"First Cannibals Ate Each Other for Extra Nutrition"

[PaleoPhil]

LOL

[PaleoPhil]

As I expected, more evidence of Neanderthal cannibalism has been found:

“the scientists concluded that the Neanderthals were victims of cannibalism. Scientists have found hints of cannibalism among Neanderthals at other sites, but El Sidrón is exceptional for the scale of evidence.” (“Bones Give Peek Into the Lives of Neanderthals,” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/21/science/21neanderthal.html?_r=1)

And as I predicted months ago...

I'm sure that the other camp will come up with some counterpoints of their own

...more counterpoints have been made by scientists not in the camp of Russell, Orschiedt, Frayer et al who have argued that most (though not necessarily all) of the Neanderthal cannibalism evidence may be due to ritual burial, as with this hypothesis of killing and cannibalizing of trespassers:

“The victims might have wandered into the territory of another band of Neanderthals. For their act of trespass, they paid the ultimate price.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/21/science/21neanderthal.html?_r=1))

Jesse Bering, Director of the Institute of Cognition and Culture, has even argued that “starvation cannibalism may have been so prevalent in the ancestral past that it literally changed our DNA. Modern human populations appear to contain specific genetic adaptations designed to combat cannibalistic viruses” (“Bite Me: An evolutionary case for cannibalism,” http://www.slate.com/id/2278240/pagenum/all/#p2). The starvation hypothesis is similar to the "extra nutrition" hypothesis. In a video below the article, psychologist Paul Bloom argues that humans engage in cannibalism for a variety of reasons, which presumably could have been true for Stone Agers as well.

Professor Tim White has argued that evidence of Neanderthal cannibalism doesn’t prove that Neanderthals didn’t also bury their dead. He suspects that Neanderthals did both:

In an interview with the BBC, he said, "When you see some Neanderthals practising intentional burial and others practising cannibalism, that is a clear indication of behaviour that is multidimensional — a pattern that mirrors the behavior of more modern people" (http://being.publicradio.org/programs/2009/novelist-as-god/particulars.shtml)

It will be interesting to see what future evidence reveals.