Credit:
University of Waterloo
A case for cannibalism
Back in the 1850s, Inuit had reported evidence of the survivors resorting to cannibalism, but these accounts were dismissed by Europeans, who deemed such a practice too shocking and depraved to be credible. But in 1997, the late bioarchaeologist Anne Keenleyside of Trent University identified cut marks on nearly one-quarter of the human bones at NgLj-2, concluding that at least four of the men who perished there had been cannibalized.
This new study is the result of DNA testing on 17 tooth and bone samples from the NgLj-2 site, first recovered in 1993. The samples included a tooth taken from a mandible, which became the second sample to yield a positive identification. “We worked with a good quality sample that allowed us to generate a Y-chromosome profile, and we were lucky enough to obtain a match,” said co-author Stephen Fratpietro of Lakehead University’s Paleo-DNA lab in Ontario. The authors believe Fitzjames likely died in May or June 1848.
Fitzjames’ mandible is also one of the bones exhibiting multiple cut marks. “This shows that he predeceased at least some of the other sailors who perished, and that neither rank nor status was the governing principle in the final desperate days of the expedition as they strove to save themselves,” said co-author Douglas Stenton, an anthropologist at the University of Waterloo.
“Surely the most compassionate response to the information presented here is to use it to recognize the level of desperation that the Franklin sailors must have felt to do something they would have considered abhorrent, and acknowledge the sadness of the fact that in this case, doing so only prolonged their suffering,” the authors concluded.
Journal of Archaeological Science, 2024. DOI: 10.1016/j.jasrep.2024.104748 (About DOIs).
