For Your Paleo Diet

October 10, 2023 9:15 AM

"Were the people living in Gough’s Cave a gruesome outlier, or where they actually part of a wider cannibalistic culture of northern Europe? A new paper now suggests that they were not alone. Human remains dating to the same time period from across northern and western Europe and attributed to the same culture, known as the Magdalenian, also show evidence that they were cannibalised. This suggests that the eating of the dead was a shared behaviour during the late Upper Palaeolithic." Oldest evidence of human cannibalism as a funerary practice.
posted by mittens (27 comments total)

(Not to editorialize, but this has always been a fascination of mine, since reading William Arens' The Man-Eating Myth, which argues that all the anthropological information we have about cannibalism (that is, cannibalism as a cultural practice as opposed to something you do during famines or other emergencies) is at best second-hand and often supported on the flimsiest of evidence. Arens points out that often cannibalism is an accusation--those other people on the other side of the mountain are cannibals, not us, we're normal! So to find evidence that cannibalism was practiced as a funerary rite, even if it died out in favor of burials, is pretty interesting stuff!)
posted by mittens at 9:20 AM on October 10, 2023 [5 favorites]

mittens: I agree! I especially find it ironic/amusing/fascinating that it has been found in (what we call) northern Europe and the UK, given the long history of European racism and colonialism towards the more "savage" southern peoples, often backed up by such accusations (not that the Magdalenians have any relationship to modern European culture, just the irony of the geographical overlap).
posted by Saxon Kane at 10:13 AM on October 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

Here we go again conflating "paleo diet" with "low-carb" and/or "high protein". A paleo diet can just as easily be high-carb and low protein.

For a real-life example, one need only look to the Kitavans of Papua New Guinea, for whom carbohydrates make up nearly 70% of their energy intake, yet exhibit no sign of obesity, heart disease, diabetes, nor any other disease of modernity.
posted by smcdow at 10:43 AM on October 10, 2023

I took "Paleo" to be referring to the time period of the remains, rather than the macronutrient ratio of the particular diet.
posted by slappy_pinchbottom at 10:48 AM on October 10, 2023 [13 favorites]

Oh, great. I know Paleo diet people who are such fanatics about keeping to the 'authentic' original human diet that this ought to be interesting.

I had a doctor, no less, push Paleo to the point I fired him. He continually contradicted my heart doctor who advocated for a Mediterranean and moderate dietary choices. Diet zealots are the worst.

I can't say I'm much in favor of ritualistic funerary cannibalism. I prefer cremation. Except for my head. Put my head on a stick. If you want to say anything about me at my funeral, you have to hold the head stick.
posted by BlueHorse at 10:52 AM on October 10, 2023 [25 favorites]

Whoops, point taken. I'd delete my comment if I could.
posted by smcdow at 10:55 AM on October 10, 2023

cannibalism was practiced as a funerary rite, even if it died out

Died out? It's still practiced widely today, albeit in ritualized form, thanks to the Catholic Church and its offshoots.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 11:25 AM on October 10, 2023 [6 favorites]

Put my head on a stick how many bites does it take to get to the center? :D
posted by supermedusa at 11:40 AM on October 10, 2023 [3 favorites]

William Arens' The Man-Eating Myth

Aren's work has some flaws as outlined in the wiki. There is a substantial amount of evidence for endogamous cannibalism or funerary cannibalism.
posted by Ashwagandha at 12:13 PM on October 10, 2023 [3 favorites]

Somehow I doubt your paleo fanatic friends are getting their daily allotment of worms, bugs and random bushmeat, BlueHorse. Early people put in the work to get that omnivore reputation.
posted by Selena777 at 12:17 PM on October 10, 2023 [6 favorites]

I know Paleo diet people who are such fanatics about keeping to the 'authentic' original human diet

Do they eat grains? Because Paleolithic humans likely did.
posted by Ashwagandha at 12:22 PM on October 10, 2023 [4 favorites]

Aren's work has some flaws as outlined in the wiki.

He responds to some of the criticisms of his work in his essay "Rethinking Anthropophagy" which can be found in a wonderful collection, Cannibalism and the Colonial World from 1999. (While he may not believe in cannibalism, in this essay he absolutely chews a hole in Nobel prize-winning creep Daniel Gajdusek and his account of how kuru is spread.)
posted by mittens at 12:31 PM on October 10, 2023

humans are opportunistic scavenging monkeys who eat whatever they can get their grubby mitts on, the more protein and fat the better!

that said, yeah, they may have had plenty of food but wanted to keep a little bit of Uncle Bob to live forever, in the most straightforward sympathetic magic type way by putting a little but of Uncle Bob inside of them. maybe that fad died out due to hygiene or disease concerns...
posted by supermedusa at 12:35 PM on October 10, 2023

how many bites does it take to get to the center?

Let's ask Mr. Owl!
posted by hippybear at 1:37 PM on October 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

This is my jam!
I'm filing this into my ongoing collection of flesh-eating liturgies.
I harbor a strong suspicion that the theophagy initiated by 1st century protochristians has no regional antecedents and is unique to the Jesus people.
I'm completely dissatisfied with current theories involving the Bacchus cycle etc.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 1:42 PM on October 10, 2023 [2 favorites]

in the most straightforward sympathetic magic type way by putting a little but of Uncle Bob inside of them. maybe that fad died out due to hygiene or disease concerns...

I can... sort of see wanting to do this? I've long felt that what I would most want to have happen to my remains after I die is get run through a giant cuisinart and then poured into a hole in the ground with a fruit tree planted over me. That's sort of the same idea in some way.

The issue with kuru is an interesting example of this funerary practice becoming a problem through disease.
posted by hippybear at 1:43 PM on October 10, 2023 [3 favorites]

I'm completely dissatisfied with current theories involving the Bacchus cycle etc.

If you go down in the woods today, you're sure of a big surprise
If you go down in the woods today, you'd better go in disguise
For every Bacchante that ever there was
Will gather there for certain because...
Today's the day they tear a few guys apart and
EEEEAT 'EM!
posted by bartleby at 2:11 PM on October 10, 2023 [8 favorites]

There's a 'well, a Thag like that, you don't eat them all at once' joke out there somewhere.
posted by bartleby at 2:13 PM on October 10, 2023 [2 favorites]

And here I thought only owlbears eat their dead moms
posted by destrius at 9:56 PM on October 10, 2023

It seems odd to me that eating the placenta (placentophagia) is not generally mentioned in discussions of cannibalism. The word does not occur in the book linked in mittens' latest comment, for example

Most mammals do it, not excepting herbivores. Sea mammals, camels, and humans are the exceptions, but there are uses of the placenta in traditional medicine, and there are health practitioners who advocate placentophagy as a preventative measure against post-natal depression. The wikipedia link says evidence that any traditional society practiced it, however, is scarce.

As far as Kuru is concerned, it is at least intriguing that the PrP proteins which give rise to and transmit the disease when misfolded are expressed and sometimes over expressed in placental tissue.
posted by jamjam at 11:06 PM on October 10, 2023 [3 favorites]

It seems odd to me that eating the placenta (placentophagia) is not generally mentioned in discussions of cannibalism

Yes, that's my understanding as well in my reading on the subject. I suspect there's a couple reasons for that but the top reason is the old favourite - misogyny / patriarchy / "that's icky woman's stuff".

I have seen the argument that because the placenta is a temporary organ that it falls into a liminal category, that is to say "flesh but not flesh". But I would agree that consumption of placenta is likely something which happened, as it does with many mammals, with our distant ancestors though there's no obvious evidence of that practice (as far as I know - I am more than happy to be corrected).
posted by Ashwagandha at 7:50 AM on October 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

Is it *misogyny* that prevents people from calling mothers who consume their placenta cannibals, or a solicitousness that carves out a reprieve from that label?
posted by Selena777 at 12:04 PM on October 11, 2023

I think the placenta belongs to the child, not the mother? I could be wrong about this, but that's what I remember from the Radiolab episode that painted the placenta as a mighty warrior organ which in defending us from our mother's hostile womb ultimately sacrifices itself as an organ we all are born with and none of us grow up with.
posted by hippybear at 12:33 PM on October 11, 2023

Is it *misogyny* that prevents people from calling mothers who consume their placenta cannibals, or a solicitousness that carves out a reprieve from that label?

Placentas are an unusual organ and our relationship with it is really fascinating and unique. So I don't really know. FWIW, when I mentioned misogyny it was in regards to bothering to study placentophagy at all.
posted by Ashwagandha at 4:38 PM on October 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

he absolutely chews a hole in Nobel prize-winning creep Daniel Gajdusek and his account of how kuru is spread

The only real winner in that conversation is Shirley Lindenbaum, one of the anthropologists actually working with the Fore who correctly noted that 1) they were doing some cannibalism and 2) it was probably causing the kuru.

More on the topic of this post, research into kuru did end up showing that people who were homozygous for a particular allele were more susceptible to the disease, whereas heterozygosity had a protective effect. This led Mead et al. to posit that such heterozygosity was actually selected for in the past due to prehistoric outbreaks of kuru-like disease. Essentially, there was enough cannibalism going on in early human history to leave an echo in our genes.
posted by Panjandrum at 1:18 PM on October 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

Oh man. There is a billion dollar idea for a theology PhD dissertation on the juxtaposition of placentophagia and the institution of the Eucharist.
There's already been a bunch of stuff on the amniotic membrane and the temple veil and the yonic spilling of water from Jesus's pierced side.
I read one on the "manger" as placenta but it was... meh.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 12:49 PM on October 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

Of course when it comes to the Eucharist we have trouble thinking of it as eating exactly--we ingest, we incorporate, but there the process stops, and we don't imagine it reaching further than that. Which is the way we treat a lot of our ingestion metaphors--including the intake of our intellectual forebears: "The miracle of imitatio is, furthermore, that eating ends in procreation, by a sudden switch which avoids the usual outcome of ingestion. The writer devours his models, assimilates them to himself as he digests them, and then, through a clever elision by which the alimentary imagery is superseded by the sexual, brings forth what he has read in a new form." (Maggie Kilgour, From Communion to Cannibalism)
posted by mittens at 1:12 PM on October 16, 2023 [1 favorite]