LISTENING PRACTICE GROUP 5: ANSWER KEY + TAPESCRIPT

PART 1:

1. F
2. NG
3. T
4. NG
5. F
Script:
Scientists have found the strongest evidence yet that the colonists living in Jamestown, Virginia
may have resorted to cannibalism. Times were tough in Jamestown in 1609 and 1610. If you can
imagine, winter was coming and supplies from England that were supposed to bring food and
other materials never made it there. And relations with the local Powhatan Indians had gotten so
bad that the few hundred settlers were actually hunkered down under a siege-like situation in the
fort. People have written that things got so bad that the settlers may have resorted to cannibalism.
Researchers digging through a pile of debris in Jamestown found bones that really took them by
surprise. There was two-thirds of a skull and part of a leg bone that belonged to what they
believe was a 14-year-old girl.
And the reason the skull surprised them was that it had some very unique marks on them. But
how do you even know that cannibalism happened when you're looking at bones that are several
hundred years old? Well, it helps if you're a forensic anthropologist like Douglas Owsley, who
works at the Smithsonian Institution and was involved in interpreting the bones. What he saw
was a skull that looked like nothing he had seen before. It had multiple knife marks and several
large gashes to the front and back of the head that he believes were caused by either a cleaver or
a lightweight hatchet. He also says there were signs that a sharp instrument was used to puncture
part of the skull and pry it open. He told me that he believes that the 14-year-old girl was already
dead when this occurred because he also works with victims of modern-day crime and he says
that if she had been alive when this happened, that there would be a different pattern of marks on
the bone.
And even apart from the physical scars on the bones, he says that they can tell a fascinating story
about this girl and where she came from. For example, doing chemical analysis, he can tell that
she was likely recently from England because she didn't show signs of having eaten the primarily
corn-based diet that was so prevalent in the colonies at the time. She also had high levels of
nitrogen in her bones, and that indicates she may have been well off in England and had access to
eating a lot of meat and protein. He's also doing additional tests to confirm this. There are no
written records of Jane's presence in Jamestown, but her bones are telling a very interesting story
about an important, if gruesome, period in our history.

PART 2:
1. epilepsy, hemorrhage, bruising
2. violent raids
3. plundering and kidnapping
4. famine, ill-fated expedition
5. cultural cannibalism
6. European cemeteries
7. medical concoctions
8. last-ditch attempt

SCRIPT
15th century Europeans believed they had hit upon a miracle cure: a remedy for epilepsy,
hemorrhage, bruising, nausea and virtually any other medical ailment. This brown powder could
be mixed into drinks, made into salves or eaten straight up. It was known as mumia and made by
grinding up mummified human flesh
- History: The word "cannibal" dates from the time of Christopher Columbus; in fact,
Columbus may even have coined it himself. After coming ashore on the island of
Guadaloupe, Columbus' initial reports back to the Queen of Spain described the indigenous
people as friendly and peaceful though he did mention rumors of a group called the Caribs,
who made violent raids and then cooked and ate their prisoners. In response, Queen Isabella
granted permission to capture and enslave anyone who ate human flesh When the island
failed to produce the gold Columbus was looking for, he began to label anyone who resisted
his plundering and kidnapping as a Caribe. Somewhere along the way, the word "Carib"
became "Canibe" and then "Cannibal."
- Cannibal: First used by colonizers to dehumanize indigenous people, it has since been
applied to anyone who eats human flesh. So the term comes from an account that wasn't
based on hard evidence, but cannibalism does have a real and much more complex history.
It has taken diverse forms— sometimes, as with mumia, it doesn't involve recognizable
parts of the human body. The reasons for cannibalistic practices have varied, too. Across
cultures and time periods, there's evidence of survival cannibalism, when people living
through a famine, siege or ill-fated expedition had to either eat the bodies of the dead or
starve to death themselves.
- Survival cannibalism: But it's also been quite common for cultures to normalize some
form of eating human flesh under ordinary circumstances. Because of false accounts like
Columbus's, it's difficult to say exactly how common cultural cannibalism has been but
 there are still some examples of accepted cannibalistic practices from within the cultures
practicing them.
- Medicinal cannibalism: Take the medicinal cannibalism in Europe during Columbus's
time. Starting in the 15th century, the demand for mumia increased. At first, stolen
mummies from Egypt supplied the mumia craze, but soon the demand was too great to be
sustained on Egyptian mummies alone, and opportunists stole bodies from European
cemeteries to turn into mumia. Use of mumia continued for hundreds of years. It was
listed in the Merck index, a popular medical encyclopedia, into the 20th century. And
ground up mummies were far from the only remedy made from human flesh that was
common throughout Europe. Blood, in either liquid or powdered form, was used to treat
epilepsy, while human liver, gall stones, oil distilled from human brains, and pulverized
hearts were popular medical concoctions. In China, the written record of socially
accepted cannibalism goes back almost 2,000 years.
- Filial cannibalism: One particularly common form of cannibalism appears to have been
filial cannibalism, where adult sons and daughters would offer a piece of their own flesh
to their parents. This was typically offered as a last-ditch attempt to cure a sick parent,
and wasn't fatal to their offspring— it usually involved flesh from the thigh or, less often,
a finger.
- Funerary cannibalism: Cannibalistic funerary rites are another form of culturally
sanctioned cannibalism. Perhaps the best-known example came from the Fore people of
New Guinea. Through the mid-20th century, members of the community would, if
possible, make their funerary preferences known in advance, sometimes requesting that
family members gather to consume the body after death. Tragically, though these rituals
honored the deceased, they also spread a deadly disease known as kuru through the
community. Between the fictionalized stories, verifiable practices, and big gaps that still
exist in our knowledge, there's no one history of cannibalism. But we do know that
people have been eating each other, volunteering themselves to be eaten, and accusing
others of eating people for millennia.