Ancient Human Feces Points to Cannibalism

Sept. 7 -- A dried clump of human feces and the traces of human muscle protein on a cooking pot are proof of prehistoric cannibalism in the American Southwest about 850 years ago, according to a team of scientists.

The findings are the latest analysis of a site near Cowboy Wash in southwestern Colorado, a Pueblo village that was suddenly abandoned around A.D. 1150. It is one of several dozen ancient village sites in the region that archaeologists say show signs of violent death and human consumption of human flesh.

Prepared as Food

Until recently, the evidence for cannibalism had been circumstantial, but significant by archaeological standards. Previous excavations revealed seven bodies at the site had been dismembered, broken apart and scattered directly on the household floor at a time when the dead were normally buried outside the house in a fetal position.

The skeletons also showed signs that they had been prepared as food. Archaeologists found cut marks from tools used to butcher meat from bone, scorching on bones where they had been exposed to open flame and “pot polish” — the tell-tale burnish at the ends of bones that have been worn from rubbing against the inside of a cooking pot.

But it is the biochemical analysis of dried human excrement — known as a coprolite in archaeologist parlance — found in one of three pithouses at the site that is most convincing, say the authors of a study published this week in Nature. In the excrement, researchers found a protein that could only come from the consumption of human flesh.

“The evidence clearly demonstrates that in the past, someone consumed human flesh at the Cowboy Wash site,” says Richard Marlar, a biochemist at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and an author of the study.

“Eight to 16 hours later,” he says, “the person that ate that food defecated into the central fireplace. It may have been the final desecration of the site, or the degrading of the people that lived there.”