Are we descendants from cannibals?

That is what David Plotz implies this week in writing about how the Jamestown colonists survived the dreadful winter of 1609.

According to the report in Smithsonian, the skeleton of a 14-year-old girl shows clear signs of being butchered for food, with telltale knife marks on her skull, jaw and shin. Fellow colonists probably ate her “brain, tongue, cheeks, and leg muscles.”

The “starving time” during the first year of Jamestown left most of the 100-odd colonists dead. Ghastly firsthand accounts hinted at cannibalism (as well as the eating of horses, dogs, cats, vermin and shoes), but this is the conclusive evidence that archeologists and historians have been waiting for.

Nevertheless, Plotz writes,

In a dire food shortage, one of the very first things you should do is eat the corpses of the dead. Human corpses have the proteins, fats, vitamins and calories that starving people most need.

Survival cannibalism is terribly sad, because starvation is sad, but it is certainly less sad — and less revolting — than almost all of the alternatives.

So if you ever find yourself with my corpse at a remote plane crash site, you know what to do. These meaty thighs, the well-marbled belly, the beer-soaked liver — they won’t be of any more use to me. Please help yourself.

Read more here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2013/05/03/2582742/starving-if-worse-comes-to-worst.html#storylink=cpy