Comments on: Found: Ancient Alaskan House—and Remains of a Child Cremated There

By: Jim

Jim — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:16:46 +0000

Eatten!!? What an idiotic notion! I grew up among the descendants of these people, there is no way they’d have eaten a child, even that long ago. They were Nomadic and had carried hundreds of dried salmon in bales tied with spruce root or sinew binding from their summer fish caps along the now famed Copper River where some of the richest salmon are still found today. They moved to this Sun River area to hunt the great herds of caribou. They built long fences and corals and killed the animals with spears they fashioned from the local copper. (Some of the purest in the world at 72% pure) The home would have been abandoned after the cremation to prevent the spread of any disease and because children were believed to take an older person with them whenever they died.

By: Iain

Iain — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 01:28:54 +0000

Just because the child was possibly eaten doesn’t mean it was killed for this purpose. Many cannibalistic societies ate their dead to keep a piece of them as remembrance, not food source. We love our children, we have done so for millions of years, check out any mamallian mom, how else to carry you poor dead child with you?
Don’t forget, child mortality would have been very, very high by todays standards. Like maybe 1 in 5 by age 5? Or more!

By: fatkid

fatkid — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 18:48:21 +0000

Speaking of the good child, it appears he tasted good too..

By: matt

matt — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 01:02:24 +0000

Summer house? needing food.?

The only way i see it is you have these mad religious types like you get in America and they want to reapopropriate the goodness the Child had.