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Prehistoric Cannibalism at Mancos 5Mtumr-2346

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The politically correct view has been that there never were any cannibals, it was just a slur against the "other." (See my review of William Arens' "The Man-eating Myth.")

Tim White has proven that it wasn't a myth. Through a minute examination of a collection of bones from the Mancos site in the Four Corners area, White proves beyond question that a community (inferred from the community-like distribution of ages and sexes) was all slaughtered and eaten at the same time.

Similar ancient Indian sites in the Four Corners region of the Southwest show that the event was not unique, although only Mancos has been subjected to minute analysis. The purpose of this painstaking work, aside from trying to discover what the archaeological remains meant, was White's attempt to devise a theoretical, quantitative method of analysis that could be applied to any bone assemblage found anywhere (although, as a practical matter, few outside the Four Corners have been so numerous and so well preserved).

The theoretical task was highly successful, which makes for tedious reading for the most part. This is a book for scholars although it is accessible to anyone; no specially deep knowledge of anatomy is required.

As for the archaeological question, who lived at Mancos and what happened to them, the answers are less clear. The residents can be placed unambiguously among the other pueblo-builders and dated closely. But what caused them to be murdered -- possibly to the last resident -- and by whom is wholly unknown. The site had two occupation periods, and there may have been two cannibal feasts as well.

In any event, the Mancos people were eaten for food. Even the deepest skeptics about cannibalism have always had to admit the existence of spiritual cannibalism: the eating of, usually, a portion of an enemy (often the liver) to either acquire the enemy's spiritual power or, possibly, to ratify contempt for it.

If that was a motive at Mancos, it was subsumed by a relentless effort to extract every last bit of food value from the carcasses. Bones were smashed to get at the marrow, and then were boiled for soup.

This suggests, to me, not a regular cannibal feast but an exceptional, famine-driven event. Such a development fits fairly well with the deteriorating ecological situation that the Indians faced about that time, which has been established through many different lines of evidence. But White does not speculate. The bones tell an incomplete tale, and he leaves it at that.

If political incorrectness is up your alley, this is the book for you. Informative, well-argued, great pictures. Adds new dimensions to the study of cannibalism.