From: Steve Wingate 
Subject: IUFO: Evidence shows cannibalism by ancient Indians
Date: 6 Sep 2000 15:58:25 -0400
To: IUFO , Anomalous Images 

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Evidence shows cannibalism by ancient Indians  

Nature magazine  

By JOSEPH B. VERRENGIA, Associated Press  

(September 6, 2000 2:20 p.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com) - Piles of 
human bones burned and boiled, smashed and scraped. Cooking pots 
smeared with blood. A few years ago, anthropologists in the American 
Southwest found the grisly remains of what appeared to be an ancient 
cannibal feast, but they lacked the biological proof - until now.  

Laboratory tests on some of the artifacts, including a piece of human 
excrement, have revealed traces of a human protein that scientists say is 
the first direct evidence of cannibalism among the Anasazi, whose empire 
stretched into present-day Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.  

"This proves they put the meat in their mouths," said Richard Marlar, a 
molecular biologist at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in 
Denver who developed the biochemical tests to detect the protein. "If you 
didn't eat human beings, this protein would not show up."  

The excavation site, consisting of three collapsed pit dwellings nicknamed 
Cowboy Wash near Dolores, Colo., was occupied about 1150 A.D. It was 
abandoned after seven people were butchered there.  

The findings were published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.  

Other anthropologists said the protein evidence is convincing. However, it 
doesn't explain exactly who committed the cannibalism or why.  

Nor does it demonstrate that the Anasazi commonly ate their own, whether 
for nourishment or in a religious ritual.  

"I doubt it was a routine thing at all in the culture of the early pueblo people, 
any more than it was routine in any other culture," said anthropologist 
William Lipe of Washington State University.  

Among modern-day Indians of the Southwest, leaders of the Hopi, Zuni and 
other tribes have been especially critical of cannibalism research.  

But Terry Knight, a Ute Mountain Ute tribal leader who supervised the 
excavation, said of the findings: "Like any other civilization, there were 
good, productive people, and there were bad people."  

Knight said he hopes the evidence of cannibalism will force anthropologists 
to revise their thinking about the Anasazi culture. He said ancient Indian 
culture is too often treated in simplistic terms when it was in reality 
complex, with many different tribes.  

Cowboy Wash was one of about 10 Anasazi homesteads in the Four 
Corners region. Today's inhabitants, the Utes, commissioned 
archaeologists to conduct a scientific survey before installing an irrigation 
system.  

Even without the specter of cannibalism, the Anasazi are a mysterious lost 
culture. They built an elaborate network of roads and ceremonial centers 
throughout the Southwest after 700 A.D. that were keenly oriented to the 
heavens. Severe drought helped to disperse the society by 1300 A.D.  

Forty miles east of Cowboy Wash stands Mesa Verde, now an elaborate 
ghost city protected by cliffs and served by aqueducts. But most Anasazi 
lived in hardscrabble settlements, growing corn and hunting game.  

The pit dwellings at Cowboy Wash appear to have been heavily used for 
many years, then suddenly abandoned. They contained pots, grinding 
stones, jewelry and other valuables.  

In the ruins, researchers also found seven dismembered skeletons in 1994. 
The bones had been stripped of their flesh, then roasted and cracked for 
their fatty marrow. Skulls were scorched and cracked open for their brains. 
In the center of one cooking hearth was found a coprolite, or piece of dried 
feces.  

The scene suggested a gruesome butchering, but critics complained the 
evidence was circumstantial. In 1997, Marlar offered to find biochemical 
proof.  

In a series of tests, he determined that both the coprolite and residue on 
cooking pots contained human myoglobin. It is a protein that picks up 
oxygen from the bloodstream and carries it into the muscle cells.  

Myoglobin is found in flesh, not in most organs or vessels. In mammals, the 
myoglobin of each species has its own chemical fingerprint. Marlar failed to 
find the myoglobin for deer, rabbit and other local game in the same 
samples.  

As a comparison, he did not detect human myoglobin in coprolites and 
other artifacts found at other Anasazi sites from the same period.  

"All we have found from the Cowboy Wash samples is human myoglobin - 
no other species," Marlar said. "They had a human meat meal."  

Initially, researchers believed the victims might be prisoners of war who 
were sacrificed. Others contend the victims might have been executed and 
incinerated as witches, but not necessarily consumed.  

The Cowboy Wash investigators now are developing a new scenario. 
According to University of North Carolina archaeologist Brian Billman, who 
coordinated the excavation, drought gripped the area in 1150 and the 
social order frayed. Marauders probably terrorized and cannibalized the 
families living at Cowboy Wash.  

Billman described the coprolite as "a final insult" by the killers.  

EDITORS: Associated Press writer William McCall contributed to this 
story.  

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Wingate

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