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Introduction

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It's my birthday today and I thought it would be worth covering something a bit more fun - albeit slightly grisly and dark.

I came across an open access paper in Nature's Scientific Reports by James Cole.

It is called "Assessing the caloric significance of episodes of human cannibalism in the Palaeolithic" and you can download/read it here.

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The Paper

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Cannibalism appears to have occurred throughout human history at various points. It appears there has been some debate as to whether the primary driver for cannibalism was nutritional or cultural.

In the case of Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea which I covered in my previous post it was a case of mainly cultural practices in relation to their funerary customs.

Cole brings new information to consideration of these practices by examining what the actual calorific value of consuming people would be!

Our understanding of prehistoric cannibalism has increased exponentially over the last few years thanks to methodological advances and increasing interpretive rigour when examining and recognising anthropogenically modified hominin remains. In the majority of studies, the interpretation is that cannibalism was practiced for nutritional reasons although there has never been a way to quantify how nutritional these episodes may be.

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Cole uses previously published data on the detailed chemical composition of 4 human bodies to construct a breakdown of their nutritional content.

This is broken down in some detail in multiple tables within the paper where the human estimates are then compared with a variety of fauna/other animals. There is also consideration of data relating to various different hominin species that existed throughout history.

The headline figures are that an average human male (adult) body would yield about 32,000 calories* of nutrition from skeletal muscle content i.e. if you were consuming them purely as meat.

If the entire body including bones was consumed then that would total over 4 times that at almost 144,000 calories*.

(*N.B. I think this is referring technically to kilocalories as that is what we conventionally mean when we refer to "calories" in the nutritional context).

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These figures are actually enough to supply multiple people with food for several days but they actually pale into insignificance when compared to the amount supplied by a variety of fauna (e.g. cattle) that have been available to people to consume as an alternative.

Cole uses this to suggest that consumption of humans was most likely due to opportunistic reasons( e.g. someone died and rather than letting their body go to waste the group may have foregone hunting on that day) and also cultural/ritualistic reasons which I have discussed previously.

The use of the human nutritional template presented here highlights that humans (and by inference hominins) fall within the expected range of calories for an animal of our average body weight. We are, however, significantly lower in calorie value when compared to single large fauna (such as mammoth, bison, cattle and horse) that have a much greater caloric return per individual than many of the groups of cannibalised human remains.

From a nutritional standpoint it did not make sense to go to the effort and likely risk of pursuing fellow humans to eat.

This is a very complex issue and the paper discusses this in some detail - I can't possibly cover all the nuances in a post like this whilst keeping it brief.

If you are interested please take a look for yourself but be warned it does cover some rather grisly points so if you are of a nervous disposition please skip it.

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Conclusion

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Cannibalism is a grisly subject but I believe it holds a unique fascination for most people.

This most likely relates to the strong cultural taboo that exists in most modern societies in relation to it. When something is forbidden it tends to stimulate people's imaginations and nightmares.

I think Cole makes an interesting argument for why pursuing humans directly as food would not make sense from a purely nutritional standpoint.

The relative risk to reward would not make it economical except in cases of opportunism.

Further as I have discussed before, the risk of prion diseases may have acted as a further negative factor (although it is hard to know if ancient peoples would have made such an association given the long incubation periods).

Anyway, I wanted to keep this brief and interesting. I hope I have succeeded.

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Thank you for reading

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References

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1. Cole, James. 2017. “Assessing the Calorific Significance of Episodes of Human Cannibalism in the Palaeolithic.” Scientific Reports 7 (April): 44707.

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