Cannibalism and Kuru[edit]
Cannibalism among the Fore of the New Guinea highlands was stopped in the 1950s and by the 1990s, most of the people who’d taken part in the cannibal feasts had developed kuru and died. Yet inexplicably, there were some who were still perfectly healthy. Alpers and his colleagues were able to show these survivors had a particular gene profile – one that protected them from Kuru. Then they compared the Fore’s genes with everyone else on the planet and found that this protection wasn't unusual-many people from Europe, Asia, and Africa, had the same protective genes. The conclusion was that at some stage in our prehistory, maybe 500,000 years ago, our forebears were routinely eating their dead.[7] Alpers and his work are the main theme of Kuru: The Science and the Sorcery (2010).[8] He is interviewed in The Genius And The Boys (2009).[9]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Alpers
A detailed study here;
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2003/04/11/828800.htm
http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/our-ancestors-drank-human-skulls/
But it was a cannibal planet long after 500,000 years ago too, right up into the neolithic. Frazer's Golden Bough points to numerous universal cultural traditions that survive as relics of human sacrifice, headhunting and cannibalism at harvest time, lending strong evidence that the first agriculturalists practiced all three.
In my 25 years of research into man's prehistoric past, I have found numerous citations of cannibalism and human sacrifice in every continent and nearly every culture's ancient history (with the exception of Africa and Australia, where evidence is more tentative). These practices continued through the neolithic in nearly every Eurasian culture. Its abandonment usually coincides with the introduction of Buddhism or a monotheistic religion (Especially Zoroastrianism and the related Abrahamic religions, such as Christianity and Islam). The proto-indo-european religions from which Hinduism and the Greek and Roman gods are said to have originated may have also played a part in the process of eliminating specifically cannibalism, but so far I've not found evidence of a ban on headhunting or sacrifice in the earliest related cultures and their texts.
The Fore, the tribe which inspired these studies, obtained the disease upon adopting cannibalism. They had little resistance in their genome before the epidemic and survivors were primarily those with the resistant gene.
The Fore are dominated by Y Hap C, which is thought to have been predominant in Australia during the late pleistocene. Unlike most peoples, Australian aborigines have little if any history of cannibalism. In most PNG tribes besides the Fore and a few others, Y hap C is rare and prion disease restance is ubiquitous. Elsewhere, resistance reaches it's highest level in Japan and parts of India.
Though sub-saharan Africans such as the Hadza and San have not been tested for prion disease immunity, they are among the few peoples colonial explorers never accused of cannibalism. No evidence of cannibalism has been documented among them or their possible ancestors. However, multiple reports hint the pygmy tribes may sometimes be victims of cannibals from neigboring Bantu tribes even today. Australian and African hunter-gatherers also exhibit less Neanderthal introgression than the vast majority of other populations, including the Bantu.
Neanderthal cannibalism is well documented and seems to have continued in the homo sapiens who assimilated them.
It seems that unless you are an Australian aborigine or sub-saharan African, you likely descend from cannibalistic neanderthal hybrids. I definitely do, so please don't take me wrong. I've got close to 4% Neanderthal introgression myself. My ancestral Y haplogroup (Hap R) is a sister group to the two Haplogroups who ate and mated with the paleolithic Papua New Guineans(Haps S and M). My haplogroups other sister group is the one that ate and mated with the former paleoamericans(Hap Q). My ancestor and hisbrothers (Haplogroups inside F) ate and mated with 70% of the planet. The men of Y Haplogroup DE ate and mated with 29% that we didn't get to.
The San and Hadza's ancestors may be the only people who escaped the spread of Neanderthal genes by their cannibalistic hybrid offspring. And it seems these two peoples had to assimilate certain genes to do so, bearing evidence of two Archaic African Hominids in their immunity systems. It's likely they went where invading northerners couldn't go; Malaria infested jungles and sun drenched deserts.
My ancestor was brought out of a cannibalistic, human sacrificing, headhunting, barbaric state by the spread of a monotheistic religion. Unless you're an African hunter-gatherer or Australian aborigine, you probably have a cannibal ancestor too.
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/04/0410_030410_cannibal.html
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/04/0410_030410_cannibal_2.html
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