Our distant ancestors were definitely cannibals. This is evidenced by the numerous findings of scientists. So, recently in the southwest of America, traces of an ancient cannibal feast were found …
The Indian settlement of Cowboy Wash in Colorado was abandoned by the inhabitants around 1150 AD. It consisted of only three earthen huts. During excavations, archaeologists came across seven dismembered skeletons. Bones and skulls were removed from the flesh, scorched in the fire and split, probably to extract the medulla from them. Fragments of bones lay in cooking pots. On the walls of the hearths were spots that looked like blood, in one of them lay a piece of hardened mass that looked like dried human excrement.
Laboratory studies have revealed that the artifacts found contain a protein whose chemical composition corresponds to that of a human. This clearly indicates cannibalism. Thus, the researchers obtained the first indisputable evidence of the existence of cannibalism among the Anasazi Indians, who once inhabited the territories of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.
Scientists, however, while acknowledging the fact of cannibalism, believe that the findings at Cowboy Wash do not yet explain who and why practiced it. The fact is that circumstantial evidence that researchers have so far come across suggests that the Anasazi ate exclusively the meat of their fellow tribesmen and most often during religious rituals. The inhabitants of Cowboy Wash were clearly killed by outsiders.
The Anasazi - these include the Hopi, Zuni and other tribes that lived in those places - represent one of the most mysterious Indian cultures. They were by no means primitive savages - they managed to build a network of roads and ritual centers throughout the southwest.
40 miles east of Cowboy Wash are the ruins of the lost city of Mesa Verde, surrounded by sheer cliffs and aqueducts. Meanwhile, most of the Anasazi lived in huts, growing corn and hunting wild animals. In the Cowboy-Wash dugouts, pottery, whetstones, jewelry and other items of archaeological value have been preserved.
Some historians suggest that local Indians were sacrificed as prisoners of war. Others claim that they were burned for witchcraft. And an archaeologist from the University of South Carolina Brian Billman put forward a hypothesis that the unfortunate Indians were destroyed and eaten by unknown intruders who planned to profit from their good. What they could not carry with them, they had to leave in the huts … One way or another, the secret of those old events in Cowboy Wash has not yet been revealed.
Irina Shlionskaya
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