The middle course: The taboo on cannibalism is caused not only by disgust — scientists

The cannibalism taboo may have biological reasons, not just cultural ones. This is reported by RMF24 with reference to the results of the study.

It was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Scientists from the universities of Wroclaw (Poland) and Prague (Czech Republic), who studied this shocking practice, found out why people do not eat each other. It turned out that the taboo on cannibalism is associated not only with disgust — it can lead to many dangerous diseases and the destruction of health.

The aversion to cannibalism has hidden foundations, and researchers have discovered the deadly effect of this practice on the population. Mikhail Misyak from Wroclaw University and Peter Turecek from Charles University in Prague has developed a mathematical model showing that the long-term practice of cannibalism leads to the degeneration of the society that practices it.

"We looked at the human body as a potential food source, analyzing both energy gains and hidden costs," explained Misiak.

According to him, "in terms of calories, a person is an average dish, especially if you take into account the difficulty of getting it," but that's not the point. The key problem is the risk of infection.

"Pathogens have an easier task because they enter the body with almost identical physiology," explained Misiak.

The model shows that the risk of diseases increases exponentially when cannibalism becomes repetitive — one cannibal eats another — this is the so-called chain of consumption.

According to the study, although heat treatment reduces the number of bacteria and viruses, it does not eliminate the main threat — prions. These are heat-resistant proteins that cause fatal neurological diseases, such as kuru.

The researchers concluded that cannibalism can be useful only under strictly defined conditions — "with severe hunger and low cost of obtaining a body." When this becomes a frequent and regular practice, it incurs huge epidemiological losses that outweigh the benefits, eventually leading to the extinction of the population. As it turned out, the taboo on cannibalism may have biological grounds, not just cultural ones. It is the hidden costs of this shocking practice that could lead to the creation of one of the strongest taboos in our society, the authors of the study believe.

"Taboo acts as an evolutionary fuse. Our results show that this is a biologically based response to the growing risk of an epidemic. Communities that did not limit cannibalism simply did not survive," Miiak concluded.