or, he says, "the other possibility is that this is done for quite another reason, the consumption of the individual as part of cannibalism."
Fresh break
The bone is also fractured and according to scientists this probably happened when it was still fresh, which might provide some support for the cannibalism theory - but Dr Schulting urges caution.
Carbon dating put the bone in the Mesolithic period, between the end of the last Ice Age and the start of farming.
Dr Schulting hopes to resolve the cannibalism question by searching Kents Cavern for other human and animal bones remains from this period to see if they were treated in the same way.
Dr Silvia Bello, a palaeontologist at London's Natural History Museum, told BBC News: "Cannibalism amongst [Homo] sapiens and pre-sapiens humans has always been a taboo topic. Whilst the presence of cut marks on faunal remains is usually referred to as a direct manifestation of butchery activities, cut marks on human remains are not usually considered to be un-equivocal evidence of cannibalism.
"The presence of butchery cut marks on human remains is generally interpreted as ritual practice, such as de-fleshing, scalping, dismembering, without consumption of the body. However, although difficult to prove, cannibalistic practices cannot be completely dismissed."
"The newly described human remains from Kent's Cavern are clearly an important development in the reconstruction of the complex funerary behaviour of Mesolithic people in Britain."
In the UK, the only other bones with cut marks were discovered in Gough's Cave, Somerset and are 5,000 years older.
This bone was dug up by in 1866 by archaeologist and geologist William Pengelly. He discovered it in the upper levels of Kents Cavern which are less studied than the lower levels as the items here are generally more recent.
It was being stored alongside some fragments of animal bone from the same area when Barry Chandler spotted it.
He was surprised that the carbon dating showed it as being so much older than the rest of the collection which are from the Bronze Age or late Neolithic era.
(Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/devon/8188406.stm)
Historical accounts
Pre-history
Some anthropologists, such as Tim White, suggest that cannibalism was common in human societies prior to the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic period. This theory is based on the large amount of butchered human" bones found in Neanderthal and other Lower/Middle Paleolithic sites.[43] Cannibalism in the Lower and Middle Paleolithic may have occurred because of food shortages.[44]
Early history
Cannibalism is mentioned many times in early history and literature. It is reported in the Bible during the siege of Samaria (2 Kings 6:2530). Two women made a pact to eat their children; after the first mother cooked her child the second mother ate it but refused to reciprocate by cooking her own child. A similar story is reported by Flavius Josephus during the siege of Jerusalem by Rome in 70 CE, and the population of Numantia during the Roman Siege of Numantia in the second century BC was reduced to cannibalism and suicide. Cannibalism was also well-documented in Egypt during a famine caused by the failure of the Nile to flood for eight years (1073-1064 BCE).
As in modern times, though, reports of cannibalism were often told as apocryphal second and third-hand stories, with widely varying levels of accuracy. St. Jerome, in his letter Against Jovinianus, discusses how people come to their present condition as a result of their heritage, and then lists several examples of peoples and their customs. In the list, he mentions that he has heard that Atticoti eat human flesh and that Massagetae and Derbices (a people on the borders of India) kill and eat old people.(---The Tibareni crucify those whom they have loved before when they have grown old---). ; this points to likelihood that St. Jerome's writing came from rumours and does not represent the situation accurately.[45]
Researchers have found physical evidence of cannibalism in ancient times. In 2001, archaeologists at the University of Bristol found evidence of Iron Age cannibalism in Gloucestershire.[46] In Germany, Emil Carthaus and Dr. Bruno Bernhard have observed 1,891 signs of cannibalism in the caves at the Hönne (1000 - 700 BCE).[47]
Middle Ages
During the Muslim-Quray wars in the early 7th century, cases of cannibalism have been reported. Following the Muslim defeat at the Battle of Uhud in 625, it is said that after killing Hamzah ibn Abdu l-Muṭṭalib, his liver was consumed by Hind bint Utbah, the wife of Abû Sufyan ibn Harb (one of the commanders of the Quray army)[48]. Although she later converted to Islam, and was the mother of Muawiyah I, the founder of the Islamic Umayyad Caliphate, Muawiyah was later slandered to be an unacceptable leader and the son of a cannibal.
Reports of cannibalism were also recorded during the First Crusade, as Crusaders fed on the bodies of their dead opponents following the Siege of Ma'arrat al-Numan. Amin Maalouf also discusses further cannibalism incidents on the march to Jerusalem, and to the efforts made to delete mention of these from western history.[49] During Europe's Great Famine of 13151317 there were many reports of cannibalism among the starving populations. In North Africa, as in Europe, there are references to cannibalism as a last resort in times of famine.[50]
For a brief time in Europe, an unusual form of cannibalism occurred when thousands of Egyptian mummies preserved in bitumen were ground up and sold as medicine.[51] The practice developed into a wide-scale business which flourished until the late 16th century. This "fad" ended because the mummies were revealed to actually be recently killed slaves. Two centuries ago, mummies were still believed to have medicinal properties against bleeding, and were sold as pharmaceuticals in powdered form (see human mummy confection).[52]
References to cannibalizing the enemy has also been seen in poetry written when China was repressed in the Song Dynasty, though the cannibalizing sounds more like poetic symbolism to express the hatred towards the enemy. (See Man Jiang Hong)
While there is universal agreement that some Mesoamerican people practiced human sacrifice, there is a lack of scholarly consensus as to whether cannibalism in pre-Columbian America was widespread. At one extreme, anthropologist Marvin Harris, author of Cannibals and Kings, has suggested that the flesh of the victims was a part of an aristocratic diet as a reward, since the Aztec diet was lacking in proteins. While most pre-Columbian historians believe that there was ritual cannibalism related to human sacrifices, they do not support Harris's thesis that human flesh was ever a significant portion of the Aztec diet.[53][54][55]
Early modern era
European explorers and colonizers brought home many stories of cannibalism practiced by the native peoples they encountered. The friar Diego de Landa reported about Yucatán instances, Yucatan before and after the Conquest, translated from Relación de las cosas de Yucatan, 1566 (New York: Dover Publications, 1978: 4), and there have been similar reports by Purchas from Popayán, Colombia, and from the Marquesas Islands of Polynesia, where human flesh was called long-pig (Alanna King, ed., Robert Louis Stevenson in the South Seas, London: Luzac Paragon House, 1987: 4550). It is recorded about the natives of the captaincy of Sergipe in Brazil, "They eat human flesh when they can get it, and if a woman miscarries devour the abortive immediately. If she goes her time out, she herself cuts the navel-string with a shell, which she boils along with the secondine, and eats them both.'" (See E. Bowen, 1747: 532.)
Reports of cannibalism among the Texas tribes were often applied to the Karankawa and the Tonkawa.[56][57] Though cannibals, the fierce Tonkawas were great friends of the white Texas settlers, helping them against all their enemies.[58] Among the North American tribes which practiced cannibalism in some form may be mentioned the Montagnais, and some of the tribes of Maine; the Algonkin, Armouchiquois, Iroquois, and Micmac; in the South the Seminole people who built the mounds in Florida, and the Tonkawa, Attacapa, Karankawa, Kiowa, Caddo, and Comanche (?); in the Northwest and West, portions of the continent, the Thlingchadinneh and other Athapascan tribes, the Tlingit, Heiltsuk, Kwakiutl, Tsimshian, Nootka, Siksika, some of the Californian tribes, and the Ute. There is also a tradition of the practice among the Hopi, and mentions of the custom among other tribes of New Mexico and Arizona. The Mohawk, and the Attacapa, Tonkawa, and other Texas tribes were known to their neighbours as "man-eaters."[59]
As with most lurid tales of native cannibalism, these stories are treated with a great deal of scrutiny, as accusations of cannibalism were often used as justifications for the subjugation or destruction of "savages." However, there were several well-documented cultures that engaged in regular eating of the dead, such as New Zealand's Maori. In one infamous 1809 incident, 66 passengers and crew of the ship the Boyd were killed and eaten by Māori on the Whangaroa peninsula, Northland. (See also: Boyd massacre) Cannibalism was already a regular practice in Māori wars.[60] In another instance, on 11 July 1821 warriors from the Ngapuhi tribe killed 2,000 enemies and remained on the battlefield "eating the vanquished until they were driven off by the smell of decaying bodies".[61] Māori warriors fighting the New Zealand Government in Titokowaru's War in New Zealand's North Island in 186869 revived ancient rites of cannibalism as part of the radical Hauhau movement of the Pai Marire religion.[62]
Other islands in the Pacific were home to cultures that allowed cannibalism to some degree. The dense population of Marquesas Islands, Polynesia, was concentrated in the narrow valleys, and consisted of warring tribes, who sometimes cannibalized their enemies. In parts of Melanesia, cannibalism was still practiced in the early 20th century, for a variety of reasons including retaliation, to insult an enemy people, or to absorb the dead person's qualities.[63]
This period of time was also rife with instances of explorers and seafarers resorting to cannibalism for survival. The survivors of the sinking of the French ship Medusa in 1816 resorted to cannibalism after four days adrift on a raft and their plight was made famous by Théodore Géricault's painting Raft of the Medusa. The misfortunes of the Donner Party in the United States are also well-known. After the sinking of the Essex of Nantucket by a whale, on November 20, 1820, (an important source event for Herman Melville's Moby-Dick) the survivors, in three small boats, resorted, by common consent, to cannibalism in order for some to survive.[64] Sir John Franklin's lost polar expedition is another example of cannibalism out of desperation.[65]
The case of R v. Dudley and Stephens (1884) 14 QBD 273 (QB) is an English case which dealt with four crew members of an English yacht, the Mignonette, which were cast away in a storm some 1,600 miles (2,600 km) from the Cape of Good Hope. After several days one of the crew, a seventeen year old cabin boy, fell unconscious due to a combination of the famine and drinking seawater. The others (one possibly objecting) decided then to kill him and eat him. They were picked up four days later. Two of the three survivors were found guilty of murder. A significant outcome of this case was that necessity was determined to be no defence against a charge of murder.
Roger Casement writing to a consular colleague in Lisbon on 3 August 1903 from Lake Mantumba in the Congo Free State said: The people round here are all cannibals. You never saw such a weird looking lot in your life. There are also dwarfs (called Batwas) in the forest who are even worse cannibals than the taller human environment. They eat man flesh raw! Its a fact. Casement then added how assailants would bring down a dwarf on the way home, for the marital cooking pot The Dwarfs, as I say, dispense with cooking pots and eat and drink their human prey fresh cut on the battlefield while the blood is still warm and running. These are not fairy tales my dear Cowper but actual gruesome reality in the heart of this poor, benighted savage land. (National Library of Ireland, MS 36,201/3)
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannibalism)
