Cannibalism may have killed Neanderthals Neanderthals who
practiced cannibalism may have spread a mad cow-like disease
that weakened and reduced populations, thereby contributing to
their extinction, according to a new theory. The theoretical
model could resolve the longstanding mystery of what caused
Neanderthals, which emerged about 250,000 years ago, to
disappear about 30,000 years ago. "The story of Neanderthal
extinction is one of the most intriguing in all of human
evolution," says Simon Underdown, a lecturer in the anthropology
department at Oxford Brookes University and author of a paper in
the journal Medical Hypotheses. "Why did a large-brained,
intelligent hominid that shared so many traits with us
disappear?" To resolve that question, Underdown studied a well-
documented tribal group, the Fore of Papua New Guinea, who
practiced ritualistic cannibalism and linked that to what could
have happened to the Neanderthals. Evidence of cannibalism Gory
evidence uncovered in a French cave in 1999 reveals Nea