New theory suggests that cannibalism did in the Neanderthals [News]

To all those out there who argue that Soylent Green was onto something– that if we were practical folks, we wouldn’t do silly things like bury the sick and dead but eat them– it turns out that may have been exactly what killed off the Neanderthals.For years, scientists have wondered how a large-brained intelligent species like the Neanderthals managed to to go completely extinct.  Theories such as competition for food and resources with Homo sapiens have come and gone and it now appears that the most likely explanation might be that Neanderthals engaged in widespread cannibalism, seeing the sick, dying and dead as a valuable food source, which led to a type of “mad cow disease” that decimated Neanderthal populations beyond repair.

From ABC.au:

Gory evidence uncovered in a French cave in 1999 reveals Neanderthals probably practiced cannibalism too.

The 100,000-120,000 year-old bones discovered at the cave site of Moula-Guercy near the west bank of the Rhone river suggests a group of Neanderthals defleshed the bones of at least six other individuals and then broke the bones apart with a hammer stone and anvil to remove the marrow and brains.

It’s not clear why Neanderthals may have eaten each other. But research on the Fore determined that maternal kin of certain deceased Fore individuals used to dismember corpses and regarded some human flesh as a valuable food source.

Beginning in the early 1900s, anthropologists also began to take note of an affliction among the Fore named kuru. By the 1960s, kuru reached epidemic levels and killed over 1100 people.

Subsequent investigations determined that kuru was related to the Fore’s cannibalistic activities and was a form of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy or TSE.

TSEs, of which mad cow disease or bovine spongiform encephalopathy is one, have been around for possibly millions of years, Underdown says.

TSEs cause brain tissue to take on an almost sponge-like appearance, caused by the formation of small holes during the development of the disease.

The disease’s latter stages often result in severe mental impairment, loss of speech and an inability to move.

Read the whole article here.