Interesting.

RENO, Nev. - There’s no physical evidence that the family who gave the Donner Party its name had anything to do with the cannibalism the ill-fated pioneers have been associated with for a century and a half, two scientists said Thursday.

No cooked human bones were found among the thousands of fragments of animal bones at that Alder Creek site, suggesting Donner family members did not resort to cannibalism, the archaeologists said at a conference of the Society for Historical Archaeology in Sacramento, Calif.

Do you remember the first time you heard this grim story in school? Most stories have a moral that reveals a layer to the human race. The Donner Party tale pretty much says that when mankind is at the brink of death we will go to any means necessary to survive. Including, killing each other for food. If the Donner Party didn’t have a human flesh feast then perhaps we have hope as a species.

The article continues…

If cannibalism did occur at the Alder Creek site, in what is now the Tahoe National Forest, bones were not burned or boiled along with the flesh, the authors said. Such bones endure in the ground a very long time, while unburned or unboiled bones turn to dust in a relatively short time.

I’m not an expert at human flesh dining etiquette, but I would assume you would want to remove the bones and filet the meat before cooking. I would be kind of disturbed seeing an arm roasting on the fire.