>>18087065
>>18087089
I don't think Congolese were so cannibalistic as Papuans.

>In 2009, researchers at the Medical Research Council discovered a naturally occurring variant of a prion protein in a population from Papua New Guinea that confers strong resistance to kuru. In the study, which began in 1996, researchers assessed over 3,000 people from the affected and surrounding Eastern Highland populations, and identified a variation in the prion protein G127. G127 polymorphism is the result of a missense mutation, and is highly geographically restricted to regions where the kuru epidemic was the most widespread. Researchers believe that the PrnP variant occurred very recently, estimating that the most recent common ancestor lived 10 generations ago

>Of the discovery, Professor John Collinge, director of the MRC’s Prion Unit at University College London, has stated that:

>"It's absolutely fascinating to see Darwinian principles at work here. This community of people has developed their own biologically unique response to a truly terrible epidemic. The fact that this genetic evolution has happened in a matter of decades is remarkable." — John Collinge, Medical Research Council

>The findings of the study could help researchers better understand and develop treatments for other related prion diseases, such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and Alzheimer’s disease

TL;DR They ate so many brains they developed immunity to Kuru.