The news world is “SHOCKED!” by this (below)…
New discovery.
Starving colonials turned to cannibalism!!!!!
Oh em gee.
[via WP]Skeleton of teenage girl confirms cannibalism at Jamestown colony ~by David Brown
The first chops, to the forehead, did not go through the bone and are perhaps evidence of hesitancy about the task. The next set, after the body was rolled over, were more effective. One cut split the skull all the way to the base. “The person is truly figuring it out as they go,” said Douglas Owsley, a physical anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution.
In the meantime, someone — perhaps with more experience — was working on a leg. The tibia bone is broken with a single blow, as one might do in butchering a cow.
That’s one possible version of an event that took place sometime during the winter of 1609-1610 in Jamestown. What’s certain is that some members of that desperate colony resorted to cannibalism in order to survive.
That cannibalism occurred during the colony’s “starving time” was never in much doubt. At least a half-dozen accounts, by people who lived through the period or spoke to colonists who did, describe occasional acts of cannibalism that winter. They include reports of corpses being exhumed and eaten, a husband killing his wife and salting her flesh (for which he was executed) and the mysterious disappearance of foraging colonists.
The proof comes in the form of fragments of a skeleton of a girl, about age 14, found in a cellar full of debris in the fort on the James River that sheltered the starving colonists. The skull, lower jaw and leg bone — all that remain — have the telltale marks of an ax or cleaver and a knife.
“Historians have to decide whether this type of thing happened,” said Owsley, who has examined thousands of skeletal remains, both archaeological and forensic. “I think that it did. We didn’t see anybody eat this flesh. But it’s very strong evidence.”
…[Read More]
Though…
I must confess?
I am a bit confused as to just WHY they are so “SHOCKED!”
Cause, um, it’s not like are ancestors hadn’t turned to such dark practices, in time of great peril, in the past, which we know about…
And often report on, with such dark, twisted, morbid glee:
Makes for a fascinating history, tis true.
Such tales definitely captures ones fascination and attention, even if one is not historically inclined.
Makes for a good story, on a slow news day.
However…
I bet those who actually were forced to live through it?
See it just a tiny bit differently.
but with a five foot-long tail, that walked the Earth about 10 million years before more familiar dinosaurs like the small, swift-footed Eoraptor and Herrerasaurus.
