Cannibalism

Cannibalism in Brazil in 1557 as described by Hans Staden.

Cannibalism is the act or practice of eating members of one's own species and usually refers to humans eating other humans (sometimes called anthropophagy). Cannibalism has been attributed to many different tribes and ethnicities in the past, but the degree to which it has actually occurred and been socially sanctioned is an extremely controversial topic in anthropology, owing to the severe taboo against its practice in most cultures. Some anthropologists argue that cannibalism has been almost non-existent and view claims of cannibalism with extreme skepticism, while others argue that the practice was common in pre-state societies.

The word cannibal comes from Spanish Canibal (used first in plural Canibales), derived from Caniba, Columbus's name for the Carib or Galibi people. Columbus originally assumed the natives of Cuba were subjects of the Great Khan of China or 'Kannibals'. Prepared to meet the Great Khan, he had aboard Arabic and Hebrew speakers to translate. Then thinking he heard Caniba or Canima, Columbus thought that these were the dog-headed men (cane-bal) described in Mandeville . Others claim that "Cannibal" meant "valiant man" in the language of the Caribs . Richard Hakluyt's Voyages introduced the word to English. Shakespeare transposed it, anagram-fashion, to name his monster servant in The Tempest 'Caliban'. The Caribs called themselves Kallinago, which may have meant 'valiant' .

Non-Human Cannibalism

While not a widespread phenomenon in nature, cannibalism is nonetheless a common practice for some species. The female red-back spider, black widow spider, praying mantis, and scorpion sometimes eat the male after mating (though the frequency of this is often overstated). For other organisms, cannibalism has less to do with sex than relative sizes. Larger octopus preying upon smaller ones is commonly observed in the wild, and the same can be said for certain toads, fish, red-backed salamanders, crocodiles, and tarantulas. It is known that rabbits, mice, rats, or hamsters will eat their young if their nest is repeatedly threatened by predators. In some species adult males are known to kill and sometimes eat young of their species to whom they are not closely related — famously, the chimpanzees observed by Dr. Jane Goodall. This is believed to be a mechanism of increasing the portion of a colony's energy and food expenditure that will then be available to the cannibal's own offspring.

Cannibalistic behavior sometimes develops in animals that do not engage in such activity in the wild. For instance, a domestic sow may eat her newborn young while in captivity, but similar behavior has not been observed in the wild. Another cause for cannibalism in captivity is territoriality; species with large territories in the wild may display cannibal behaviors in confinement with others. For example, while tarantulas infrequently cannibalize in the wild, they do so much more commonly in captivity. During the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, a number of animals at the Belgrade Zoo, including a tigress and two she-wolves were reported to be so traumatized that they ate their offspring .

Human Cannibalism

Throughout history there has always been rumors, legends and accusations of cannibalism among societies. Whether propaganda or historical fact, man seems obsessed with the idea of ‘primitive’ societies and their ‘savage’ customs. In antiquity, Greek reports of anthropophagy were related to distant, non-Hellenic barbarians, or else relegated in myth to the 'primitive' chthonic world that preceded the coming of the Olympian gods. Cannibalism was reported in Mexico, the flower wars of the Aztec Empire being considered as the most massive manifestation of cannibalism, but the Aztec accounts, written after the conquest, reported that human flesh was considered by itself to be of no value, and usually thrown away and replaced with turkey. There are only two Aztec accounts on this subject: one comes from the Ramirez codex, and the most elaborated account on this subject comes from Juan Bautista de Pomar, the grandson of Netzahualcoyotl, tlatoani of Texcoco. The accounts differ little. Juan Bautista wrote that after the sacrifice, the Aztec warriors received the body of the victim, boiled it to separate the flesh from the bones, then would cut the meat in very little pieces, and send them to important people, even from other towns; the recipient would rarely eat the meat, since they considered it an honor, but the meat had no value by itself. In exchange, the warrior would get jewels, decorated blankets, precious feathers and slaves; the purpose was to encourage successful warriors. There were only two ceremonies a year where war captives were sacrificed. Although the Aztec empire has been called "The Cannibal Kingdom", there is no evidence in support of it being a widespread custom. Ironically, the Aztecs believed that there were man-eating tribes in the south of Mexico; the only illustration known showing an act of cannibalism shows an Aztec being eaten by a tribe from the south (Florentine Codex).

The Korowai tribe of southeastern Papua is one of the last surviving tribes in the world said to engage in cannibalism. It is also reported by some that African traditional healers sometimes use the body parts of children in their medicine. However this is undocumented and believed by most anthropologists to be an untrue rumor. See The Cannibalism Debate.

Stories of harrowing survival and necessity involving cannibalism are equally numerous throughout history. In the Bible, cannibalism is described as taking place during the siege of Samaria. . During the siege that resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem by Rome in 70C.E., Flavius Josephus reports that 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. In Egypt during a famine caused by the failure of the Nile to flood for eight years (AD 1064-1072), incidents of cannibalism were reported, as they were in Europe during the Great Famine of 1315-1317. However, many historians have since denied these reports as fanciful and ambiguous.

The survivors of the sinking of the French ship Medusa in 1816 resorted to cannibalism after four days adrift on a raft. After the sinking of the Whaleship 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 .

During the 1870s, in the U.S. state of Colorado, a man named Alferd Packer was accused of killing and eating his traveling companions. He was later released due to a legal technicality, and maintained that he was innocent of the murders throughout his life. However, modern forensic evidence, unavailable during Packer's lifetime, indicates that he did indeed murder and/or eat several of his companions.

The case of R v. Dudley and Stephens (1884) 14 QBD 273 (QB) is an English case which is said to be one of the origins of the defense of necessity in modern common law. The case dealt with four crewmembers of an English yacht that was cast away in a storm some 1600 miles from the Cape of Good Hope. After several days one of the crew fell unconscious due to a combination of famine and drinking seawater. The others (one objecting) decided then to kill him and eat him. They were picked up four days later. The fact that not everyone had agreed to draw lots contravened The Custom of the Sea and was held to be murder. At the trial was the first recorded use of the defense of necessity.

Famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera claimed in his autobiography that during a period in 1904, he and his companions ate "nothing but cadavers" purchased from the local morgue. Rivera was fully aware of the shock value of this tale. Rivera claims that he thought cannibalism a way of the future, remarking, "I believe that when man evolves a civilization higher than the mechanized but still primitive one he has now, the eating of human flesh will be sanctioned. For then man will have thrown off all of his superstitions and irrational taboos." Readers may be reminded of the savage satire of Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal.

The dehumanizing situations of war, that push both civilians and soldiers to the very limit of the survival, has been apparently responsible for numerous incidents of cannibalism. Lowell Thomas records the cannibalization of some of the surviving crewmembers of the Dumaru after the ship exploded and sank during the First World War . Documentary and forensic evidence supports eyewitness accounts of cannibalism by Japanese troops during World War II. This practice was resorted to when food ran out, even with Japanese soldiers killing and eating each other when enemy civilians were not available. In other cases, enemy soldiers were executed and then dissected. A well-documented case occurred in Chichi Jima 1945, when the Japanese soldiers killed, rationed and ate eight downed American airmen. (Ninth downed, Lt.JG George H. Bush, was picked by submarine USS Finback, and avoided the fate.) This case was investigated in a 1947 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 .

Cannibalism was reported by at least one reliable witness, the journalist Neil Davis, during the South East Asian wars of the 1960s and 1970s. Davis reported that Khmer (Cambodian) troops ritually ate portions of the slain enemy, typically the liver. However he, and many refugees, also report that cannibalism was practiced non-ritually when there was no food to be found. This usually occurred when towns and villages were under Khmer Rouge control, and food was strictly rationed, leading to widespread starvation. Ironically, any civilian caught participating in cannibalism would have been immediately executed .

Médecins Sans Frontières, the international medical charity, supplied photographic and other documentary evidence of ritualized cannibal feasts among the participants in Liberia's internecine strife in the 1980s to representatives of Amnesty International who were on a fact-finding mission to the neighboring state of Guinea. However, Amnesty International declined to publicize this material, the Secretary-General of the organization, Pierre Sane, stating at the time in an internal communication that "what they do with the bodies after human rights violations are committed is not part of our mandate or concern". Cannibalism has been reported in several recent African conflicts, including the Second Congo War, and the civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone, subsequently verified in video documentaries by Journeyman Pictures of London. Typically, this is apparently done in desperation, as during peacetime cannibalism is much less frequent. Even so, it is sometimes directed at certain groups believed to be relatively helpless, such as Congo Pygmies. It has been reported by defectors and refugees that, at the height of the famine in the 1990's, cannibalism was sometimes practiced in North Korea .

One of the most famous examples of cannibalism as a necessity, partially due to the 1993 movie Alive that dramatized the true events, is that of the Uruguayan rugby team that was stranded in the high Andes for weeks by a plane crash. After several weeks of starvation and struggle for survival, the numerous survivors decided to eat the frozen bodies of the deceased in order to survive. They were rescued over two months later. See Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571.

Cannibalism in popular culture

Some examples of cannibalism in popular culture:

• Classical mythology:
  • Thyestes
  • Tereus
• William Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, in which Tamora is unknowingly served a pie made from the remains of her two sons.
• Herman Melville's Typee, a semi-factual account of Melville's voyage to the Pacific Island of Nuku Hiva, where he spent several weeks living among the island's cannibal inhabitants, after which he fled the island fearing to be eaten.
• H. G. Wells's The Time Machine, an 1896 science fiction novel features cannibalism by the more advanced species, the Morlocks, as a means of survival.
• Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein. Among (non-human) Martians, eating one's dead friends is an act of great respect. Some humans adopt the practice.
• In Soylent Green, a 1973 science fiction film starring Charlton Heston, Edward G. Robinson, and Joseph Cotten, Soylent Green is the processed remains of corpses rendered into small green crackers.
• Hannibal Lecter, a fictional character created by Thomas Harris in the 1983 novel Red Dragon, as well as Harris's 1992 The Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal. The character and his cannibalistic acts were made even more famous when adapted to film, though the original Red Dragon adaptation, Manhunter, never states or implies Lecter's cannibalism.
• Survivor Type, a short story in Stephen King's 1985 collection Skeleton Crew. The story follows a shipwreck victim stranded on a remote island, driven to eat his own body parts to survive.
• Fannie Flagg's novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, in which investigators are unknowingly fed the barbecued ribs of a man whose murder they are investigating.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Encyclopædia Britannica 2005 edition.

External links

• The Cannibalism Paradigm: Assessing Contact Period Ethnohistorical Discourse, by James Q. Jacobs. A critical, academic review of Mesoamerican cannibalism claims.
• BBC article about German cannibalism case
• In Defence of Cannibalism. 1982 essay by philosopher Richard Routley which examines whether and under what circumstances (e.g. eating those who died from natural causes) cannibalism might be morally acceptable.
• Harry J. Brown, 'Hans Staden among the Tupinambas.'
• Markman Ellis, "Crusoe, cannibalism and empire." Robinson Crusoe's fearful ruminations on cannibals, and Capt. Cook's reports of Maori cannibalism, which were convincing to many 18th and 19th century Europeans, though not to all modern anthropologists, set into the context of colonial empire-building.
• Video clip showing reports of cannibalism in North Korea
• History and ethical considerations of cannibalism
• Lyrics and English translation of Mein Teil, the Rammstein song about the Meiwes incident
• All about Cannibalism: The Ancient Taboo in Modern Times (Cannibalism Psychology) at CrimeLibrary.com
• The Straight Dope Notes supporting routine cannibalism as myth
• SongFacts.com pages for "Stranded In The Jungle" and "Timothy"

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