Our Ancestors Were Cannibals? What we can learn about the Kuru
virus...  The Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea practiced something
in between ritual and survival cannibalism until the 1950s.
Beginning in the 19th century, this group was partaking in
ritual acts of mortuary cannibalism, which was later held to be
responsible for the transmission of the fatal kuru epidemic.
From approximately 1920 through the 1960s and epidemic of the
prion disease kuru swept through the Fore, killing more than 200
people a year. Women and children were most vulnerable to the
disease because they ate the most contaminated parts of the
body- the brains, while men ate the best parts, including the
muscle.  The brain diseases, called prion diseases, are
characterized by loss of coordination, dementia, paralysis, and
eventually death. The disease is caused by misshaped molecules
that clump together and accumulate in brain tissue. These
molecules are called prion proteins. Scientists believe the
misshapen prion proteins somehow cause n