n.
[Cf. F. cannibalisme.]
The act or practice of eating human flesh by mankind. Hence; Murderous cruelty; barbarity. Berke.
| Dictionary: Can·ni·bal·ism |
[Cf. F. cannibalisme.]
The act or practice of eating human flesh by mankind. Hence; Murderous cruelty; barbarity. Berke.
| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: cannibalism |
For more information on cannibalism, visit Britannica.com.
| Archaeology Dictionary: cannibalism |
The practice of eating human flesh, normally either out of dire need or for ceremonial purposes. The latter is more common, and usually related to a belief that eating parts of deceased relatives or enemies slain in battle allows their power to be passed on to the celebrants. The practice is not easy to prove from the archaeological record, although cutmarks on bone that relate to de-fleshing a corpse, the splitting of long bones, and the systematic opening of the skull to extract the brain are usually taken as strong indicators.
| Columbia Encyclopedia: cannibalism |
Bibliography
See P. Brown and D. Tuzin, ed., The Ethnography of Cannibalism (1983); A. W. B. Simpson, Cannibalism and the Common Law (1984).
| Food & Culture Encyclopedia: Cannibalism |
There is certainly no shortage of information on cannibalism. A search at any good library will net twenty to thirty books on the topic, and, at the time this encyclopedia went to press, the World Wide Web contained no fewer than 850 sites. Books on the topic range from popular surveys by Askenasy (1994) to anthropological treatments by Brown and Tuzin (1983), Goldman (1999), and Petrinovich (2000) to anthropological critique by Arens (1979) to postcolonial and literary critique by Barker and others (1998). A superficial examination of post–World War II films lists a variety of both serious and humorous treatments of cannibalism, many of them first-rate (Fires on the Plain [Japan, 1959], Soylent Green [U.S., 1973], Survive! [Mexico, 1976], Eating Raoul[U.S., 1982], Silence of the Lambs [U.S., 1991], Delicatessen [France, 1991], The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover [1993/1989, France/Netherlands.], Alive [U.S., 1993]). The fact that cannibalism is a powerful taboo in most human societies undeniably contributes to our fascination with tales about organisms eating conspecifics (others of the same species), especially humans.
The practice of human cannibalism is highly variable and can be defined in a number of ways: (1) Endocannibalism is the consumption of deceased individuals who live within the group, such as kin and friends. (This pattern was common in New Guinea as an act of veneration.) (2) Exocannibalism is the consumption of outsiders as an act to gain strength or demonstrate power over the vanquished, who had usually been murdered. (3) Starvation or survival cannibalism is the consumption during actual or perceived starvation. (This is well documented in numerous historical sources.) (4) Gastronomic cannibalism is nonfunerary, nonstarvation cannibalism, that is, routine cannibalism for food. (This is not well documented.) (5) Medicinal cannibalism is the consumption of human tissues such as blood, powdered bone, or dried tissue for medicinal purposes. (6) Sadistic cannibalism is the killing and eating of individuals out of sadistic or psychopathological motives. (There is considerable evidence for this pattern of cannibalism.) In exocannibalism, gastronomic cannibalism, and sadistic cannibalism, the victims are murdered before being eaten; in endocannibalism, starvation cannibalism, and medicinal cannibalism, they are not.
Cannibalism in Nonhuman Animals
Cannibalism occurs in a wide variety of invertebrate and vertebrate species and includes: infanticide, mating and courtship, competitive encounters, eating the old, and eating eggs. Among nonhuman organisms, cannibalism may be either ecological or social. Ecological factors include a limited food supply or the recovery of reproductive investment when food is scarce for infant survival; social factors include competition for reproductive resources or food resources. A general principle is that older individuals usually consume younger ones or eggs; it is relatively rare for adults to eat other adults. Elgar and Crespi (1992) define cannibalism in nonhuman organisms only in cases where an individual is killed (rather than dying a natural death) before being eaten.
In a comprehensive survey of cannibalism in primates in the wild, Hiraiwa-Hasegawa (1992) observed only five species in this practice: Cercopithecus ascanius (redtail monkey), Papio cynocepharus cynocephalus (baboon), Macaca fuscata (Japanese macaque), Gorilla gorilla beringei (mountain gorilla), and Pan troglodytes (common chimpanzee). In each episode observed, infants were eaten after being killed, and this custom appeared to serve a nutritional (therefore, ecological rather than social) purpose in animals who ordinarily consumed meat as a part of their diets. Chimpanzees, our closest evolutionary relatives, have the highest rates of cannibalism among non-human primates; chimpanzees also have the highest rates of predation (of red colobus monkeys) among nonhuman primates.
Cannibalism in History and Prehistory
Identification of cannibalism in the distant past is, according to Tim White (1992), based on very specific indicators in fossilized or unfossilized human bones: (1) similar butchering techniques for human and animal remains; (2) similar patterns of long bone breakage (for marrow extraction); (3) identical patterns of processing and discarding after use; and (4) evidence of cooking (White, 1992). Based on these criteria, there is good evidence for cannibalism from the southwestern United States; New Guinea, Fiji, and other sites in the Pacific; and Europe; there is limited evidence at other sites around the world. Ann Gibbons (1997) has reported that very early paleoanthropological specimens dating back hundreds of thousands of years are increasingly being identified as showing signs of cannibalism.
There is abundant evidence from historical accounts of cannibalism in the Caribbean (the term was defined for Carib Indians; the Spanish word Canibales is a form of the ethnic name Carib) and in Spanish accounts of Mesoamerican ritual sacrifices and cannibalism. Many historical accounts have been challenged within the past few decades because most information was derived from enemies of the groups identified as "cannibals," where the term was used to denigrate the other group. Also, during periods of exploration from the sixteenth century onward, Europeans were likely to accept the identification of "cannibal" in a group that was thought to be "savage" and "primitive." Hence, there is probably some exaggeration in the historical literature.
A storm of controversy has arisen over new evidence for cannibalism in Anasazi populations of the southwestern United States from the period between 900 and 1200 C.E. White (1992) and the Turners (1999) have identified skeletal remains from a number of populations that lived in the Four Corners area that show clear signs of persistent and regular cannibalism (White, 1992; Turner and Turner, 1999). The controversy has been fueled by the traditional view of these peoples as peaceful and non-violent and the belief that, if cannibalism did exist, it resulted from periodic famine and hunger, which must have commonly struck prehistoric peoples of the arid Southwest. A new image of these peoples, under the purported cultural influence of Mesoamerican traditions of violence from the south, is one of human sacrifice, cannibalism, and social pathology—quite different from the earlier view.
Cannibalism and Survival
Some of the best-documented examples of cannibalism have been based on the conditions that take place during widespread famines and on accounts of shipwrecked, marooned, or stranded groups of people who have gone for long periods without food. Two of the best-documented of many cases are the pioneer Donner party's isolation in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the fall and winter of 1846–1847, and the crash of the Uruguayan rugby team in the Chilean Andes in October 1972. In these and other well-documented cases, it is unquestionable that the food acquired by means of cannibalism enabled some individuals to survive rather than starving to death.
A more controversial issue is whether regular cannibalism in groups of people makes the difference between inadequate and adequate dietary intake. The Aztecs of Mexico practiced regular ritual sacrifice of captives and consumed the victims. Michael Harner (1977) and Marvin Harris (1977) argued that this food provided a protein-rich source of nutrients to a large Aztec population that was suffering from limited protein intake due to the absence of Native American domestic animals during pre-Hispanic times. This argument has been countered on the grounds that (1) population density was somewhat lower than estimated and (2) protein sources were available from a variety of plant and wild animal food that, when considered together, provided an adequate protein intake for most of the people.
Garn and Block (1970) argued that the meat yield from an average human body (50 kg) would only provide about 4.0 kg of protein, and that this would meet the daily minimum protein requirements of only sixty adults. However, Dornsteich and Morren (1974) presented a more convincing argument for New Guinea cannibalism in several highland populations. They noted that the consumption of human flesh by the Miyanmin people provided between 5 and 10 percent of the daily intake of protein, which was equivalent to or greater than the protein derived from domestic and feral pig consumption. This basic issue seems to relate to the primary motives that people have for consuming human flesh. It is probably not correct to state that some people practice cannibalism solely as a source of food. There are many other human motives for cannibalism. On the other hand, human tissue has the same nutritional value as any other mammalian tissue when it is eaten, whether by a human or nonhuman predator.
Cannibalism and Disease
The Fore tribe of the highlands of Papua New Guinea was investigated at length beginning in 1957 by D. Carleton Gajdusek, who won a Nobel prize in 1976 for his study of the neurological-degenerative disease kuru, which he determined was caused by human contact with infected human brain tissue. Kuru, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy are all transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSE) and were formerly believed to be caused by a slow virus infection; recent evidence indicates that they are conveyed by proteins called prions. Among the Fore, the principal pattern of contact with infected human tissue was during the mortuary preparation associated with endocannibalistic consumption of dead kin. In 1979 William Arens challenged Gajdusek's explanation for the spread of kuru on the grounds that there were no direct observations of cannibalism in the Fore people.
Whether cannibalism reflects pathological behavior depends on the circumstances of consumption. Starvation cannibalism appears to be tacitly condoned by Western societies, and other societies have sanctioned a variety of exocannibalistic practices. But perhaps the most abhorrent practice is that of sadistic or psychopathological murder and consumption of human tissue. Jeffrey Dahmer is a most recent example. A deranged young man who did not appear to be abnormal, he was arrested in Milwaukee in 1991 for the murder, dismemberment, and partial consumption of seventeen individuals. There are many other examples of such bizarre and pathological behavior in the literature.
The Greeks
The ancient Greeks' fears of cannibalism were reflected in the writings of Homer and others. For example, the Titan god Kronos ate his sons Hades and Poseidon and tried to eat Zeus in the fear that they would supplant him. Zeus, the future leader of the Olympian gods, forced his father to disgorge Hades and Poseidon. In another story, the curse on the House of Atreus was brought about by a deceptive form of endocannibalism. Atreus and Thyestes were brothers. In a series of deceptions, Atreus, having killed his own son without knowing who he was, exacted revenge against his brother, Thyestes, by killing Thyestes' own sons and serving them to him at a feast. A final example is in the tale of Odysseus' return from Troy to Ithaca. He stopped at an island in search of food and stumbled on the cave of Polyphemus, a Cyclops. Odysseus escaped from Polyphemus, but not before the Cyclops had devoured a number of his men.
Jack and the Beanstalk
This rhyme from "Jack and the Beanstalk" illustrates an example of threatened cannibalism in a children's story. Numerous nursery rhymes and fairy tales include cannibalism as part of the theme. Another example is "Hansel and Gretel."
Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum.
I smell the blood of an Englishman.
Be he alive or be he dead,
I'll grind his bones to make my bread.
Kuru
Kuru can be used as an example of how endocannibalism led to a disastrous epidemic of a degenerative encephalopathic disease, the discovery of a whole class of diseases called prion diseases, a Nobel Prize won by D. Carleton Gajdusek, and the beginning of our understanding of mad cow disease, which led to the mass destruction of livestock in the United Kingdom.
A popular account of the early discovery of kuru is given in a book by Michael Howell and Peter Ford (1985). The Fore people, who live in the central highlands of New Guinea and practiced a form of endocannibalism, were reported to have a disease that had a gradual onset (imbalance) but then progressed rapidly to an inability to stand or sit upright, dementia, and a general neurological deterioration that always ended in death. The Fore attributed the lethal disorder to sorcery, but Western officials believed the epidemic had natural causes, perhaps hysteria. Following work by Vincent Zigas, a district medical officer, and Carleton Gajdusek, a young American scientist, it was discovered that endocannibalism, as practiced by the Fore, contributed to the familial transmission of the infectious agent. By handling and consuming the incompletely cooked remains of the kuru victims, especially the highly infectious brain and nervous tissue, members of the family contracted the disease but did not show symptoms until many years later. The first connection with an animal disease was suggested in 1959 when a veterinary scientist suggested that kuru in humans seemed similar to symptoms of a disease called scrapie that was found in sheep. The most recent epidemic of a prion disease is mad cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy), which is a livestock disease that has been transmitted to humans. This is the second example of a livestock prion disease that has somehow been transformed and become infectious in humans (the first is the probable transmission of scrapie to humans in kuru). Finally, the kuru epidemic in the Fore population was brought to a halt when the Australian government outlawed cannibalism in what is now Papua-New Guinea, and the practice slowly began to decline.
Bibliography
Arens, William. The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophagy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979.
Askenasy, Hans. Cannibalism: From Sacrifice to Survival. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1994.
Barker, Francis, Peter Hulme, and Margaret Iversen, eds. Cannibalism and the Colonial World. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Brown, P., and D. Tuzin, eds. The Ethnography of Cannibalism. Washington, D.C.: Society for Psychological Anthropology, 1983.
Dornstreich, Mark D., and George E. B. Morren. "Does New Guinea Cannibalism Have Nutritional Value?" Human Ecology 2 (1974): 1–12.
Elgar, M. A., and B. J. Crespi. "Ecology and Evolution of Cannibalism." In Cannibalism: Ecology and Evolution among Diverse Taxa, edited by M. A. Elgar and B. J. Crespi, pp. 1–12. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Gajdusek, D. Carleton. "Unconventional Viruses and the Origin and Disappearance of Kuru." Science 197 (1977): 943–960.
Garn, Stanley M., and W. D. Block. "The Limited Nutritional Value of Cannibalism." American Anthropologist 72 (1970): 106.
Gibbons, Ann. "Archaeologists Rediscover Cannibals." Science 277 (1997): 635–637.
Goldman, L. R., ed. The Anthropology of Cannibalism. Westport, Conn., and London: Bergin and Garvey, 1999.
Harner, Michael. "The Ecological Basis for Aztec Sacrifice." American Ethnologist 4 (1977): 117–135.
Harris, Marvin. Cannibals and Kings: The Origins of Cultures. New York: Random House, 1977.
Hiraiwa-Hasegawa, M. "Cannibalism among Non-Human Primates." In Cannibalism: Ecology and Evolution among Diverse Taxa, edited by M. A. Elgar and B. J. Crespi. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Howell, Michael, and Peter Ford. The Beetle of Aphrodite and Other Medical Mysteries. New York: Random House, 1985.
Petrinovich, L. The Cannibal Within. New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 2000.
Turner, Christy G., II, and Jacqueline Turner. Man Corn: Cannibalism and Violence in the Prehistoric American Southwest. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1999.
White, T. D. Prehistoric Cannibalism at Mancos 5MTUMR-2346. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.
—Michael A. Little
| Wikipedia: Cannibalism |
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This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (September 2008) |
Cannibalism (from Caníbalis, the Spanish name of the allegedly cannibalistic Caribs[1]), also called anthropophagy, is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other humans (sometimes known as "long pig"[citation needed]).
The term "cannibalism" is also used in zoology to mean the act of any species consuming members of its own kind. The expression "cannibalization" is in addition used metaphorically outside of biological fields to refer to the reuse of parts or ideas or to situations such as when a company's assets eat into its other assets. This article is about human cannibalism.
Cannibalism has recently been both practiced and fiercely condemned in several wars, especially in Liberia[2] and Congo.[3] Today, the Korowai are one of very few tribes still believed to eat human flesh.[4][5] It is also still known to be practiced as a ritual and in war in various Melanesian tribes.[6]
Cannibalism was widespread in the past among humans throughout the world, and it continued into the 19th century in some isolated South Pacific cultures. Neanderthals are believed to have practiced cannibalism.[7][8] Among modern humans it has been practiced by various groups.[9] In the past, it has been practiced by humans in Europe,[10][11] South America,[12] India,[13] New Zealand,[14] North America,[15] Australia ,[16] the Solomon Islands,[17] parts of West Africa[5] and Central Africa,[5] some of the islands of Polynesia,[5] New Guinea,[18] Sumatra,[5] and Fiji,[19] usually in rituals connected to tribal warfare.[citation needed] Fiji was once known as the 'Cannibal Isles'. Evidence of cannibalism has been found in the Chaco Canyon ruins of the Anasazi culture.[20]
The closely related practice of headhunting continued in Europe until the early 20th century in the Balkan Peninsula and to the end of the Middle Ages in Ireland and the Scottish Marches.[21]
Contents |
The reasons for cannibalism include the following:
There are fundamentally two kinds of cannibalistic social behavior; endocannibalism (eating humans from the same community) and exocannibalism (eating humans from other communities).
A separate ethical distinction can be made to delineate between the practice of killing a human for food (homicidal cannibalism) versus eating the flesh of a person who was already dead (necro-cannibalism).
The social stigma against cannibalism has been used as an aspect of propaganda against an enemy by accusing them of acts of cannibalism to separate them from their humanity. The Carib tribe in the Lesser Antilles, from whom the word cannibalism derives, for example, acquired a longstanding reputation as cannibals following the recording of their legends by Fr. Breton in the 17th century. Some controversy exists over the accuracy of these legends and the prevalence of actual cannibalism in the culture.
During their period of expansion in the 15th through 17th centuries, Europeans equated cannibalism with evil and savagery. In the 16th century, Pope Innocent IV declared cannibalism a sin deserving to be punished by Christians through force of arms and Queen Isabella of Spain decreed that Spanish colonists could only legally enslave natives who were cannibals, giving the colonists an economic interest in making such allegations. This was used as a justification for employing violent means to subjugate native people. This theme dates back to Columbus' accounts of a supposedly ferocious group of man-eaters who lived in the Caribbean islands and parts of South America called the Caniba, which gave us the word cannibal.[23]
The Korowai tribe of southeastern Papua could be one of the last surviving tribes in the world engaging in cannibalism, although there have been media reports of soldiers/rebels in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Liberia eating body parts[24] to intimidate child soldiers or captives.[25] Marvin Harris has analyzed cannibalism and other food taboos. He argued that it was common when humans lived in small bands, but disappeared in the transition to states, the Aztecs being an exception.
A well known case of mortuary cannibalism is that of the Fore tribe in New Guinea which resulted in the spread of the prion disease Kuru. It is often believed to be well-documented, although no eyewitnesses have ever been at hand. Some scholars argue that although postmortem dismemberment was the practice during funeral rites, cannibalism was not. Marvin Harris theorizes that it happened during a famine period coincident with the arrival of Europeans and was rationalized as a religious rite.
In pre-modern medicine, an explanation for cannibalism stated that it came about within a black acrimonious humour, which, being lodged in the linings of the ventricle, produced the voracity for human flesh.[26]
Some now-challenged research received a large amount of press attention when scientists suggested that early humans may have practiced cannibalism. Later reanalysis of the data found serious problems with this hypothesis. According to the original research, genetic markers commonly found in modern humans all over the world suggest that today many people carry a gene that evolved as protection against brain diseases that can be spread by consuming human brains.[27] Later reanalysis of the data claims to have found a data collection bias, which led to an erroneous conclusion:[28] that in some cases blame for incidents claimed as evidence has been given to 'primitive' local cultures, where in fact the cannibalism was practiced by explorers, stranded seafarers or escaped convicts.[29]
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This section may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this section if you can. (May 2009) |
Unsubstantiated reports of cannibalism disproportionately relate cases of cannibalism among cultures that are already otherwise despised, feared, or are little known. In antiquity, Greek reports of cannibalism, (often called anthropophagy in this context) were related to distant non-Hellenic barbarians, or else relegated in Greek mythology to the 'primitive' chthonic world that preceded the coming of the Olympian gods: see the explicit rejection of human sacrifice in the cannibal feast prepared for the Olympians by Tantalus of his son Pelops. All South Sea Islanders were cannibals so far as their enemies were concerned. When the whaleship Essex was rammed and sunk by a whale in 1820, the captain opted to sail 3000 miles upwind to Chile rather than 1400 miles downwind to the Marquesas because he had heard the Marquesans were cannibals. Ironically many of the survivors of the shipwreck resorted to cannibalism in order to survive.
However, Herman Melville happily lived with the Marquesan Typees (Taipi), rumoured to have been the most vicious of the island group's cannibal tribes, but also may have witnessed evidence of cannibalism. In his autobiographical novel Typee, he reports seeing shrunken heads and having strong evidence that the tribal leaders ceremonially consumed the bodies of killed warriors of the neighboring tribe after a skirmish.
William Arens, author of The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophagy (New York : Oxford University Press, 1979; ISBN 0-19-502793-0), questions the credibility of reports of cannibalism and argues that the description by one group of people of another people as cannibals is a consistent and demonstrable ideological and rhetorical device to establish perceived cultural superiority. Arens bases his thesis on a detailed analysis of numerous "classic" cases of cultural cannibalism cited by explorers, missionaries, and anthropologists. His findings were that many were steeped in racism, unsubstantiated, or based on second-hand or hearsay evidence. In combing the literature he could not find a single credible eye-witness account. And, as he points out, the hallmark of ethnography is the observation of a practice prior to description. In the end he concluded that cannibalism was not the widespread prehistoric practice it was claimed to be; that anthropologists were too quick to pin the cannibal label on a group based not on responsible research but on our own culturally-determined pre-conceived notions, often motivated by a need to exoticize. He wrote:
Anthropologists have made no serious attempt to disabuse the public of the widespread notion of the ubiquity of anthropophagists. ... in the deft hands and fertile imaginations of anthropologists, former or contemporary anthropophagists have multiplied with the advance of civilization and fieldwork in formerly unstudied culture areas. ...The existence of man-eating peoples just beyond the pale of civilization is a common ethnographic suggestion.[30]
Arens' findings are controversial, and have been cited as an example of postcolonial revisionism .[31] His argument is often mischaracterized as “cannibals do not and never did exist”,[citation needed] when in the end the book is actually a call for a more responsible and reflective approach to anthropological research. At any rate, the book ushered in an era of rigorous combing of the cannibalism literature. By Arens' later admission, some cannibalism claims came up short, others were reinforced.
Conversely, Michel de Montaigne's essay "Of cannibals" introduced a new multicultural note in European civilization. Montaigne wrote that "one calls 'barbarism' whatever he is not accustomed to." By using a title like that and describing a fair indigean society, Montaigne may have wished to provoke a surprise in the reader of his Essays.
Cannibalism has been occasionally practiced as a last resort by people suffering from famine. In colonial Jamestown, colonists resorted to cannibalism during a period known as the Starving Time, from 1609-1610. After food supplies were diminished, some colonists began to dig up corpses for food. During this time period, one man confessed to killing his pregnant wife, salting, and eating her, before being burned alive as punishment.[32]
In the US, the group of settlers known as the Donner party resorted to cannibalism while snowbound in the mountains for the winter. The last survivors of Sir John Franklin's Expedition were found to have resorted to cannibalism in their final push across King William Island towards the Back River.[33] There are many claims that cannibalism was widespread during the famine of Ukraine in the 1930s, during the Siege of Leningrad in World War II,[34][35] and during the Chinese Civil War and the Great Leap Forward in the People's Republic of China.[36] There were also rumors of several cannibalism outbreaks during World War II in the Nazi concentration camps where the prisoners were malnourished.[37] Cannibalism was also practiced by Japanese troops as recently as World War II in the Pacific theater.[38] A more recent example is of leaked stories from North Korean refugees of cannibalism practiced during and after a famine that occurred sometime between 1995 and 1997.[39]
Lowell Thomas records the cannibalisation of some of the surviving crew members of the Dumaru after the ship exploded and sank during the First World War in his book, The Wreck of the Dumaru (1930). Another case of shipwrecked survivors forced to engage in cannibalism was that of the Medusa, a French vessel which in 1816 ran aground on the Banc d'Arguin (English: The Bank of Arguin) off the coast of Africa, about sixty miles distant from shore.
In 1972, the survivors of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, consisting of the rugby team from Stella Maris College in Montevideo and some of their family members, were resorted to cannibalism during their entrapment at the crash site. They had been stranded since October 13 and rescue operations at the crash site did not commence until December 22. The story of the survivors was chronicled in Piers Paul Read's 1974 book, Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, in a 1993 film adaptation of the book, called simply Alive, and in a 2008 documentary: Stranded: I’ve Come From a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains.
It is believed that cannibalism took place on Easter Island after the construction of the Moai caused an ecosystem collapse starting with the inaccessibility of wood to build fishing boats.
Cannibalism features in many mythologies, and is most often attributed to evil characters or as extreme retribution for some wrong. Examples include The witch in Hansel and Gretel and Baba Yaga of Slavic folklore.
A number of stories in Greek mythology involve cannibalism, in particular cannibalism of close family members, for example the stories of Thyestes, Tereus and especially Cronus, who was Saturn in the Roman pantheon. The story of Tantalus also parallels this. These mythologies inspired Shakespeare's cannibalism scene in Titus Andronicus.
Hindu mythology describes evil demons called "asura" or "rakshasa" that dwell in the forests and practice extreme violence including devouring their own kind, and possess many evil supernatural powers. These are however the Hindu equivalent of "demons" and do not relate to actual tribes of forest-dwelling people.
The Wendigo (also Windigo, Weendigo, Windago, Windiga, Witiko, Wihtikow, and numerous other variants)[40] is a mythical creature appearing in the mythology of the Algonquian people. It is a malevolent cannibalistic spirit into which humans could transform, or which could possess humans. Those who indulged in cannibalism were at particular risk[41], and the legend appears to have reinforced this practice as taboo.
Some anthropologists, such as Tim White, suggest that cannibalism was common in human societies prior to the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic period. This theory is based on the large amount of “butchered human" bones found in Neanderthal and other Lower/Middle Paleolithic sites.[42] Cannibalism in the Lower and Middle Paleolithic may have occurred because of food shortages.[43]
Cannibalism is mentioned many times in early history and literature. It is reported in the Bible during the siege of Samaria (2 Kings 6:25–30). Two women made a pact to eat their children; after the first mother cooked her child the second mother ate it but refused to reciprocate by cooking her own child. A similar story is reported by Flavius Josephus during the siege of Jerusalem by Rome in 70 AD, and the population of Numantia during the Roman Siege of Numantia in the second century BC was reduced to cannibalism and suicide. Cannibalism was also well-documented in Egypt during a famine caused by the failure of the Nile to flood for eight years (1073-1064 BCE).
As in modern times, though, reports of cannibalism were often told as apocryphal second and third-hand stories, with widely varying levels of accuracy. St. Jerome, in his letter Against Jovinianus, discusses how people come to their present condition as a result of their heritage, and then lists several examples of peoples and their customs. In the list, he mentions that he has heard that Atticoti eat human flesh and that Massagetae and Derbices (a people on the borders of India) kill and eat old people.(---The Tibareni crucify those whom they have loved before when they have grown old---). ; this points to likelihood that St. Jerome's writing came from rumours and does not represent the situation accurately.[44]
Researchers have found physical evidence of cannibalism in ancient times. In 2001, archaeologists at the University of Bristol found evidence of Iron Age cannibalism in Gloucestershire.[45] In Germany, Emil Carthaus and Dr. Bruno Bernhard have observed 1,891 signs of cannibalism in the caves at the Hönne (1000 - 700 BCE).[46]
During the Muslim-Qurayš wars in the early 7th century, cases of cannibalism have been reported. Following at the Battle of Uhud in 625, it is said that after killing Hamzah ibn Abdu l-Muṭṭalib, his liver was consumed by Hind bint ‘Utbah, the wife of Abû Sufyan ibn Harb (one of the commanders of the Qurayš army).[47] Although she later converted to Islam, and was the mother of Muawiyah I, the founder of the Islamic Umayyad Caliphate, Muawiyah was later slandered to be an unacceptable leader and the son of a cannibal.
Reports of cannibalism were also recorded during the First Crusade, as Crusaders fed on the bodies of their dead opponents following the Siege of Ma'arrat al-Numan. It is also possible that the Crusaders staged such incidents as part of psychological warfare. Amin Maalouf also discusses further cannibalism incidents on the march to Jerusalem, and to the efforts made to delete mention of these from western history.[48] During Europe's Great Famine of 1315–1317 there were many reports of cannibalism among the starving populations. In North Africa, as in Europe, there are references to cannibalism as a last resort in times of famine.[49]
The Muslim explorer Ibn Batutta reported that one African king advised him that nearby people were cannibals (this may have been a prank played on Ibn Batutta by the king in order to fluster his guest).
For a brief time in Europe, an unusual form of cannibalism occurred when thousands of Egyptian mummies preserved in bitumen were ground up and sold as medicine.[50] The practice developed into a wide-scale business which flourished until the late 16th century. This "fad" ended because the mummies were revealed to actually be recently killed slaves. Two centuries ago, mummies were still believed to have medicinal properties against bleeding, and were sold as pharmaceuticals in powdered form (see human mummy confection).[51]
References to cannibalizing the enemy has also been seen in poetry written when China was repressed in the Song Dynasty, though the cannibalizing is perhaps poetic symbolism, expressing hatred towards the enemy (see Man Jiang Hong).
While there is universal agreement that some Mesoamerican people practiced human sacrifice, there is a lack of scholarly consensus as to whether cannibalism in pre-Columbian America was widespread. At one extreme, anthropologist Marvin Harris, author of Cannibals and Kings, has suggested that the flesh of the victims was a part of an aristocratic diet as a reward, since the Aztec diet was lacking in proteins. While most pre-Columbian historians believe that there was ritual cannibalism related to human sacrifices, they do not support Harris's thesis that human flesh was ever a significant portion of the Aztec diet.[52][53][54]
European explorers and colonizers brought home many stories of cannibalism practiced by the native peoples they encountered. The friar Diego de Landa reported about Yucatán instances, Yucatan before and after the Conquest, translated from Relación de las cosas de Yucatan, 1566 (New York: Dover Publications, 1978: 4), and there have been similar reports by Purchas from Popayán, Colombia, and from the Marquesas Islands of Polynesia, where human flesh was called long-pig (Alanna King, ed., Robert Louis Stevenson in the South Seas, London: Luzac Paragon House, 1987: 45–50). It is recorded about the natives of the captaincy of Sergipe in Brazil, "They eat human flesh when they can get it, and if a woman miscarries devour the abortive immediately. If she goes her time out, she herself cuts the navel-string with a shell, which she boils along with the secondine, and eats them both.'" (See E. Bowen, 1747: 532.)
Reports of cannibalism among the Texas tribes were often applied to the Karankawa and the Tonkawa.[55][56] Though cannibals, the fierce Tonkawas were great friends of the white Texas settlers, helping them against all their enemies.[57] Among the North American tribes which practiced cannibalism in some form may be mentioned the Montagnais, and some of the tribes of Maine; the Algonkin, Armouchiquois, Iroquois, and Micmac; in the South the Seminole people who built the mounds in Florida, and the Tonkawa, Attacapa, Karankawa, Kiowa, Caddo, and Comanche (?); in the Northwest and West, portions of the continent, the Thlingchadinneh and other Athapascan tribes, the Tlingit, Heiltsuk, Kwakiutl, Tsimshian, Nootka, Siksika, some of the Californian tribes, and the Ute. There is also a tradition of the practice among the Hopi, and mentions of the custom among other tribes of New Mexico and Arizona. The Mohawk, and the Attacapa, Tonkawa, and other Texas tribes were known to their neighbours as "man-eaters."[58]
As with most lurid tales of native cannibalism, these stories are treated with a great deal of scrutiny, as accusations of cannibalism were often used as justifications for the subjugation or destruction of "savages." However, there were several well-documented cultures that engaged in regular eating of the dead, such as New Zealand's Maori. In one infamous 1809 incident, 66 passengers and crew of the ship the Boyd were killed and eaten by Māori on the Whangaroa peninsula, Northland. (See also: Boyd massacre) Cannibalism was already a regular practice in Māori wars.[59] In another instance, on 11 July 1821 warriors from the Ngapuhi tribe killed 2,000 enemies and remained on the battlefield "eating the vanquished until they were driven off by the smell of decaying bodies".[60] Māori warriors fighting the New Zealand Government in Titokowaru's War in New Zealand's North Island in 1868–69 revived ancient rites of cannibalism as part of the radical Hauhau movement of the Pai Marire religion.[61]
Other islands in the Pacific were home to cultures that allowed cannibalism to some degree. The dense population of Marquesas Islands, Polynesia, was concentrated in the narrow valleys, and consisted of warring tribes, who sometimes cannibalized their enemies. In parts of Melanesia, cannibalism was still practiced in the early 20th century, for a variety of reasons — including retaliation, to insult an enemy people, or to absorb the dead person's qualities.[62]
This period of time was also rife with instances of explorers and seafarers resorting to cannibalism for survival. The survivors of the sinking of the French ship Medusa in 1816 resorted to cannibalism after four days adrift on a raft and their plight was made famous by Théodore Géricault's painting Raft of the Medusa. The misfortunes of the Donner Party in the United States are also well-known. After the sinking of the Essex of Nantucket by a whale, on November 20, 1820, (an important source event for Herman Melville's Moby-Dick) the survivors, in three small boats, resorted, by common consent, to cannibalism in order for some to survive.[63] Sir John Franklin's lost polar expedition is another example of cannibalism out of desperation.[64]
The case of R v. Dudley and Stephens (1884) 14 QBD 273 (QB) is an English case which dealt with four crew members of an English yacht, the Mignonette, which were cast away in a storm some 1,600 miles (2,600 km) from the Cape of Good Hope. After several days one of the crew, a seventeen year old cabin boy, fell unconscious due to a combination of the famine and drinking seawater. The others (one possibly objecting) decided then to kill him and eat him. They were picked up four days later. Two of the three survivors were found guilty of murder. A significant outcome of this case was that necessity was determined to be no defence against a charge of murder.
Roger Casement writing to a consular colleague in Lisbon on 3 August 1903 from Lake Mantumba in the Congo Free State said: “The people round here are all cannibals. You never saw such a weird looking lot in your life. There are also dwarfs (called Batwas) in the forest who are even worse cannibals than the taller human environment. They eat man flesh raw! It’s a fact.” Casement then added how assailants would “bring down a dwarf on the way home, for the marital cooking pot...The Dwarfs, as I say, dispense with cooking pots and eat and drink their human prey fresh cut on the battlefield while the blood is still warm and running. These are not fairy tales my dear Cowper but actual gruesome reality in the heart of this poor, benighted savage land.” (National Library of Ireland, MS 36,201/3)
Many instances of cannibalism by necessity were recorded during World War II. For example, during the 872-day Siege of Leningrad, reports of cannibalism began to appear in the winter of 1941–1942, after all birds, rats and pets were eaten by survivors. Leningrad police even formed a special division to combat cannibalism.[65][66] Following the Soviet victory at Stalingrad it was found that some German soldiers in the besieged city, cut off from supplies, resorted to cannibalism.[67]
Later, in February 1943, roughly 100,000 German soldiers were taken prisoner of war (POW). Almost all of them were sent to POW camps in Siberia or Central Asia where, due to being chronically underfed by their Soviet captors, many resorted to cannibalism. Fewer than 5,000 of the prisoners taken at Stalingrad survived captivity. The majority, however, died early in their imprisonment due to exposure or sickness brought on by conditions in the surrounded army before the surrender.[68]
In parts of Eastern Europe during World War II, there are anecdotal accounts of people finding human fingernails in sausage suggesting the foodstuffs were composed of human flesh.
Many written reports and testimonies collected by the Australian War Crimes Section of the Tokyo tribunal, and investigated by prosecutor William Webb (the future Judge-in-Chief), indicate that Japanese soldiers, in many parts of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, committed acts of cannibalism against Allied prisoners of war. According to historian Yuki Tanaka: "cannibalism was often a systematic activity conducted by whole squads and under the command of officers".[69]
In some cases, flesh was cut from living people. An Indian POW, Lance Naik Hatam Ali (later a citizen of Pakistan), testified that in New Guinea: "the Japanese started selecting prisoners and every day one prisoner was taken out and killed and eaten by the soldiers. I personally saw this happen and about 100 prisoners were eaten at this place by the Japanese. The remainder of us were taken to another spot 50 miles [80 km] away where 10 prisoners died of sickness. At this place, the Japanese again started selecting prisoners to eat. Those selected were taken to a hut where their flesh was cut from their bodies while they were alive and they were thrown into a ditch where they later died."[70]
Another well-documented case occurred in Chichijima in February 1945, when Japanese soldiers killed and consumed five American airmen. This case was investigated in 1947 in a war crimes trial, and of 30 Japanese soldiers prosecuted, five (Maj. Matoba, Gen. Tachibana, Adm. Mori, Capt. Yoshii, and Dr. Teraki) were found guilty and hanged.[71] In his book Flyboys: A True Story of Courage, James Bradley details several instances of cannibalism of World War II Allied prisoners by their Japanese captors. The author claims that this included not only ritual cannibalization of the livers of freshly-killed prisoners, but also the cannibalization-for-sustenance of living prisoners over the course of several days, amputating limbs only as needed to keep the meat fresh.[72]
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