# Prehistoric cannibalism and the limits of a history of mercy

Commentary on Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton.

On [CH07.P019](https://glosses.org/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH07.P019/#char=661,737): "As a fact, anthropophagy is certainly a decadent thing, not a primitive one."

The certainty exceeds what the historical assertion can sustain. Bello, Parfitt and Stringer's 2011 study of Gough's Cave identifies deliberately processed human remains, including skull-cups directly dated to approximately 14,700 calibrated years before present. Their analysis suggests consumption of body tissues and marrow alongside careful preparation of the skulls. This is evidence from Upper Palaeolithic people, rather than a hypothetical future fashion for eating human flesh. [Bello et al., Abstract and Results](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3040189/).

It does not establish that all early humans ate people, that cannibalism was humanity's original condition, or that participants regarded it as morally right. Nor can archaeological traces decide Chesterton's evaluative category of decadence. They do, however, undermine any straightforward chronological reading in which cannibalism belongs only to later societies. His principal argument can be separated from this vulnerable aside: discovering that a practice occurred early would still not prove that its abandonment was inevitable or morally good. The paragraph's own distinction between historical claims and the structure of a moral argument should therefore be applied to Chesterton too.

## Sources

- [Silvia M. Bello, Simon A. Parfitt and Chris B. Stringer, Earliest Directly-Dated Human Skull-Cups](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3040189/), PLoS ONE 6(2), e17026 (16 February 2011), Abstract, Introduction final paragraph, Results Table 1 and associated radiocarbon notes; doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0017026

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