There's no physical evidence that the family who gave the Donner Party its name had anything to do with the cannibalism the ill-fated pioneers have been associated with for a century and a half, two scientists said Thursday.
Cannibalism has been documented at the Sierra Nevada site where most of the Donner Party's 81 members were trapped during the brutal winter of 1846-47, but 21 people, including all the members of the George and Jacob Donner families, were stuck six miles away because a broken axle had delayed them.
No cooked human bones were found among the thousands of fragments of animal bones at that Alder Creek site, suggesting Donner family members did not resort to cannibalism, the archaeologists said at a conference of the Society for Historical Archaeology in Sacramento, California.
Others, cited later on in the article, suggest it's not a slam dunk. One thing though: It's unfortunate that our cultural trajectory has such an overarching negative view of cannibalism, such that descendants aho weren't even involved in the actual event have this to say:
"We are thrilled and relieved," said Lochie Paige, the great-granddaughter of Eliza Donner, daughter of George Donner.
"Their findings, in my mind, completely exonerate her from having any part in cannibalism," she said from her California home Thursday.
It's not really such a ghoulish practice as we tend to view it as. In some cases, such as we're seeing in the southwest U.S., it may have been used as a terror practice. In many cases, however, it's almost accepted as a matter of course that consuming at least part of another person after death makes them, literally and figuratively, part of you. What's done is done.
And if eating each other weren't bad enough Researcher: Birds hunted ancient man
An American researcher said Thursday his investigation into the death nearly 2 million years ago of an ape-man shows human ancestors were hunted by birds.
"These types of discoveries give us real insight into the past lives of these human ancestors, the world they lived in and the things they feared," Lee Berger, a paleo-anthropologist at Johannesburg's University of Witwatersrand, said as he presented his conclusions about a mystery that has been debated since the remains of the possible human ancestor known as the Taung child were discovered in 1924.
The Taung child's discovery led to the search for human origins in Africa, instead of in Asia or Europe as once theorized. Researchers regard the fossil of the ape-man, or australopethicus africanus, as evidence of the "missing link" in human evolution.
Well, that's kind of interesting. Might not be of any wide-ranging significance though. It appears that only this one skull of a child has been found to have been preyed upon by a bird. I consider it doubtful that adults were thusly preyed upon as well, just because of the size difference and the thickness of the skull in adults (the article says the bird would womp a critter in the (back of the?) head with its talons and then wait for it to die). I believe other Australo. skulls have been found with definite signs of predation by cats, so whether this is an isolated kill on a young'un or evidence of widespread raptor predation is still open.
Missed this (HT to Hawks) Discover magazine is putting all its archaeology stories in one place, apparently freely accessible.
And this just in. . . Archaeologists Find 'Unusual' Indian Burial Site In Downtown Miami: Crypt-Like Graves Never Observed In Region Before, Archaeologists Say
Archaeologists excavating two American Indian burial sites in downtown Miami said they have found hundreds of remains piled in limestone fissures -- some of the bones stacked in limestone boxes.
"In terms of the rest of Florida, we've never seen anything that's been the same," state archaeologist Ryan Wheeler said. "It's a very unusual mode of burial."
The bone piles were discovered in at least five fissures, according to archaeologist Robert Carr, director of the Archaeological and Historical Conservancy.