[Sca-cooks] Re: cannibalism

[Vincent Cuenca]

>Years a good I read and enjoyed _The Man-Eating Myth_. At that point,
   >judging by the book, the orthodoxy among anthropologists was that
   >(non-starvation) cannibalism did exist or had existed in a wide
   >variety of cultures. The book was an attempt to debunk that belief,
   >and argued that there was no good evidence for it anywhere.

ISTR some buzz a couple years back, about an anthropologist claiming to have
found evidence of a cannibal cult among the Anasazi.  He proferred as
evidence human bones with tool marks and "pot polish" (marks made by
knocking against the walls of a pot during cooking), and fecal matter
showing signs of human hemoglobin. His contention was that this was a
practice imported from Mexico rather than being an indigenous religious
rite, and offered as additional evidence a skull with filed teeth.  Tooth
filing doesn't show up in the American Southwest, but is a documented
practice in Northern and Central Mexico.  Of course, he's drawing a lot of
fire from different sources, including Pueblo Indian groups claiming
deliberate slander and racism.  Again, it's a case of cannibalism as
religious rite rather than as innate savagery or depravity.  An interesting
debate, to say the least.

Vicente

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If you get into a jam, you can always eat something, blow something up or
throw penguins. --Jim Henson




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