“Assessing the Calorific Importance of Episodes of Human Cannibalism in the Paleolithic”, 2017-04-06 (; backlinks):
Episodes of Paleolithic cannibalism have frequently been defined as ‘nutritional’ in nature, but with little empirical evidence to assess their dietary importance.
This paper presents a nutritional template that offers a proxy calorie value for the human body. When applied to the Paleolithic record, the template provides a framework for assessing the dietary value of prehistoric cannibalistic episodes compared to the faunal record.
Results: show that humans have a comparable nutritional value to those faunal species that match our typical body weight, but substantially lower than a range of fauna often found in association with anthropogenically modified hominin remains. This could suggest that the motivations behind hominin anthropophagy may not have been purely nutritionally motivated.
It is proposed here that the comparatively low nutritional value of hominin cannibalism episodes support more socially or culturally driven narratives in the interpretation of Paleolithic cannibalism.
…Globally, the number of Paleolithic cannibalism fossil sites remain relatively few5, further supporting the notion that the practice of hominin cannibalism may have been an exceptional activity. However, given the sparse nature of the hominin fossil record, the fact that we have evidence for cannibalism at all infers that the behavior was perhaps more common within prehistoric populations7 than the number of archaeological sites suggests. Additional support for the possible widespread nature of prehistoric cannibalism comes from genetic studies of global patterns of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs)8, which imply that prehistoric TSE polymorphisms were a routine feature of hominin life. Mead et al 200321ya, for example, propose that the repeated exposure of hominins to the effects of TSEs (such as Kuru and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease) resulting from cannibalistic activities, drove the polymorphism adaptation as a selective advantage within prehistoric populations8,9. These authors argue that such an adaptation would only be necessary if exposure to the neurodegenerative diseases (through the consumption of infected flesh) was a common feature in prehistoric hominin lifeways.
…Prior to this study, only one published estimate of the nutritional value of the human body seems to have been made. 1970 claimed that a 50kg male would yield 30kg of edible muscle mass, which in turn would yield around 4.5kg of protein or 18,000 calories. However, no information was supplied by which this estimate could be tested or assessed. The authors further suggested that this would serve one day’s protein requirement for 60 people (averaging 60kg in weight, working on the protein requirement principles that 1gram of protein is needed per kilogram of body weight per day)41. If this were extended to a ‘person a week’ ration for a group of 60 people, then this would amount to 9g (36 calories) of quality protein per day. These calculations led the authors to conclude; “the nutritional value of cannibalism may therefore be viewed as questionable, unless a group is in a position to consume its own number in a year”41: pg106.
To construct the human nutritional template in this study, the total average weights and calorie values (fat and protein) for each body part were combined from published chemical composition analyses of 4 male individuals42,43,44. The published materials used here are the only sources that shared the same original data format, in displaying the full body compositional data as percentages for body weight, fat and protein content. This in turn facilitated a clear comparison of data across the individual specimens. The results are summarised in Table 1, with full methods, calculations and detailed data tables given in Supplementary Information 1…Ideally, nutritional templates for females and a range of ages would be constructed, to represent the full nutritional potential of hominin social groups (see Discussion). However, data for females and sub-adults are not available within the published literature, and the collection of primary data of this nature was outside the ethical (and legal) scope of this study.
…1970’s original estimations of the calorie value of protein within edible skeletal muscle mass (18,000 calories per 30kg muscle mass) are not dissimilar to the results obtained from the nutritional template presented in this study (19,951 calories per 24.897kg muscle mass—S1) although they do seem to have underestimated the overall potential calorie values of skeletal muscle mass. In addition, 1970 concentrated solely on skeletal muscle tissue, which is not the only edible component of the human body. From ethnographic and archaeological studies, other body parts are known to be eaten during episodes of cannibalism, including the lungs, liver, brain, heart, nervous tissue, bone marrow, genitalia and skin1,2,12,14,19,29,30,45. Table 1 therefore shows the full nutritional value of the human body (protein+fat) and highlights the nutritional value of those parts of the body that are most commonly consumed according to ethnographic and archaeological accounts (marked ‘✱’).
…In order to enhance our understanding of the episodes of cannibalism beyond calorie counts, Table 6 shows the number of days a group of 25 modern males, Neanderthal males and Pleistocene Anatomically Modern Human males could survive from each Paleolithic cannibalism episode compared against the faunal record…When Tables 5 & 6 are compared it can be seen that whole cannibalistic episodes hold the same calorific value or less than many individual large faunal species (for example: mammoth, rhinoceros, aurochs, bison, cow, bear, horse, giant deer, red deer, musk-ox, deer, boar or reindeer).