kuru first appeared around the turn of the 20th century in the uwami village of the keiagana people, and spread to the awande in the north fore. by the 1930s it had spread to the south fore. it was around this time that ted eubank, a european gold prospector, first noticed the neurodegenerative disease, but it was not documented until 1957, by anthropologists berndt and berndt, and reported to western medicine until 1957 by d.c. gadjusek and vincent zigas. according to gajdusek, who also observed kuru in the 1950s, the hypothesis that the disease was spread via the endocannablistic rituals of the fore people was extremely apparent. however, shirley lindenbaum and robert glasse were the first to formally publish the hypothesis that kuru spread through cannibalism.