Did we invent cannabalism?

Today I was working on a discussion for my Neandertal class about whether Neandertals were engaging in cannibalism and while I'm pretty sick of picturing people going at each other for dinner I thought it would make a relevant blog post. Finding a practice such as cannibalism in the archaeological record is tough, I think this is evidenced by the fact that there is no unequivocal example of cannibalism in the archaeological record. There are tons of papers on it though, either claiming to have a site with evidence of it or telling these people that they're wrong. I'm not exactly sure why it seems we want to find this in our past so bad; for obvious reasons cannibalism is usually looked at in a negative light. In the case of the Caribs of the Caribbean region, Europeans used accusations of cannibalism in order to justify the murder and exploitation of these people...who were never really cannibals at all. Which is why I find it fascinating that people find cannibalism so fascinating. While trying to track down the articles I had to read for my discussion, I came across many, many others talking about cannibalism in an archaeological light. As I've mentioned for almost all of these papers there is another to criticize it and give alternative, just as likely, explanations for the assemblages. People look at things like; cut marks, burning, disassociation of bones among many other lines of evidence to distinguish 'cannibalistic' remains; though cannibalism has never been a completely accepted practice.
In almost all societies there is a taboo against cannibalism, this is most likely a result of the obvious health issues involved, there is no way I'd eat something as disgusting as a human being, and when it is practised is is usually the result of either survival practices or some sort of ritual practice which is partaken of only at specific times, often only by specific people (ex. warriors, shaman, ect.). And because archaeologists are so keen on using modern ethnographic comparisons to project onto past populations, sometimes of a different species ie Neandertals, it is again curious to me that with the lack of evidence for cannibalism among modern populations, researchers insist on trying to find evidence of this in the archaeological record. I almost think its like the train wreck that you can't look away from; cannibalism is something terrible and so against what our society thinks is 'right' or 'moral' that people find it so intriguing and want to find out who and why someone would engage in this type of activity. Overall I find it pretty gross and would be perfectly happy to think that it doesn't exist at all but with all things in archaeology you never really know and cannot project ideals of our present ideas of what is normal behaviour or what should be.