May 5, 2023 06:58 PM
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/...and-brains
KEY POINTS: One of the greatest mysteries in evolution is why Neandertals went extinct about 30,000 years ago. Neandertals had a cannibalistic practice of eating each other, spanning a time period of about 80,000 years, from 120,000 to 40,000 years ago. Eating raw brains and flesh may have contributed to the Neandertal extinction because of potential deadly diseases.
EXCERPTS: [...] It is well known that raw meat often contains dangerous bacteria like salmonella, E. coli, Campylobacter, and listeria, all of which can cause serious illnesses and even death.
[...] There is also the possibility that given the evidence for the eating of Neandertal flesh and brains earlier about 120,000 years ago at Moula-Guercy (France) and later at Troisième cave, a prion-caused (an abnormal protein) disease such as mad cow (bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE) may have been present. BSE is one of the disease forms of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE), and it is often more present in the brains of animals than in their flesh.
In humans, TSE produces a severe form of dementia, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, that kills people very rapidly (within a couple of years or faster). In New Guinea, those people who practiced cannibalism were well known to suffer from kuru, which means to shake or tremble, because those were some of its initial symptoms. It has also been found that TSE may initially affect the cerebellar brain network, and the cerebellum is responsible for fine and gross motor movements (and also thinking). Interestingly, women and children appeared to be more susceptible to kuru, as it was a cultural practice more likely among them than the adult men. The incidence of kuru declined precipitously with the decline of cannibalism in New Guinea from the 1950s to the present.... (MORE - missing details)
KEY POINTS: One of the greatest mysteries in evolution is why Neandertals went extinct about 30,000 years ago. Neandertals had a cannibalistic practice of eating each other, spanning a time period of about 80,000 years, from 120,000 to 40,000 years ago. Eating raw brains and flesh may have contributed to the Neandertal extinction because of potential deadly diseases.
EXCERPTS: [...] It is well known that raw meat often contains dangerous bacteria like salmonella, E. coli, Campylobacter, and listeria, all of which can cause serious illnesses and even death.
[...] There is also the possibility that given the evidence for the eating of Neandertal flesh and brains earlier about 120,000 years ago at Moula-Guercy (France) and later at Troisième cave, a prion-caused (an abnormal protein) disease such as mad cow (bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE) may have been present. BSE is one of the disease forms of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE), and it is often more present in the brains of animals than in their flesh.
In humans, TSE produces a severe form of dementia, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, that kills people very rapidly (within a couple of years or faster). In New Guinea, those people who practiced cannibalism were well known to suffer from kuru, which means to shake or tremble, because those were some of its initial symptoms. It has also been found that TSE may initially affect the cerebellar brain network, and the cerebellum is responsible for fine and gross motor movements (and also thinking). Interestingly, women and children appeared to be more susceptible to kuru, as it was a cultural practice more likely among them than the adult men. The incidence of kuru declined precipitously with the decline of cannibalism in New Guinea from the 1950s to the present.... (MORE - missing details)