Mmm... tastes like pork
Apr. 12th, 2003 02:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
novapsycheHuman cannibalism was once common, prion gene suggests
Early humans may have regularly dined on each other.
That is the unappetizing conclusion of British researchers who have discovered that a gene that protects against prion diseases -- infectious diseases that can be spread through eating contaminated flesh -- is found in people all over the world.
The gene is most common among the Fore of Papua New Guinea who, until the late 1950s, feasted on the flesh of the dead at funerals. The Fore also suffered from kuru, an infectious disease that leads to tremors and dementia, and kills its victims within two years.
Researchers now know kuru is transmitted by a prion, a deviant protein that causes other proteins to clump together in the brain. They also know that it belongs to a group of diseases that includes bovine spongiform encephalopathy (sometimes known as mad-cow disease) and its human version, new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. All three leave the brains of victims riddled with holes.
Unless you happen to carry a protective gene.
The British team, whose results were published in today's issue of the journal Science, found that gene was most prevalent in female Fore over 50 who had survived years of mortuary feasting without getting kuru.
British people who carry the gene also seem to be protected from new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
[…]The British researchers, led by John Collinge of University College in London, wanted to know how common the protective prion gene is, so they checked more than 2,000 DNA samples selected to represent worldwide genetic diversity.
They found a version of the gene in all populations, with its prevalence decreasing in East Asia except for the Fore.
This led them to conclude the gene may have evolved because it offered protection to human cannibals, and that cannibalism must have been widespread early in human history.
For years archeologists and anthropologists have debated how common cannibalism was among early human cultures, with some researchers insisting it has never existed.
Beth Conklin, associate professor of anthropology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., says that much of the evidence for cannibalism was flimsy.
But there is compelling evidence in the case of several groups, including the Fore and the Wari, a group of native people who live in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil.
In recent years, new evidence of cannibalism in ancient times has been hotly debated. Archeologists found traces of a human-muscle protein in an 850-year-old dried clump of human feces and in a cooking pot in the American Southwest.
They also found evidence that Neanderthals, who lived in Europe from 120,000 to 30,000 years ago, were cannibals.
But Dr. Conklin says it is difficult to know how widespread the consumption of body parts was. These new findings will likely add to the debate.
Shirley Lindenbaum, a U.S. researcher who collected data about cannibalism among the Fore in the 1960s, says there are two facts about the kuru epidemic that may become key points in that debate.
She says that cannibalism was not an ancient custom of the Fore, but was adopted at the turn of the century after they noticed some of their northern neighbours practising it.
As well, it almost wiped the Fore out, infecting so many women of childbearing age that, if cannibalism had not been abandoned, their population could not have survived, Dr. Lindenbaum says. This could mean that the gene that researchers believe may have evolved to protect cannibals from prion diseases would not have saved the Fore. In order to survive, they had to stop eating each other.
Early humans may have regularly dined on each other.
That is the unappetizing conclusion of British researchers who have discovered that a gene that protects against prion diseases -- infectious diseases that can be spread through eating contaminated flesh -- is found in people all over the world.
The gene is most common among the Fore of Papua New Guinea who, until the late 1950s, feasted on the flesh of the dead at funerals. The Fore also suffered from kuru, an infectious disease that leads to tremors and dementia, and kills its victims within two years.
Researchers now know kuru is transmitted by a prion, a deviant protein that causes other proteins to clump together in the brain. They also know that it belongs to a group of diseases that includes bovine spongiform encephalopathy (sometimes known as mad-cow disease) and its human version, new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. All three leave the brains of victims riddled with holes.
Unless you happen to carry a protective gene.
The British team, whose results were published in today's issue of the journal Science, found that gene was most prevalent in female Fore over 50 who had survived years of mortuary feasting without getting kuru.
British people who carry the gene also seem to be protected from new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
[…]The British researchers, led by John Collinge of University College in London, wanted to know how common the protective prion gene is, so they checked more than 2,000 DNA samples selected to represent worldwide genetic diversity.
They found a version of the gene in all populations, with its prevalence decreasing in East Asia except for the Fore.
This led them to conclude the gene may have evolved because it offered protection to human cannibals, and that cannibalism must have been widespread early in human history.
For years archeologists and anthropologists have debated how common cannibalism was among early human cultures, with some researchers insisting it has never existed.
Beth Conklin, associate professor of anthropology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., says that much of the evidence for cannibalism was flimsy.
But there is compelling evidence in the case of several groups, including the Fore and the Wari, a group of native people who live in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil.
In recent years, new evidence of cannibalism in ancient times has been hotly debated. Archeologists found traces of a human-muscle protein in an 850-year-old dried clump of human feces and in a cooking pot in the American Southwest.
They also found evidence that Neanderthals, who lived in Europe from 120,000 to 30,000 years ago, were cannibals.
But Dr. Conklin says it is difficult to know how widespread the consumption of body parts was. These new findings will likely add to the debate.
Shirley Lindenbaum, a U.S. researcher who collected data about cannibalism among the Fore in the 1960s, says there are two facts about the kuru epidemic that may become key points in that debate.
She says that cannibalism was not an ancient custom of the Fore, but was adopted at the turn of the century after they noticed some of their northern neighbours practising it.
As well, it almost wiped the Fore out, infecting so many women of childbearing age that, if cannibalism had not been abandoned, their population could not have survived, Dr. Lindenbaum says. This could mean that the gene that researchers believe may have evolved to protect cannibals from prion diseases would not have saved the Fore. In order to survive, they had to stop eating each other.
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Date: 2003-04-12 11:36 am (UTC)