According to scientific information, there is no evidence that the ancient people would have used their own kind for food on an ongoing basis. Yes, there were some religious sacrifices, for example there were such Aghoris: holy cannibals or religious corpse eaters. But this is a completely separate topic and this process did not occur with the aim of saturation. But "their own kind" ran around no less than wild animals, and even in places more.
Why do you think? This is what science answers to this question …
The thing is that people are rightfully considered the most dangerous prey in the animal kingdom, while you definitely cannot call them the most nutritious, although human meat is very high in calories. New research, based on calculating the number of calories in the body of an ordinary person, proves that human consumption of their own kind was mainly ritual, and not for the sake of saturation - at least among hominids, including Homo erectus, H. anteсessor, Neanderthals and modern people.
To find out how many calories an average body mass contains, the researchers turned to other work conducted from 1945 to 1956, which described the detailed chemical composition of four adult men who bequeathed their bodies to science. It turned out that the average adult male contains 125,822 calories (mainly due to fat and protein), which is enough to meet the daily nutritional requirements for 60 people. It is worth noting that, of course, fat is the most high-calorie, of course (49,399 calories), but the least high-calorie part of the human body is teeth (only 36 calories). These numbers represent a lower limit, as Neaderthals and some other extinct hominids appear to have more muscle mass and need more food.
Be that as it may, in comparison with other animals that made up the diet of ancient people, eating their own kind was unprofitable and too dangerous. The mammoth, on average, provided the tribe with 3,600,000 calories, the woolly rhinoceros - 1,260,000, and the bison - 979,200, and it was much easier to catch them, and the horn and skins were used for household needs, the researchers conclude. The results of their analysis were published in Scientific Reports.
In some Paleolithic monuments in Europe, which are 936,000 - 147,000 years old, scientists have indeed managed to find evidence of cannibalism, which can be regarded as a necessary measure in case of hunger or a simple unwillingness to “waste” an absolutely healthy body that died from natural reasons. But in most cases, according to researchers, prehistoric cannibalism was still of a ritual nature.
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By the way, there is an opinion that Animals do not kill their own kind, or as an option: "Animals do not kill just like that."
The essence:
Wild animals never kill their own kind, unless by accident. And in general, they kill only to eat or when they defend themselves. Well, straight knights in shining armor of nobility!
Actually:
Here are the results of a study of wolves in Alaska:
“From 1975 to 1982, 151 wolves from 30 packs were wearing collars … (Ballard et.al. 1987). During the years of tracking, 76 of these wolves died: … 7 were killed by wolves ….
“In northern Alaska, in a national park from 1986 to 1992, 107 wolves from 25 packs were wearing collars (Meier et al. 1992). Of those marked, 31 wolves died, including 16 killed by wolves from neighboring packs. (According to the site Okhotniki.ru).
So they squabble to death, in the truest sense of the word. And not only wolves. A bear can easily not only kill, but also devour a fellow, and even bear cubs. Anyone, even their own, even strangers. Lions are more picky in this regard: the lion (male) will protect his cubs, and he will kill strangers without hesitation, the truth will not be. By the way, did someone there say that they don't kill just like that? Here you are! Will gnaw and throw.
Leaving aside mammals, among fish and invertebrates cannibalism, that is, eating individuals of their own species, is generally common. Spiders are generally proverbial, such a tradition is widely known among squid. The most famous cannibals in our Middle Lane are pikes. The so-called pike lakes are known: closed lakes in which there are no fish other than pikes, but they grow there to very large sizes. What are they eating? An adult pike lays eggs, fry hatch from it. Fry eat the smallest plankton, those that have grown up are larger plankton and their younger counterparts, those who have grown even more - those who have not yet had time to grow up … And the larger the individual, the greater the percentage of its diet consists of the meat of its younger brothers and sisters. Such is the ecosystem, where the elements of the food chain are not representatives of different species,and representatives of the same species of different ages.
There is one important pattern here: the more complex the organism is organized, the longer one individual lives, the less often cannibalism occurs. There is a biological rationale for this: prion infections, which develop most often in those who eat their own kind. In addition, prion infections primarily affect the nervous tissue, and if there is a brain, there is something to hurt. The most popular prion diseases today - the famous mad cow disease (obviously in cattle) and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (in humans) are caused precisely by the consumption of individuals of their own species. For cows - forced, people feed them meat and bone meal, obtained from the same cows in the process of processing, from waste. In humans, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is directly related to the tradition of cannibalism and was very popular in New Guinea. Draconian measures against cannibalism led to the almost complete eradication of the disease, but even now it sometimes happens. Actually, in the same New Guinea, any detected case of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease indicates that the aborigines took up the old and is an indication for sending a punitive expedition to the appropriate area. Usually it helps, and against a bad tradition, and against a bad disease.
That is, if you live less than 10 years, and besides, there are no brains, only nerve ganglia, you can calmly feast on your own kind. But if you are going to live for 15-20 years or more, and besides, you have also acquired a brain, it is better to refrain from eating individuals of your own species. For purely medical reasons.
Output:
There is no special nobility among animals. They squabble to death and devour their own only in this way. Highly organized species with a developed nervous system - smaller, can generally abandon cannibalism, those that are more primitive and smaller eat their own more often. But everyone who, in principle, is capable of killing, kills their own.
People are perhaps the only species that has developed such a feeling as humanism and thought of the idea of the value of each particular life. What, of course, can be proud of.