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Cannibalism can be detected?

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ameagari

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I was reading an old thread and the topic of cannibalism came up, and I seem to remember hearing/reading somewhere that if you have ever ingested certain biological material, specifically from a human being, it can be detected via some test.
In short, if you've ever eaten someone, in theory the fact can be detected. I don't know if it is only possible via testing of your brain matter, or blood, or intestinal tract, though I seem to remember it being something to do with the brain. And no, I'm not thinking of the brain damage caused by mad cow disease, but it does have something to do with certain proteins only found in human tissue.

So anyway, anyone else heard of this? I can't remember enough of it to know whether the source was reliable, or that this might just be an UL.
 
Its new to me. You would be able to tell if it was human meat in the digestive tract but unless you actually developed some kind of connected complaint (like kuru) I'm unsure there is a way to detect if you've ever eaten long pig.

Any sources?

I might just cancel that dinner party (Donner Party?) I was planning for tomorrow evening ;)
 
There's a incredibly small chance that intestinal bacteria would pick up a recognisable piece of DNA from the meat before it was digested and replicate it for a while, giving a minute chance that the DNA could be picked up by analysis of the bowel contents. But this is really is phenomenally unlikely and if it did happen it would be immensely time consuming and expensive to search through all the gut bacteria, plus the DNA is unlikely to be replicated for more than a few months at most.
In the case of Sawney Bean and friends it would be more likely that the bacteria would pick up human DNA, but the chances would still be infinitesimal. I'm sure it would be impossible to tell if someone had once eaten human meat.
If you had recently eaten human, then they could tell from analysing the gut contents as Emperor says, and there was also a great episode of Law and Order (i think) where two kids disembowelled and partially ate their friend and became suspects when they came down with the same infection she had had. Of course that wasn't proof, it just alerted the police.
So go ahead and eat your neighbour, they won't be able to prove a thing ;)
 
Whoa.... How did I miss THAT episode?
Since I posted, I learned that the Anasai tribe out West is debated to have been cannibalistic because of evidence found at one site-- in part due to human excrement containing evidence that whoever poo'ed there had indeed had a meal of someone. I may have read that somewhere else some time, and more or less forgotten it, only to sort of warp the idea in my mind.
After all, it's pretty amazing to be able to study centuries old poo and know the person who made it had canibalised someone!
Thanks for your explanations.
 
Cannibalism can be detected in some cases, as noted above if you have feces from a person whose consumed human protein.

It has been analyzed for the presence of human protein, which would prove the ingestion of human flesh. The results are expected to be published this year. (1999)

Link to story http://www.trussel.com/prehist/news128.htm

To demonstrate that the butchered humans were actually consumed, Richard Marlar, a University of Colorado molecular biologist tested a coprolite (human feces) found on site. It tested positive for the human muscle protein myoglobin, which indicates the feces was the remains of digested human flesh.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowboy_Wash
 
Let's say that there is such a test - one that can tell if I'd consumed human flesh in 1987.

Wouldn't pretty much those same results come back if I'd consumed monkey or chimpanzee or gorilla?

Afer all, we share 15 percent of our genetic makeup with the lowly banana.

Old Time Radio....Werebanana
 
There was an island tribe (I think) that ritually ate the brains of their dead. It was a very important ceremony to them. The problem is that a brain disease began to spread from this. I don't know if they ever dissuaded them from doing this. Could this be what you're thinking of?

That Law and Order episode is interesting, 'cause there was a CSI with a similar plot. A high schooler ate small portions of another high schooler that they had killed, and caught E. Coli. I think.
 
There was an island tribe (I think) that ritually ate the brains of their dead. It was a very important ceremony to them. The problem is that a brain disease began to spread from this.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it was Kuru or "laughing sickness" - rather like CJD. 100% fatal as well.

More from Wikipedia below - it looks like the tribe concerned has ceased to practise cannibalism in any case.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_%28disease%29
 
ameagari said:
WhoaI learned that the Anasai tribe out West is debated to have been cannibalistic because of evidence found at one site-- in part due to human excrement containing evidence that whoever poo'ed there had indeed had a meal of someone.
Click to expand...

"They analyzed the fossilized remains of human excrement from a site containing butchered human bones and found evidence of myoglobin, a human enzyme that is found in muscle tissue but not in the digestive tract."

http://www.vanderbilt.edu/exploration/n ... sm_pt2.htm
 
OldTimeRadio said:
Let's say that there is such a test - one that can tell if I'd consumed human flesh in 1987.

Wouldn't pretty much those same results come back if I'd consumed monkey or chimpanzee or gorilla?

Afer all, we share 15 percent of our genetic makeup with the lowly banana.

Old Time Radio....Werebanana
Click to expand...

The oft quoted bit about 'sharing DNA with chimps' or what ever is a bit misleading. Tiny amounts of DNA make huge amounts of difference in the final individual. So saying we share 50% of our DNA with Horses or somesuch, is largely meaningless.
 
Well certainly the 96% in common with chimps should be balanced with a mention of how much we actually share with other animals and plants. Makes it seem a lot less impressive.

You can learn a lot from old shit. One of my geology lecturers has recently done a remarkable find of dinosaur poo. Though what it is about it that makes it remarkable I can´t quite remember.
 
AFAIK that protein is human unique, if not, and it were in chimps, bonobos and Gs it still wouldn't be a problem for analying Native American coprolites.

Lots of good info in Poo!
 
Myoglobin isnt unique to humans, its found in all mammals. In fact it was one of the first proteins ever to be crystallised and have its structure deduced- if i remember they used sperm whale myoglobin because you can get a lot of muscle from the same individual. Human myoglobin is probably not that different from other mammal species (one or two amino acids different). I assume that the guys that did the work on this coprolite used some sort of immunological test to show that it was human and not another species myoglobin. However, the authentic coprolite myoglobin would be at extremely low concentration and would produce a very low signal. You would also get a low signal if there was a modern contaminant myoglobin from a non-human species (depending on how specific the immunologic test was). I would be very cautious in trusting this result.
 
The result hasn't been challenge on scientific ground. It also backs up phyiscal evidence of butchery (of the bodies) and their being cooked.
 
yeah- the physical evidence of cutmarks and spiral longbone fractures is pretty convincing. There was a paper recently on the El Sidron neanderthals which pretty conclusively showed they had been butchered. I totally trust the interpretation of physical butchery marks but am sceptical of immunologic tests on ancient material
 
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