The Indians didn't just eat corn; suffered a period of drought
By: Tamara Traubman
Scientists say they have discovered direct evidence of Native American cannibalism at an ancient Anasazi settlement near Mesa Verde in Colorado. Dismembered human bones, a stone cutting tool stained with blood, and remains of human tissue in a clay cooking pot were discovered at the site. However, the most solid evidence, according to the researchers, was found in ancient human excrement. Biochemical tests of the feces revealed traces of human muscle protein.
"The find provides unequivocal evidence of cannibalism that occurred from time to time in the American Southwest," said Dr. Brian Billman, an archaeologist from the University of North Carolina, a member of the research team that published its findings yesterday in the scientific journal "Nature".
In response, leaders of the descendants of the Anasazi tribe said that the tribe never engaged in cannibalism and that they deny the archaeologists' claims. In recent years, several additional studies have been published linking ancient Indians to cannibalism. The studies were based on damaged human bones that appeared to have been damaged by slaughter. But critics of the studies argued that these signs were not enough, as the bones could just as easily have been damaged by ancient burial practices, which included burning and mutilating the bones of the dead.
In the current study, the researchers repeated the tests several times, because they knew that this was a sensitive and controversial issue. Their final and unequivocal conclusion in their opinion was that the muscle protein (myoglobin) discovered in the feces could only be found in the feces of a person who ate human flesh.
Dr. Jarrer Diamond, an anthropologist from the University of California, Los Angeles, who wrote an accompanying paper to the study, said the evidence gathered by the research team was "compelling," adding that he also shared the conclusion that some of the ancestors of the Native Americans had experimented with cannibalism.
Even if there was cannibalism, archaeologists believe it was extremely rare, and may have been done in times of severe famine. There is evidence that suggests eating a person between 1150-900 AD. Evidence from a slightly later period suggests that for about fifty years there was what archaeologists call "cannibalistic practice" - that is, eating dead relatives or enemies other than because of hunger.
Against archaeologists who previously believed that the Indians were cannibals, it was argued that they were fueling racism and genocide. It should be noted that European settlers who arrived in the New World used stories about cannibalism among the Indians as a justification for their acts of conquest and killing.
But the evidence in the current study was actually discovered in a conservation operation carried out by the descendants of the Utah tribe. These initiated rescue excavations in historical sites that were facing demolition.
From the excavations it became clear that between the years 1150-1130 there lived a community of 125-70 people. In those years, one of the worst droughts that Western America has known in the past two thousand years hit the region. The drought was the background for tensions between the local Indians and invaders from the Anasazi tribe who came from the surrounding area.
Dr. Billman and his colleagues wrote in the report that the entire community appears to have been wiped out in "a single incident of terrorist violence and cannibalism during a period of social chaos caused by the drought." The evidence points to the killing, cooking and eating of seven people. Now the researchers say it would be interesting to try to find traces of other human tissues in the feces, in addition to the protein discovered in the muscle.
{Appeared in Haaretz newspaper, 8/9/2000}
