Gisela Ermel
U.S. researchers angry Indian friends: "Were the Anasazi cannibals?"
bones have suspicious marks on
In: Mysteries, No. 5, Sept. / Oct. 2007, Basel 2007
the southwest of the United States today the people of the Anasazi once lived. Their culture is a mystery to this day, the archaeological of the Research could not be resolved. Who led 850 of the sudden and inexplicable cultural leap the stone age farmers to the mysterious "Chaco phenomenon" (named for the Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, the center of culture) and its like on the drawing board designed, astronomically oriented cities, his bizarre road system and its gigantic, multi-story Great Houses? Why did the end of the Chaco phenomenon as abrupt and sudden as its beginning? Why is this culture collapsed, and why the Anasazi entrenched during this time collapse in inaccessible cliff dwellings high up on steep rock walls? And why was around the year 1300 the four countries meet Anasaziland of Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico as well as empty? Where are the Anasazi disappeared? To all these questions, there are still no answers.
The quadrilateral region - the region of the Anasazi 
Above: Pueblo Bonito, one of the Great Houses of Chaco phenomenon of Anasazi Below: One of the typical cliff dwellings the collapse phase of the Anasazi
One chapter of the history of the North American Southwest is particularly cruel and scary. In 1967 a young anthropologist Christy G. Turner, at that to see still in force but peaceful Anasazi in a new light. Turner then examined prehistoric human teeth in the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff. His work had demonstrated the goal of immigration from Asia to America based on the study of human teeth in prehistoric skeletons.
On the last day of his research Turner asked the curator of the museum, a large box from an upper shelf herunterzuholen who had stabbed him in the eye for a long time. It contained the remains of an inscription, according to archaeological lot at Polacca Wash, an Arroyo under the First Mesa of the Hopi Reservation. On this site was excavated in 1964 by the archaeologist Alan P. Olsen. Turner opened the box and stared at a bizarre collection of more than a thousand pieces of human bone. "It looks like waste of a meal!" Turner is Haen declared spontaneously. The fragments made him the impression of broken and burnt animal bones, as they had been found in Anasazi midden. But because Turner had already forensic experience, he noticed immediately that he obviously had the right bones that looked like those of victims of violence, which he had seen in the Police Department and investigated. Since Turner's work was finished in Flagstaff, he took the bones with the Arizona State University, where he worked as a professor.
1968 put his findings, which he had acquired through the study of these bones, in a lecture to the discussion, which he held during an archaeological meetings in Santa Fe. Turner reported that the bones from Polacca Wash belonged to a group of thirty people, mostly women and children who had been killed and dismembered by force. In particular, the heads showed large losses. Each of the skulls had been taken, usually from the front, right in the face of the victim, and this at a time when the meat had found the bones. Obviously, this was done to remove the brains. The remaining bone, reported on Turner, showed Scratch marks, cut marks, traces of beatings, fragmentation, carnage, laceration and also still burn marks. The larger bones had been broken into small pieces, well, he supposed, so that they fit in a cooking pot. Olsen, the excavator had assessed the bone as prehistoric. Turner as his talk ended with a finding, the bones are probably the remains of a cannibal meal, it was deathly quiet in the hall. Unbelieving eyes staring at Turner. Soon it was mumbled, and then invaded the colleagues at him, trying to explain to him that there must be another explanation for the finding that Turner was his mistake.
Prof. Christy G. Turner within an Anasazi ruin During the next few years, Turner delved more into the archaeological finds, the exhibit traces of cannibalism seemed. Astonished, he found that he was not the first one to interpret such traces in this sense, and read with interest the statements of the excavator and sparse fragments of the 19 viewfinder and early 20 Century, such as Wetherill, Hough, Fewkes, Hodges, Pepper and others. He was surprised by the reaction to his speech in Santa Fe is not that these statements and assumptions at that time no one had taken seriously.
1988 Turner wanted his cannibal hypothesis at the 51 Pecos Conference imagine, still one of the most important archaeological regularly held meetings in North America, this time in Dolores, Colorado, taking place. It was planned with Turner, and according to the program, there should be within the conference, a mini-symposium on cannibalism. But literally the last minute the program had to be changed due to a fix enraged calls from invited speakers and participants and because of the threat of disruptions to take place if the mini-symposium should. It was the first time in the history of the Pecos Conference, a program that part had to be canceled because the planners feared the meeting negative headlines.
early 1990s examined the paleoanthropologist Tim D. White bones of an Anasazi archaeological place in the Mancos Canyon, southern Colorado. He also found signs that seemed to indicate his opinion on cannibalism. And not only that, the bones showed tracks, as they were stirred during the cooking process in the vessel, where they rubbed against the walls of the vessel.
White and his team then did an experiment. The men broke some mule bones and put them into an exact replica of an Anasazi cooking pot filled with water. On a stove, the pot contents were heated for three hours while stirred occasionally with a wooden stick. The Fat from the bones rose to the surface and clotted inside the pot, forming a layer of fat thickness of about one centimeter. Last everything was transferred, and White took one of the bones and scraped so that the fat ring from the inside of the pot from. Under the microscope showed the same Schabespuren animal bones, such as White had seen the human bones. The bone, which White had used herauszuschaben the fat showed a pattern of scratches that exactly resembled those of the Mancos-bone. White called this the "pot polish". When Turner learned
result of this research, he once more before many of his bones already investigated and found numerous traces of pot polish. The traces were only at the ends of bones, not on the sides, as was to be expected. Turner reiterated White's experiment and was able to confirm the pot edge.
Turner cannibalism hypothesis met with fierce opposition in an age where everything Indian was regarded as at once spiritual and wonderful. Most people wanted to believe that all evil and warlike was reached only by the whites in North America - before everything was true, beautiful and peaceful have been. The Anasazi? Friendly beings in harmony with Mother Nature. And among these peaceful creatures Kannibalusmus should have taken place? Never! Turner's cannibals were a nuisance for Indians, an imposition on Archaeologists and a horrible idea for New Agers. Cannibalism was something completely negative: cannibalism is evil, and evil people are cannibals. Bitter angry letters blocked Turner's mailbox, and scientists said at meetings, take part in which he intended. The National Geographic quoted Kurt Dongoske, an archaeologist from the tribe of the Hopi: "Anasazi cannibalism can only be proved if we find evidence of human life in prehistoric excrement!" He would be better not to say that one should not wake sleeping dogs so well known ...
Brian Billman, an assistant professor at the University of Northern Carolina, and a team began in 1992 with excavations Sleeping in the Ute Mountains, Utah. At one point in the Cowboy Wash he and his colleagues made a grisly discovery. At the beginning of the excavations they had found all this, what a typical Anasazi archaeological site: a few rooms, a waste pile and kivas, all originating from the collapse after the Chaco phenomenon.
As the men dug the first kiva, they found a pile of shredded, cooked and burnt human bones at the base of a ventilator shaft. It seemed as if the bones out on the floor of the kiva crushed and boiled, and afterwards thrown down into the shaft had been. There were cut marks on the bones of stone tools, and the long Bones had all been broken into manageable pieces, suitable for the pot or to get the marks, assumed the excavators.
found in a second kiva, the team the remains of five people. In this case, the bone inside the Kiva seemed to have been edited. These bones looked more like roasted. Cut marks were visible at the points where muscles had been, apparently the bones had been in front of the breaking parts only fleshed yet. The skulls of two of these people were put into the fire, roasted, and broken, here was probably the cooked brain had been taken out. Kiva in the same stone tools were found: an ax, hand axes and two large pieces of stone with razor sharp edges.
Billman examined these tools later in the lab and could see that the two large pieces of stone contained residues of human blood.
Total had been found here in the ruins at Cowboy Wash the remains of twelve people, of which only five have been buried. The other seven appeared to have been systematically dismembered, badly bruised the bone and in some cases burned or boiled. They had been left behind as after a meal. Cut marks, fractures and other traces of stone tools were clearly identifiable on the bone, and the bright color in some places seemed to arise from cooking. The burn pattern revealed that a number of bones had been set on fire as long as the meat was still on them.
made in the ashes of the main fire Billman and his team have a very unusual find. It was a nondescript lump of some material, which was described as "macrobiotic relic" - parts of an unidentified plant. An excavator packed the clumps into a container.
Great was the surprise of the team, as the lump was examined in the laboratory and it was recognized with what you had to do it do: with a dried human - turd (or how archaeologists put it more politely: Coprolites). After that time the fire of the cannibals was cold, so suspected Billman, had probably one of them "facilitated".
Billman sent parts of the precarious discovery at the laboratory of the University of Nebraska, to have it analyzed it. The first result was that the sample contained no plant remains, but it consisted of digested and ausgeschiedenem meat. A pollen analysis also revealed that the cluster was formed in late spring or early summer - just the season, was held to the raid.
but was not yet known whether the digested and excreted in Exkrementhaufen meat was human. Billman 1997, the findings the excavations at a meeting of the Society of American Archaeology in Nashville before. After his talk, learned to know Billman Richard Marlar, a biochemist who was very interested in the data of excrement. Marlar Billman suggested to send him some samples of coprolites, and some pieces of the archaeological site found at Anasazi vessels for inspection. He would try to determine whether we have here cannibalism, or not. Billman was happy to comply with this request.
Marlar worked at the Health Science Center at the University of Colorado at Denver. The core problem was to find a way to identify human tissue that passed through a human digestive system was. Marlar examined the samples for myoglobin, a protein that is found only in skeletal and heart muscle of man, and that can not enter the digestive system, other than by eating. Served as controls numerous stool samples of patients of the connected hospital. Marlar led by a number of different analysis, also of the ceramic vessels, to determine whether they contained traces of human protein of the bone.
All results were equally positive, there have been had cannibalism, human protein was found both in the excreta as well as on the inner walls of two different pots, a serving bowl and six stone tools be. The man, who was then relieved by the cool fire had eaten human flesh, in fact, digested and excreted.
As Turner 1999, his book "Man Corn" brought out, containing all his research from now more than 15,000 of examined skeletons and strongly expressed the cannibalism hypothesis, he again sparked heated debates. The New Yorker about science to the Washington Post, numerous newspapers and magazines fell just as radio stations and TV stations with enthusiasm to the spooky theme. Hearty made the headlines at once topics and areas of knowledge such as skeletal analysis, forensic medicine Paleopathology and - at least for a while - very popular. Turner described in his book, the bones from archaeological sites in New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah (the Anasazi region): in 54 of 76 cases there was evidence of cannibalism. Overall, here alone in the ruins examined over three hundred people were slaughtered, boiled or grilled and eaten was. Almost all cases were in the time of collapse after the Chaco phenomenon, came to numerous cases of violence. According to Turner cannibalism could be largely limited to the Anasazi area.
But who were these cannibals? Tuner sympathized with Declaration of the Mesoamerican and wanted his readers make up Toltecs migrated tasty. But there is no archaeological evidence for cannibalism in Central America. Critics joked because even you about Turner's "Toltec thugs." You know not yet, so Turner's colleagues, who were the eaters and who is eaten. Friends? Related? Slaves? Aliens? Enemies? Turner responded to these and similar objections even in fun: "There is still a small chance that this will have done Aliens!" Myths of the Navajo to man-eating giants, and the Zuni cannibal demons to help any further really.
were
But why are some people eat been? Everywhere speculated those who believe in Turner cannibals of hunger-driven, on ritual practices, religious reasons, of social pathology, repression and burial customs. Hunger, said Turner, could not have been the reason for the cannibalism of the Southwest, because hunger does not explain the extreme mutilation of the body from consuming or the large amounts of bone, sometimes by more than fifty people at once (this is after all a whole tonne edible human flesh).
But there are other explanations besides the reaction to Turner's book. Peter Bullock, an anthropologist at the Museum of Nex Mexico rejected Turner's hypothesis with a short and concise: "A joke!" Even Kurt Dongoske who doubted even after the detection of myoglobin in Billman's Exkrementhaufen still remained, as well: "Turner has proven nothing!" Had there been cannibalism, then it would have shown the Indians on rock art, so Dongoske. The hypothesis, of which he was convinced, was nothing more than a further denigration of the Indians.
As you can see, the Kannibalismusfrage was a very emotive subject. It was devoured by the hungry consumers of the mass media, and it brought the goose bumps as agreeable to the fore like a Stephen King thriller or a Dracula movie. For a while Turner cannibals were the hottest topic in the prehistoric Southwest. Turner once said with resignation: "I'm the guy who brought the case to Anasazi." Turner was even accused of causing injury to Anasazi-tourism. Well, like all human beings know well enough to know that Turner might have caused an over bloodthirsty cannibals more for even greater influx in ancient Anasazi ruins!
Literature:
Cart, Julie: Did Cannibalism Kill Anasazi Civilization? In: Los Angeles Times, www.trussel.com/prehist/news128
Ermel, Gisela: The Anasazi mystery. Leipzig 2005
Hartigan, Rachel: Dying for Dinner? In: U.S. News, www.usnews.com / USNews / double issue / mysteries / anasazi
Prestion, Douglas: Cannibals of the Canyon. In: The New Yorker, 30 November 1998
Turner, Christy G. Turner Jacqueline: Man Corn. Salt Lake City 1999
more:
Gisela Ermel: The Anasazi mystery.
master planner, cannibals and Kachinas: On the trail of a vanished people.
Bohmeier-Verlag, Leipzig 2005 ISBN 3-89094-448-5
200 pages, with illustrations in
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