Cannibalistic Neandertals

I was looking through follow classmate's blog: Krystal Groves and inspired me to talk about it on my blog. You can check her blog here: http://archofdeath.blogspot.ca/2013/03/today-i-was-working-on-discussion-for.html

I am also in the Neandertals class (Anth 394) and we are having a discussion on "Neandertals eat Neandertals world". We read through three papers:

• Trinkaus E. 1985. Cannibalism and burial at Krapina. Journal of Human Evolution 14(2):203-216.
• Rosas et al. 2006. Paleobiology and comparative morphology of a late Neandertal sample from El Sidron, Asturias, Spain. PNAS 103(51):19266-19271.
• Underdown S. 2008. A potential role for Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies in Neanderthal extinction. Medical Hypotheses 71: 4-7.

They are all short, so have a look at them.

So what the articles suggest are that the evidences of the cannibalistic behaviours found in Neandertals were the human-induced modification of human bones like: cut marks, flakes, percussion pitting, conchoidal scars and adhering flakes. Also they show skull bones with cut marks that possibly indicate the skinning of the bodies. Some of the long bones were broken, which is related to processing for marrow. Lastly, there are few with signs of burning of the bones and scattered bone fragments mixed with other bones of other mammals.

The reasons why archaeologists think that Neandertals were practising cannibalism is that the bone breaking for marrow and brains suggest the nutritional exploitation. There were signs of high levels of developmental stress, shown on the bones and teeth enamels, perhaps suggesting cannibalism was a way for survival. Few have fought these discussions on the "what if they were ritualistic behaviours?" But since we cannot ask the dead, this still remains puzzling.

Personally, there might have been evidences of cannibalistic behaviours, but I don't quite agree 100% of all those suggestions. The skulls and other bone fragments are very old. It is hard to tell what exactly happend to them. So this appealing idea should be kept on the low key, until they find more evidences.

Underdown's hypothesis is that Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathis was involved in Neandertal's extinction. Comparing the Neandertals with the Fore tribe in Papua New Guinea who practices the cannibalistic rituals, he suggests that it is possible for this could have happened to the Neandertals as well. I agree that it is plausible that this could have happend, but however, even in the paper, it mentions briefly about how TSE might have spread by using infected tools from cutting off other animals that carried it. Unfortunately, this is not testable, since last population of Neandertals are extinct and you cannot simply compare it with the Kuru (Fore Tribe) and the population that last died off 30,000 years ago.