If you and your buddy were stranded on a frozen mountain with no food, would you eat their organs? But this actually happened to plane crash survivor Piers Paul Read in 1972 in the Andes. He documented the whole thing in his 1974 book ‘Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors,’ which was made into the 1993 movie ‘Alive’.
In the movie musical ‘Cannibal! The Musical,’ the life of renowned American cannibal Alferd Packer is recounted. From the viewpoint of a cannibal coming of age in 2016, ‘Raw’ offers some very horrific scenes. In the end, cannibalism serves as a type of impenetrable moral wall that Jeffrey Dahmer and other nonhuman beings live on the other side of. However, contrary to what you would have assumed, our interpretation of cannibalism is more contemporary. The cannibal’s tooth really contained the earliest human DNA ever discovered.
A Bit Long In The Tooth
The oldest human DNA on record was found back in 1994 in the Atapuerca Mountains in northern Spain. The bones showed signs of being ‘cut and fractured’ as though cannibalized. One of the teeth of one of the victims itself contained remnants of human DNA. Homo antecessor must have been short of protein and seemingly took to devouring other humans before being devoured themselves.
Decent Calories Per Bite
Researchers estimate that early humans might have accounted for a full 13% of other humans’ daily calories. In terms of ‘calories per bite,’ humans would have provided a ‘moderately nutritious meal’. Homo antecessor wasn’t too, too related to our particular branch of the human tree, which includes Denisovans and Neanderthals.
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