in 1557 as alleged by Hans Staden .]]
(from "to consume") is the act or practice of Human s consuming other humans. In Zoology , the term cannibalism is extended to refer to any Species consuming members of its own kind.
Among humans it has been practised by various tribal groups in the past in the Amazon Basin ,1 North America ,2 Africa ,3 Fiji , Australia ,4 New Zealand ,5 Solomon Islands , New Caledonia ,6 and New Guinea ,7 usually in rituals connected to Tribal Warfare . Fiji was once known as the 'Cannibal Isles'. The Chaco Canyon ruins of the Anasazi culture have been interpreted by some archaeologists as containing evidence of ritual cannibalism.
Care should be taken to distinguish among ritual cannibalism (sanctioned by a Cultural Norm ) from cannibalism by necessity occurring in extreme situations of Famine , and cannibalism by Mentally Disturbed people. There are fundamentally two kinds of cannibalistic social behaviour; Endocannibalism and Exocannibalism .
The term originated from Christopher Colombus' interpretation of the word ' Carib ' , which was the name of the first indigenous people he found in the Americas, as he believed that they were man-eaters. Richard Hakluyt 's ''Voyages'' introduced the word to English and Shakespeare transposed it, in an anagram-fashion, to name his monster servant in '' The Tempest '' ' Caliban' . {Link without Title}
and Lithuania 1571 ]]
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 . New research points to the fact that early man may have practised cannibalism. Genetic markers commonly found in modern humans all over the world could be evidence that our earliest ancestors were cannibals, according to new research. Scientists suggest that today some people carry a gene that evolved as protection against Brain Diseases that can be spread by consuming human flesh.8
The Carib tribe 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.
According to a decree by Queen Isabella Of Castile and also later under British colonial rule, Slavery was considered to be illegal unless the people involved were so depraved that their conditions as slaves would be better than as free men. This legal requirement may have led to conquerors exaggerating the extent of cannibalistic practices, or inventing them altogether, as demonstrations of cannibalistic tendencies were considered evidence of such depravity.Brief history of cannibal controversies; David F. Salisbury, August 15, 2001
The Korowai tribe of southeastern Papua could be one of the last surviving tribes in the world engaging in cannibalism.
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 disease Kuru . It is often believed to be well-documented, although no eyewitnesses have ever been at hand. Some scholars argue that although post-mortem 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. Anthropophagy .
- In Germany some experts like Emil Carthaus and Dr. Bruno Bernhard found 1,891 signs of cannibalism in the Caves at the Hönne (BC 1000 - 700).
- Cannibalism is reported in the during the siege of Jerusalem by Rome in 70AD.
- Cannibalism was documented in Egypt during a famine caused by the failure of the Nile to flood for eight years (BC 1064-1073).
- St. Jerome , in his letter '' Against Jovinianus '', tells of meeting members of a British tribe, the Atticoti , while traveling in Gaul . According to Jerome, the Britons claimed that they enjoyed eating "the buttocks of the shepherds and the breasts of their women" as a delicacy (ca. 360 AD). In 2001, archaeologists at the University of Bristol found evidence of Iron Age cannibalism in Gloucestershire. Cannibalistic Celts discovered in South Gloucestershire 7 March 2001
- Reports of cannibalism were recorded during the First Crusade , as Crusaders reportedly fed on the bodies of their dead opponents following the capture of the Arab town of Ma'arrat Al-Numan . 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. (Amin Maalouf, The Crusades through Arab Eyes. Schocken, 1989, ISBN 0-8052-0898-4).
- In Europe during the Great Famine Of 1315–1317 , at a time when Dante was writing one of the most significant pieces of literature in western history and the Renaissance was just beginning, there were widespread reports of cannibalism throughout Europe. However, many historians have since dismissed these reports as fanciful and ambiguous. The ''canto'' 33 of Dante's Inferno ambiguously refers to Ugolino Della Gherardesca eating his own sons while starving in prison.
- Cannibalism was reported in , 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, then they boiled it to separate the flesh from the bones, then they 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 honour, 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 its being a widespread custom.
- 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 ). In the Siege Of Tenochtitlan , there was a severe hunger in the city; people reportedly ate lizards, grass, insects, and mud from the lake, but there are no reports on cannibalism of the dead bodies.
- The friar 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.)
- In the Middle Ages, "thousands of , NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Autumn, 1994), pp. 24-51. doi:10.2307/1345912.
- In the Dutch '' Rampjaar '' (disaster year) of 1672 , when France and England attacked the republic during the Franco-Dutch War / Third Anglo-Dutch War , Johan De Witt (a significant Dutch Political Figure ) was killed by a shot in the neck; his naked body was hung and mutilated and the heart was carved out to be exhibited. His brother was shot, stabbed, Eviscerate d alive, hanged naked, brained and partly eaten.
- Howard Zinn describes cannibalism by early Jamestown settlers in his book ''A'' ''People's History of the United States''.
- An event occurring in the western New York territory ("Seneca Country") U.S.A., during 1687 was later described in this letter sent to France: “On the 13th (of July) about four o’clock in the afternoon, having passed through two dangerous defiles (narrow gorges), we arrived at the third where we were vigorously attacked by 800 Senecas, 200 of whom fired, wishing to attack our rear whilst the remainder of their force would attack our front, but the resistance they met produced such a great consternation that they soon resolved to fly. All our troops were so overpowered by the extreme heat and the long journey we had made that we were obliged to bivouac (camp) on the field until the morrow. We witnessed the painful Sight of the usual cruelties of the savages who cut the dead into quarters, as in slaughter houses, in order to put them into the pot (dinner); the greater number were opened while still warm that their blood might be drank. our rascally ''outaouais'' (Ottawa Indians) distinguished themselves particularly by these barbarities and by their poltroonery (cowardice), for they withdrew from the combat;..." -- Canadian Governor, the Marquis De Denonville .
- In '', a Satirical Pamphlet in which he proposed that poor Irish families sell their children to be eaten, thereby earning income for the family. It was written as an attack on the indifference of landlords to the state of their tenants and on the political economists with their calculations on the schemes to raise income.
- In New Zealand in 1809 , 66 passengers and crew of the ship The Boyd were killed and eaten by Maori on the Whangaroa peninsula, Northland. This was utu (revenge) for the whipping of a Maori who refused to work while traveling on the ship from Australia. This remains the bloodiest mass-murder in New Zealand history, and perhaps the largest death-toll from a cannibalistic act in modern times. See the Boyd Massacre .
- 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 .
- The Acadian Recorder (a newspaper published out of Halifax , Nova Scotia in the early 1800s) published an article in its May 27, 1826, issue telling of the wreck of the ship 'Francis Mary', en route from New Brunswick to Liverpool, England, with a load of timber. The article describes how the survivors sustained themselves by eating those who perished.''The Acadian Recorder'', Saturday, May 27, 1826
- Sir John Franklin 's lost polar expedition and the Donner Party are other examples of human cannibalism from the 1840s.
- 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, the Mignonette , which were 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 the famine and drinking sea-water. 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.
- In the 1870s, in the U.S. state of Colorado , a man named Alferd Packer was accused of killing and eating his travelling companions. He served fourteen years in prison before being paroled, and throughout his life maintained that he was innocent of the murders. The story of Alfred Packer was satirically told in the Trey Parker comedy/horror/musical film, '' Cannibal! The Musical '', released in 1996 by Troma Studios. The main food court at the University Of Colorado At Boulder is named the Alferd Packer Grill.
soldiers displaying the skins of the
- During the 1930s, multiple acts of cannibalism were reported from the Ukraine during the Holodomor .9
- A well-documented case occurred in Chichijima in 1945, when Japanese soldiers killed and consumed eight downed 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.
- During his service in World War II, John F. Kennedy believed that a boy from the Solomon Islands , bragged of eating a Japanese soldier. Native islanders also in their historical culture also practised Headhunting . PT 109 by Donovan (book)
- Prior to 1931, '' New York Times '' reporter William Buehler Seabrook , in the interests of research, obtained from a hospital intern at the Sorbonne a chunk of human meat from the body of a healthy human killed by accident, and cooked and ate it. He reported that, "It was like good, fully developed veal, not young, but not yet beef. It was very definitely like that, and it was not like any other meat I had ever tasted. It was so nearly like good, fully developed veal that I think no person with a palate of ordinary, normal sensitiveness could distinguish it from veal. It was mild, good meat with no other sharply defined or highly characteristic taste such as for instance, goat, high game, and pork have. The steak was slightly tougher than prime veal, a little stringy, but not too tough or stringy to be agreeably edible. The roast, from which I cut and ate a central slice, was tender, and in color, texture, smell as well as taste, strengthened my certainty that of all the meats we habitually know, veal is the one meat to which this meat is accurately comparable."William Bueller Seabrook. ''Jungle Ways'' London, Bombay, Sydney: George G. Harrap and Company, 1931
- While stating that nearly all areas of outbreaks in Kentucky supposedly due to eating squirrel brains, the author, Burkhard Bilger, suggests that they may instead be due to possible continuing practices of mortuary cannibalism in the area; however, it should be noted that rumors of mortuary cannibalism in twenty-first century Appalachia are still considered speculation.
- References to cannibalizing the enemy has also been seen in poetry written when China was repressed in the Song Dynasty , though the cannibalizing sounds more like poetic symbolism to express the hatred towards the enemy. (See '' Man Jiang Hong '') The Chinese hate-cannibalism was reported during World War II also. (Key Ray Chong:Cannibalism in China, 1990)
- In his book '''', 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.
- in '' The Gulag Archipelago '', Alexander Solzhenitsyn described cannibalism as rife among Soviet prisoners in German Prisoner Of War camps.
- Cannibalism was reported by the journalist Neil Davis during the South East Asian wars of the 1960s and 1970s. Davis reported that Cambodia n troops ritually ate portions of the slain enemy, typically the Liver . However he, and many refugees, also report that cannibalism was practised 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. Any civilian caught participating in cannibalism would have been immediately executed.Tim Bowden. ''One Crowded Hour''. ISBN 0-00-217496-0
- Cannibalism has been reported in several recent Africa n conflicts, including the Second Congo War , and the civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone . 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 is also reported by some that Witch Doctor s sometimes use the body parts of children in their medicine. In the 1970s the Uganda n dictator Idi Amin was reputed to practise cannibalism.
- On tells the story of this ordeal.
- It has been reported by defectors and refugees that, at the height of the famine in 1996, cannibalism was sometimes practised in North Korea .
- Médecins Sans Frontières , the international medical charity, supplied photographic and other documentary evidence of ritualised 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 neighbouring state of Guinea . However, Amnesty International declined to publicise this material; the Secretary-General of the organization, Pierre Sane , said 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". The existence of cannibalism on a wide scale in Liberia was subsequently verified in video documentaries by Journeyman Pictures of London .
- In March 2001 in Germany, Armin Meiwes posted an Internet ad asking for "a well built 18 to 30 year old to be slaughtered and consumed". The ad was answered by Jürgen Armando Brandes. After killing and eating Brandes, Meiwes was convicted of Manslaughter and later, murder. The song "Mein Teil" by Rammstein is based of this.
- In September 2006, Australian television crews from '' 60 Minutes '' and '' Today Tonight '' attempted to rescue a six-year-old boy who they believed would be ritually cannibalised by his tribe, the Korowai , from Papua, Indonesia .
- On January 13 , 2007 , Danish artist Marco Evaristti hosted a dinner party for his most intimate friends. The main meal was Agnolotti pasta, on which was topped a meatball made with the artist's Own Fat , removed earlier in the year in a Liposuction operation '' Artist Cooks meal in own Body Fat '', January 13, 2007.
- On September 4th 2007 Serbian police stated that they have identified 26-years-old Danijel Jakupek Zak from Serbian village Novi Banovci. He killed a 5 year old boy and his uncle (26), who was Jakupek's schoolmate and also the son of Jakupek's school teacher. Police reported that Jakupek rehearsed several satanic/cannibalistic acts on approximately 20 cats which were buried in his backyard and that 10 live cats were also found in his apartment, probably awaiting future experiments. He stated that he had to try the practise on a human being. As stated, he obviously enjoyed the massacre of his alleged victims, drank their blood and even tried their meat. In his apartment police found a stack of cannibalistic and satanic literature. He also claimed that in the prosecution of his two victims "HE entered his body". Jakupek was questioned regarding the aforementioned unnamed person who only goes by the name "HE" and he replied that "HE" is a "superior mighty lord" but not pointing out any specific icon. Neighbours described him as being very strange, having a "sparkly look" and he obviously indicated that he is mentally distorted. '' {Link without Title} ''
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