Lecture on Prehistoric Cannibalism: A Dummy's Experience of the Talk by Sneha Kushwaha

As you may have gauged from the title itself, this is a dummy's experience of the lecture on Prehistoric Cannibalism that we had with Dr. James Cole recently. For people who still did not get it, yes the dummy of this story is me and the me here was clearly a stranger to Prehistory (I mean if you discount the one semester where I tried learning all hominin profiles or studied various lithic technologies, hoping that a question on Prehistory does not pop up in the exam). But then the future is unpredictable, and sometimes you find yourself doing that one thing that you thought you would never ever do. For me, it was diving into Prehistory pretty hard. And despite the initial intimidation, I fell harder and harder for it, especially after the lecture on 9th September 2020. 

I believe I am not the only one who was a little scared of this concept of cannibalism. I mean, I always thought of it as something made up by a human mind, when it decides to play tricks on you and produces stuff like a zombie or a vampire! But no, the concept is real and it is very much wrapped in the layers of mystery in an equally mysterious time period we call as prehistory. (You can now tell I love mysteries.) What could be more amazing than diving into the topic of Prehistoric Cannibalism with Dr. James Cole himself, who is highly revered as a researcher in this field. Even before the announcement of the talk, our chat groups were filled with research papers on cannibalism (rather than our desks because, you know, we live in a virtual world now) to prepare our minds with. The subsequent debates and discussions among ourselves alleviated the level of excitement in everyone. Then the day came, and oh what a wondrous day it was! It was the most mind boggling yet the most interesting evening we all had in months. (Once you watch the video lecture, you will absolutely relate with me, for I thoroughly enjoyed the talk.) Dr. Cole was very eloquent and empathetic with his arguments and the presentation of various diagrams and charts was heavy yet systematic to absorb. 

 Do you want to know how tasty you are and whether you'd form a favourite food for someone? The talk, right here, is the perfect place for you to discover that! Believe me, it is indeed a fascinating journey to undertake. Unfortunately (and much to my dismay) we are not a favourable choice even though we ourselves intake a lot of calories (You cannot get a complex here!) Dr. Cole surely changed my hitherto ideas about cannibalism being only an instinct for survival. The debate surrounding whether the cannibalism practiced is nutritional or ritual spanned before us like an endless maze, with no clear answers but rather more puzzling evidence at each turn. A question quickly bubbled up inside me at that moment: What was even “ritual”? Was it our twisted modern connotation of presumably abnormal behaviour of human beings? Or a term to make explainable something too obscure that was out of our reach? - see I am chewing. (Bad joke, I know!) 

The two hour long talk (you will understand later, as did I, that the one topic about which one can never cease to talk about is, well, Prehistory) landed us on a pile of questions that Dr. Cole picked up very patiently and answered each one to our satisfaction. And just in the process, we saw ourselves asking yet deeper questions. This session summarized the talk effectively and kept us hanging on each of his words. 

 I personally came to interpret a lot through this lecture by Dr. Cole. Prehistory does not always provide comprehensible arguments; there are several debates and one cannot really cancel out any theory. If you thought Dark was complicated, then Prehistory is on another level in this complexity game. Nothing is definite and being introspective remains the only way. Some questions lead to bigger discoveries but some only reveal deeper mysteries. That’s prehistory for me (and maybe, for you too!) This blog is just a door to let you in to a great talk on Prehistoric Cannibalism by Dr. James Coles- the second instalment of which comes out on our YouTube channel. Let loose all your thoughts and biases a little and discover a greater understanding of Prehistory through this enriching talk!