Mail & Guardian reporter Contemporary Western horror of eating people could be an aberration, and has a lot to answer for in the world of anthropology, which is a Western creation. Evidence for cannibalism abounds – even if circumstantial – both from the modern world and throughout history, but academic anthropology has found itself in a funk of denial. This explains why Richard A Marlar of the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Denver and his colleagues have gone to great lengths to substantiate a case of cannibalism from the western United States.
Writing in Nature, Marlar and colleagues examine what happened at an archaeological site called Cowboy Wash, in southwestern Colorado when, sometime around AD 1150, a small settlement was suddenly abandoned. At around the time of the desertion of Cowboy Wash, seven people were killed, dismembered and cooked. Signs of butchery are evident, and traces of human blood remain on implements found in the remains of the houses, even after 850 years. Cooking pots contain traces of human myoglobin, a protein found only in skeletal and heart muscle – in other words, meat. The researchers have published many of these findings in reports, alleging that they have stumbled on nothing less than a cannibal feast – to deluges of denial. Signs of butchery, even cookery, do not necessarily mean human ingestion, claim critics.
The researchers provide the clincher in their Nature report. The evidence that challenges the scepticism is humble enough: just before leaving, one of the diners at the grisly occasion left a small deposit on the cooling hearth. This coprolite ( the technical term for palaeo-poo) has yielded much to modern scrutiny. First, it is completely devoid of plant matter. The pooper had not eaten any plant matter for more than a day: he or she would have eaten meat, exclusively. But what meat? Biochemistry reveals traces, again, of human myoglobin, suggesting that the depositor had just enjoyed a cannibal repast. Even this may not be conclusive, for faeces may contain cells sloughed from the diner’s intestine, and even quantities of blood. The researchers show that myoglobin is not found in intestinal wall cells, and it is absent from blood – this was demonstrated by analysis of the stools of modern volunteers. Considered globally, cannibalism should be less a moral issue than one of custom. In parts of New Guinea, and in the Old West, eating people could have been as natural as fish and chips on a Friday night – only prejudice prevents us from admitting it.