Research doesn’t support cannibalism by Donner family

I believe the last two paragraphs of the article make the rest of the article almost meaningless with respect to discrediting the original accounts.

Exactly my thought as well

Seems the point of the article is to say that they have found no archaeological evidence for cannibalism. The article-- including the title-- is misleading, since 'research' should include the accounts of the survivors and rescuers, not just the material evidence.

Rather than bone, they probably should look at feces data (if preserved) if they want material evidence, as the party probably didn't treat human remains the same way they treated the remains of animals they ate, either in the way they ate them (the article suggests not processing to the bone) or in their disposal. And even then, unless there was rampant cannibalism, preserved material evidence may be hard to find.

...my $ 0.02

Yeah, it's a weird article. If the cannibalism happened, it would stand to reason it would be in the last few weeks, after they'd used up everything else and were desperate. It's not like, yum, let's eat Jim, and then after that we can have a nice beef repast. :-?

I saw that article, BBB. Now we only have Alive to support survival of the species<smile>

Well, there goes Stephen King's The Shinning.(never liked that book, anyway)

From an historiographic perspective, Flyboy nailed this one down . . . NEXT ! ! !

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The reason that I questioned, Setanta, is because I didn't understand what you meant.

Historiography is the discipline which studies the writing of history, and the collection of historical data along with the verification of same . . . Flyboy's remark sums up the value of the posted article.

Yelling "NEXT" simply means, bring on something else . . .

I understood that, Setanta. You just sounded like you thought all other contributions were pointless.

The article fails to make clear two crucial points which are to be found in the professional literature on the excavation. First the Donner Party was named after the family that organized the trek and is separate from the Donner family. The second is that the Donner party was split into two groups that became separated and wintered approximately 10 miles apart. Members of the Donner family were in one of those camps, but not both. The cannibalism, which did occur, took place at only one of the two camp sites and not at the one the Donner family was living in.