Cannibalism

Cannibalism, or anthropophagy, is the ingestion of human flesh by humans. The idea of people eating parts of other people is something that has occurred wherever and whenever humans have formed societies. In traditional accounts cannibalism has emerged from peoples' history and cosmology, embedded in their myths and folklore. In all of these contexts, anthropophagy connotes moral turpitude.

The concept of cannibalism, its ethical encumbrances, and its cultural expression in history and myth are unquestionably universal. To be human is to think about the possibility of cannibalism. Anthropophagy is hard-wired into the architecture of human imagination. Cannibal giants, ogres, bogies, goblins, and other "frightening figures" populate the oral and literate traditions of most cultures, summoning images of grotesqueness, amorality, lawlessness, physical deformity, and exaggerated size. The Homeric tradition of the Greek Cyclops, the Scandinavian and Germanic folklore giants, or the Basque Tartaro find parallels in Asia, Africa, India, and Melanesia. In a fusion of the historical and the fabled, these pancultural incidences of cannibal indicate a remarkable similarity in the way meanings are assigned to cannibalism across the world.

Constructing History with Cannibals

Many cultural mythologies posit a prehistory that antedates the onset of acceptable mores, an epoch closed off from the beginnings of human settlement and social organization, when cannibalistic dynasties of giants prevailed. This common motif in cultural history indicates that cannibalism often symbolizes "others" that are less than fully human in some way. The imputation of anthropophagy draws a boundary between "us" and "them," the civilized and uncivilized, in a manner that depicts humans as emerging from a chaotic and bestial epoch dominated by a race of human-eating giants. These images of cannibal predecessors constitute a story that people tell themselves through myth to explain their past and present circumstances. So conventional are these patterns of thought across time and culture that we have come to understand cannibalism as the quintessential symbol of alterity, an entrenched metaphor of cultural xenophobia.

Constructing Fiction with Cannibals

These themes of primordial anthropophagy serve other functions as well. Most oral traditions contain such folktales and fables that are passed down through the generations. One thinks here of the Western stories such as "Jack and the Beanstalk," "Hansel and Gretel," and early versions of "Little Red Riding Hood." These are not just dormant figures inhabiting the fairytale world, they convey for caretakers a vision of control and are frequently used—like the Western bogeyman or little green monster—to coerce, frighten, and cajole children into obedience. The threat of cannibalization provides an externalized and uncontrollable projection of parenthood capable of punishing misdeeds. In this sense, cannibal figures share certain characteristics with imaginary companions and fictions such as the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, or Santa Claus, which, by contrast, project positive reward rather than negative punishment.

Cannibal representations are part of the universal stock of imaginative creations that foster obedience and conformity. Psychologists thus argue that anthropophagy is an archetype unaffected by cultural relativism and is, perhaps, a reflection of childhood psychodynamic processes. Flesh eating, from this perspective, may reflect child-engendered projections of parenthood and innate destruction fantasies.

Parallels between Western and non-Western fictional mediums illuminate the power cannibalism exerts on the human psyche. The commercial success of films such as Silence of the Lambs, Manhunter, and The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, along with the extensive media coverage of cannibalistic criminals such as Jeffrey Dahmer, Gary Heidnik, and Albert Fish, speaks volumes about the public's fascination with cannibalism. Moviegoers' sympathetic cheering for Hannibal Lecter is a way of suspending disbelief, of inverting societal norms in the sanctuary of a movie theater. An alternative reality of moral turpitude is assumed as escapism, as if the audience is saying, "Do your best to scare me because I know it isn't really true." As a metaphor for abandonment, cannibalism scandalizes, titillates, and spellbinds.

In the context of folklore, cannibalism allows a rich re-imagining of the boundaries between the human and nonhuman, civilized and barbarian, male and female, the utopian and real. As such anthropophagy promotes not only social control but also teaches lessons about history, morality, and identity.

Cannibalism emerges in these discourses of imaginative literature and sacred history as an "otherworldly" phenomenon that is unfavorable to human survival and thus likely to command fear and respect—hence the prevalence of cannibalistic motifs in nursery rhymes. These profound pancultural similarities have led some analysts to argue that the term "cannibalism" should be reserved only for the fantasy, both European and native, of the flesh-eating "other" rather than the practice of flesh-eating.

Constructing the Practice of Cannibalism

As soon as one starts to consider questions about which peoples have eaten human flesh, one finds controversy. The main issues are the colonial history of attributions of flesh-eating as a political form of domination; the problem of what is acceptable evidence in the context of scientific knowledge of the day; and the problems of interpreting oral, archaeological, and written evidence.

Although there is no accepted consensus on the various types of cannibalism encountered by researchers, the literature differentiates generally among a few types.

Survival cannibalism. This well-documented variant involves consumption of human flesh in emergency situations such as starvation. Some of the most famous cases are the 1846 Donner Party in the Sierra Nevada and the South American athletes stranded in the Andes in 1972, whose plight later became the subject of the film Alive (1993).

Endocannibalism. Endocannibalism is the consumption of human flesh from a member of one's own social group. The rationale for such behavior is usually that in consuming parts of the body, the person ingests the characteristics of the deceased; or through consumption there is a regeneration of life after death.

Exocannibalism. Exocannibalism is the consumption of flesh outside one's close social group—for example, eating one's enemy. It is usually associated with the perpetration of ultimate violence or again as a means of imbibing valued qualities of the victim. Reports of this practice suggest a high incidence of exocannibalism with headhunting and the display of skulls as war trophies. The majority of the controversies about the practice of cannibalism refer to endocannibalism and/or exocannibalism.

Evidence in the Twenty-First Century

In the popular Western imagination, knowledge and understanding of cannibals were shaped by early explorers, missionaries, colonial officers, travelers, and others. The most commonly cited accounts are those about the South American Tupinamba Indians; the Caribbean Cariba (the word cannibal comes from, and is a corruption of, carrib and Caliban )of St. Vincent, St. Croix, and Martinique; and the South American Aztecs. These accounts were followed by numerous reported incidences of cannibalism in Africa, Polynesia, Australia, and Papua New Guinea. These often dubious attributions of cannibalism were a form of "othering"—denigrating other people and marking a boundary between the good "us" and the bad "them." The "primitive savage" was thus constructed as beyond the pale of civilization. As Alan Rumsey has noted, "Cannibalism has been most fully explored in its Western manifestations, as an aspect of the legitimating ideology of colonialism, missionization, and other forms of cultural imperialism" (1999, p. 105). Books that charted the travels of early explorers during the 1800s and early 1900s invariably carry titles with the term cannibal.

How reliable are these early accounts, and what kinds of evidence for cannibal practices do they contain or rely upon? One of the most famous commentators and critics, has concluded, "I have been unable to uncover adequate documentation of cannibalism as a custom in any form for any society. . . . The idea of the 'other' as cannibals, rather than the act, is the universal phenomenon" (Arens 1979, p. 139).

Many historical texts are compromised by Western prejudices, so that cannibalism emerges more as colonial myth and cultural myopia than as scientifically attested truth. The accounts do not stand the test of modern scholarly scrutiny. Most anthropologists, however, tend to reject the argument that unless one has photographic or firsthand evidence for a practice, one cannot infer its existence at some period. Anthropologists and archaeologists rely on a host of contextual clues, regional patterns, and material-culture evidence when drawing conclusions about past social practices. What the anthropologist gains by way of notoriety may be lost by heated dispute with ethnic descendants who find the attribution of past cannibalism demeaning because of the connotations of barbarism.

The Main Disputes

Among the principal academic disputes about evidence for cannibalistic practices, two in particular stand out. First, archaeologist Tim White has conducted an analysis of 800-year-old skeletal bone fragments from an Anasazi site at Mancos in southwest Colorado. William Arens has responded that White was seduced by the Holy Grail of cannibalism and failed to consider other explanations for the kind of perimortal bone trauma he encountered.

Second, Daniel Gajdusek found a fatal nervous disease known as kuru among a small population of the Fore people in Papua New Guinea. The disease is related to Creutzfeldt-Jacob, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), and Gertmann-Stausler-Scheinker syndrome. Working with anthropologists, Gajdusek claimed the disease was caught through the mortuary practice of eating the brains from dead people in Fore. Arens questioned the photographic evidence provided by Gadjusek and others. He suggested other forms of transmission by which the disease may have been contracted. The result is clashing scholarly perspectives on the historical occurrence of cannibalism.

Social Explanations and Conditions for Cannibalism

The cross-cultural evidence for cannibalism among societies in Papua New Guinea, such as the Gimi, Hua, Daribi, and Bimin-Kuskusmin, suggests it is linked to the expression of cultural values about life, reproduction, and regeneration. Flesh is consumed as a form of life-generating food and as a symbolic means of reaffirming the meaning of existence. In other areas of Papua New Guinea, the same cultural themes are expressed through pig kills and exchanges. Cannibalism was a means of providing enduring continuity to group identity and of establishing the boundaries of the moral community. But it was equally a form of violence meted out to victims deemed amoral or evil, such as witches who brought death to other people.

A second line of research has suggested that this latter exocannibalism is an expression of hostility, violence, or domination toward a victim. In this interpretation, the perpetrator eats to inflict an ultimate indignity and thus an ultimate form of humiliation and domination. The archaeologist John Kantner, reviewing the evidence for reputed Anasazi cannibalism in the American Southwest, has concluded that with the gradual reduction in available resources and intensified competition, exocannibalism became a sociopolitical measure aimed at enforcing tribal inequities. However the evidence remains hotly disputed. Skeletal trauma is indexed by bone markings made by tools or scrapers, disarticulations, breakage patterns, and "pot polish," blackened bone fragments suggesting abrasions caused by the boiling of bones. Such data indicate intentional and targeted defleshing of bones for the extraction of marrow. Such bone markings are quite different from mortuary bones found elsewhere in the region. Controversy surrounds these findings because other causes for the same bone markings have been proffered, including, second reburial of remains and external interference with bones by animals and natural hazards. Other scholars are therefore reluctant to impute cannibalism in the absence of any direct observation of it.

Other analysts, looking at the famous Aztec materials, have suggested that such large-scale cannibalism is related both to hunger and the appreciation of the nutritional value of flesh. In other words, cannibalism is a response to material conditions of existence such as protein depreciation and dwindling livestock. In Mesoamerica these predisposing conditions ensure that cannibalism is given a ritual rationale so that themes of renewal are manifested through flesh-eating. The evidence of perimortem mutilation is overwhelming; the inference from these data to cannibalism and its rationales remains, however, contestable and less compelling.

Conclusion

From the available evidence, scholars have gleaned a seemingly reliable historical account of how cultures have constructed and used their concepts of cannibalism to provide a stereotype of the "other." Whatever technological advancements might yield in the way of more refined analysis of skeletal materials, proving that culture "X" or "Y" conducted cannibalism may not be quite the defining moment in human self-definition that some have thought it to be. The key insight is that in pancultural discourse and imaginative commerce, the human consumption of human flesh has served as a social narrative to enforce social control. Moreover, attributions of cannibalism remain a potent political tool wielded by those who pursue agendas of racial and ethnic domination.

The French philosopher Michel Montaigne long ago disabused society of the Western-centered notion that eating human flesh is somehow barbaric and exotic: "I consider it more barbarous to eat a man alive than eat him dead" (1958, p. 108). How one interprets cannibalism is thus always circumscribed and inflected by a culturally shaped morality.

For many researchers, then, the issue of whether cannibalism was ever a socially sanctioned practice is of secondary importance. Developments in experts' understanding of archaeological remains include the etiology and transmission of diseases like BSE, and interpretation of oral accounts and regional patterns that will likely point to some forms of cannibalism in some past cultures, even if such findings are tempered by contemporary cultural imperatives to avoid the appearance of stigmatization of the "other."

See also: Aztec Religion; Sacrifice

Bibliography

Anglo M. Man Eats Man. London: Jupiter Books, 1979.

Arens, William. The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophagy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.

Askenasy, Hans. Cannibalism: From Sacrifice to Survival. Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1994.

Cortés, Hernando. Five Letters 1519–1526, translated by J. Bayard Morris. New York: W. W. Norton, 1962.

Davies, Nigel. Human Sacrifice. New York: William Morrow & Co., 1981.

Goldman, Laurence R. Child's Play: Myth, Mimesis and Make-believe. Oxford: Berg, 1998b.

Goldman, Laurence R., ed. The Anthropology of Cannibalism. Wesport, CT: Bergin & Garvey 1999.

Harris, Marvin. Cannibals and Kings. New York: Random House, 1977.

Hogg, G. Cannibalism and Human Sacrifice. London: Pan, 1962.

Montaigne, Michel de. Essays, translated by J. M. Cohen. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1958.

Obeyesekere, G. "Review of the Anthropology of Cannibalism: (L. R. Goldman)." American Ethnologist 28, no. 1 (2001):238–240.

Pickering, M. "Cannibalism Quarrel." New Scientist 15 August 1992:11.

Rumsey, Alan. "The White Man As Cannibal in the New Guinea Highlands." In Laurence R. Goldman ed., The Anthropology of Cannibalism. Wesport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 1999.

Sagan, Eli. Cannibalism: Human Aggression and Cultural Form. New York: Harper & Row, 1974.

Sahagón, Bernardino de. Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain, 13 vols., translated by Charles E. Dibble and Arthur O. Anderson. Santa Fe, NM: The School of American Research, 1950–1982.

Sanday, Peggy Reeves. Divine Hunger: Cannibalism As a Cultural System. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

Turner, Christy G., II, and Jacqueline A. Turner. Man Corn: Cannibalism and Violence in the Prehistoric American Southwest. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.

Tuzin, D., and Paula Brown, eds. The Ethnography of Cannibalism. Washington, DC: Society for Psychological Anthropology, 1983.

LAURENCE R. GOLDMAN

Cannibalism

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The belief in the existence of man-eaters just beyond a culture’s boundary is a time-honored and cherished notion for many parts of the world. In what we call advanced societies, such as our own, cannibals are thought to inhabit the remaining mysterious distant fringes of civilization such as the highlands of New Guinea and the rain forests of the Amazon. There, the inhabitants with a more limited view of the world suspect cannibals in the next valley or around the bend of the river. How and why this imagery came into existence and continues to be so compelling for both the lay public and academics alike is as debatable as it is apparent.

No better example of the longstanding Western proclivity to label distant people as cannibalistic can be found than in the work of the fifth century BCE Greek traveler Herodotus, the father of history and anthropology. Not far from the limits of Hellenic culture in an area we now recognize as central Asia, he noted (in Herodotus: A New and Literal Version, 1879) that “beyond the desert Anthropophagi dwell, … the only people that eat human flesh” (pp. 243, 273.) With these characteristic remarks, the author of the first account of exotic peoples set the paradigm generally employed over the succeeding centuries: First, those who did not share Western culture, those both different and inferior, are the other ; and second, they were often labeled sight unseen as man-eaters.

This theme was repeated in some of the classic Roman texts and then later by medieval travel accounts of the then known world. Over time, many peoples, such as the Irish and the Scots, as well as the European Jews and North African Muslims, were cast by one or another obscure writer as consumers of human flesh. Eventually, the list of itinerant raconteurs included the famous Marco Polo, who in the late fourteenth century claimed to have traversed the Eurasian continent from Venice to China before residing there for a number of years.

Although the veracity of his account is now debated, what is significant is his report of unobserved cannibals on Jipangu (Japan) on the border of Kubla Khan’s Mongol empire. A copy of this text, which even then was popular, was later in the library of Christopher Columbus and also occupied his imagination as he sailed into the New World while erroneously assuming he was on the eastern border of the Old World. Believing that he was in the vicinity of Jipangu, the admiral also recorded an encounter with cannibals in what was actually the Caribbean, probably in the vicinity of Cuba. Thus, for the first time contact with the rumored man-eaters was made, and the word cannibal, a Spanish derivation of Carib, entered the lexicon to replace Anthrophagi. Although the suspected cannibals were then seen, the act of cannibalism continued to go unobserved. This new context necessitated a revision of the ideological paradigm, which now assumed that the custom was repressed by conquest. There were also more profound practical implications, for at the time those degenerate enough to eat their own kind could be enslaved. In subsequent eras the label legitimized conquest and colonization as Western nations came into contact with a host of far-flung would-be cannibals.

This assumption and powerful image of the other as cannibal remained a feature of Western ideology for some centuries until it was eventually challenged in The Man-Eating Myth (Arens 1979). A review of some of the literature on the most infamous reputed man-eaters from North America, Africa, and New Guinea led to the book’s conclusion that the idea of gustatory cannibalism— that is, an activity engaged in on a regular basis with social approval—could not be substantiated by the usual standards of academic inquiry.

The initial negative reaction to the conclusion, most explicit in a series of essays by cultural anthropologists (Brown and Tuzin 1983) has gradually lessened over time. Once the question whether it could be that so many, if not most, people of color were cannibals until contacted by white Europeans was explicitly framed for debate, it became intellectually and politically untenable in the postcolonial era to maintain what was formerly an implicit affirmative conclusion. There was also the eventual realization that the proposal did not rule out survival and ritual cannibalism. This new perspective, though, leads to related issues regarding how those implicated in this sort of activity are labeled, and then how to define ritual in a consistent manner.

As for the consumption of human flesh under dire conditions, it has been long recognized that this behavior is possible in any culture. This impression is substantiated by European shipwreck tales, as well as by the Donner Party incident when the party’s members survived on the remains of their compatriots while stranded in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains in 1846. In no instance are those implicated—the French, the English, and Americans—subsequently labeled as endo-cannibals, eaters of their own kind. Similarly, this behavior may have been characteristic of, for example, the Inuit or other Native Americans, as deduced from historical sources or archeological evidence, such as that reported in Billman, Lambert, and Leonard’s (2000) detailed article about the Mesa Verde region in the twelfth century. However, these groups are not stigmatized as cannibals by the general public. These contradictory impressions are objectively unacceptable.

The issue of ritual cannibalism is more complicated. Desiccated human body parts were sold as remedies for various human ailments by European and American apothecaries until the early twentieth century (Gordon-Grube 1988); some American food cultists advocate the consumption of the human placenta (Janszen 1980); and there is the use of human cadaver extracts in contemporary biomedicine, presumably to capture the strength of the deceased. These domestic customs may be considered bizarre, misguided, or even guided science, but they are never labeled ritual cannibalism. However, South American groups reported to consume the ashes of the dead for whatever reason are ipso facto deemed ritual cannibals. Again this situation is intellectually unacceptable and hints at cultural discrimination.

A recent consideration of the issue in Gananath Obeyesekere’s Cannibal Talk (2005) recommends that we reserve the term cannibalism for the irrational fear that the other wants to eat us and use the term anthropophagy to refer to the actual practice in ritual and survival contexts. Perhaps it would be simpler to conclude that there are no cannibals in the sense of how the situation was once subjectively viewed; alternately, from a more objective contemporary perspective, we could all be cannibals. What is more obvious is that the cannibal epithet, as leveled by one culture against another, is more common than the deed itself.

SEE ALSO Anthropology; Religion; Rituals; Warfare, Nuclear

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arens, W. 1979. The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophagy. New York: Oxford University Press.

Barker, Francis, Peter Hulme, and Margaret Iversen, eds. 1998. Cannibalism and the Colonial World. Cambridge, NJ: Cambridge University Press.

Billman, Brian R., Patricia M. Lambert, and L. B. Leonard. 2000. Cannibalism, Warfare, and Drought in the Mesa Verde Region During the Twelfth Century, A.D. American Antiquity 65: 145–178.

Brown, Paula, and Donald Tuzin, eds. 1983. The Ethnography of Cannibalism. Washington, DC: Society for Psychological Anthropology.

Gordon-Grube, Karen. 1988. Anthropophagy in Post-Renaissance Europe: The Tradition of Medicinal Cannibalism. American Anthropologist 90 (2): 405–409.

Janszen, Karen. 1980. Meat of Life. Science Digest (November–December): 78–81, 121.

Obeyesekere, Gananath. 2005. Cannibal Talk: The Man-Eating Myth and Human Sacrifice in the South Seas. Berkeley: University of California Press.

William Arens

cannibalism Attitudes have changed considerably since the early twentieth century, when Sir James Frazer could blithely ask, of far-flung ethnographic correspondents ensconced among the ‘natives’, ‘Do they eat their enemies or their friends?’ The inevitable result of the inquiry was the concept of a universe of customary man-eaters beyond the borders of civilized society eventually enshrined in anthropological texts as ‘endo’- or ‘exo’-cannibals, depending on the status of the victims, lending a scientific tone to the discussion. Today's post-modern perspective assumes such questions produce ‘pre-figured’ responses indicating more about those who pose them than about those who have become known as ‘The Other’ — the exotic objects of discussion. Thus, some believe no objective truth, as opposed to subjective cultural representations, can result from the discourse. In this context considering cannibalism has become a complicated task.

Initially it must be entertained, if not accepted, that travellers' accounts of strange lands with anthropophagic (man-eating) inhabitants should be discounted. Famous representatives of this genre, such as Herodotus and Marco Polo, as well as a host of minor peregrinators, never actually encountered the phenomenon in question. (Often they never even encountered the presumed anthropophagi.) Instead they relied upon the reports of one exotic people about the peculiar behaviour of others even more distant. Nonetheless, a template had been set for followers, including Columbus and his contemporaries, who subsequently also issued accounts on the fantastical inhabitants of the New World. (In the process they introduced the term ‘cannibal’, as a perversion of the word ‘Carib’). In addition to relying on expectations and unsubstantiated reports, this generation of explorers and Conquistadors had the added impetus to provide a legitimization for their activities, which often had sad consequences for the indigenes. Subsequent exemplars also inevitably came upon cannibals in Africa, South America, Asia, and the Pacific in the colonization process. In some instances, those who failed to have the encounter merely plagiarized the work of others so as not to be outshone.

In the twentieth century, anthropologists — newly-minted professional interpreters of the exotic — whose self-proclaimed mandate was to de-romanticize the experience by direct observation and objective interpretation of contemporary cultures, continued, despite its absence, to reinforce the cannibalism theme on the authority of previous visitors. The usual explanation for the lacuna was the recent cessation or secret practice of the deed, due to the impact of colonialism and/or missionary activity. The retention of this ethnographic tidbit, as so many others were abandoned, obviously has much to do with the discipline's need for the exotic. This peculiar state of affairs led to the suggestion of a cannibal mythology as a feature of Western cosmology. This does not suggest that those responsible for the vision, including anthropologists, were engaged in a conscious hoax as opposed to maintaining a long-standing cultural projection. (Although their errors are understandable, it could be argued that the discipline had a greater responsibility to be more circumspect in its deliberations on this matter than others.) Nor does the argument imply that cannibalism has never been a feature of some societies; rather that such a conclusion is not supported by evidence. The best way to comprehend the situation in all its complexities invites a consideration of a more recent cannibal belief complex involving a number of academic disciplines, including medicine.

In 1957, while visiting Papua New Guinea, D. Carleton Gajdusek, a medical researcher, learned of an epidemic called kuru, savaging the highland area, principally among the Fore people. After arduous initial investigations, his preliminary results allowed for an expanded research team including cultural anthropologists. Of more immediate importance, laboratory results indicated that the disease could be transmitted — via the distillation of human victims' brain tissue — to chimpanzees. A reasonable extrapolation of this fact was that the illness had been transmitted among humans in New Guinea in some unknown fashion. A review of the literature indicates that the pre-figured notion of cannibalism entered into the discussion as the suspected agent of kuru transmission, first tentatively, and then with greater authority; the authors, including the anthropologists, began to cite each others' remarks in their publications until cannibalism eventually emerged as a scientific fact. The sensational nature of the claim soon enshrined it in the secondary and popular literature. However, none of the parties intimately involved had ever observed the deed, as opposed to learning of it from previous accounts. The inability to document the activity was explained as usual in terms of the cessation of the practice, or its continued secret occurrence. Thus, a common assertion about an exotic people was incorporated into an otherwise rational scientific discourse.

The recent concern over the spread of Creutzfeld–Jacob disease (a variant of kuru) in Europe provides an instructive example of how the matter is envisioned for ‘civilized’ populations. The implication of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) in this instance suggests that the dietary habits of the Fore people, which included the consumption of undercooked pork, including brain tissue, should now be given greater consideration in the transmission of kuru. Customary funeral practices, which involved direct contact with the deceased's brain tissue, and institutionalized male homosexuality, also deserve greater appreciation as a disease vector, since they are well-documented activities, as opposed to cannibalism, which was merely assumed.

In sum, it no longer appears reasonable to assume the anthropophagic nature of others in the sense that they have been wholesale consumers of human flesh. This assertion does not deny some cross-cultural variation on the theme. For example, it has been reported on good authority that inhabitants of South America ritually consume the bone-ash of the departed. Yet, similar bodily substances were sold in European and American apothecaries until the beginning of the twentieth century and continue to be used today in some forms for their assumed medicinal qualities. The human use of the human body in all these instances raises interesting questions about the distinction between science and ritual.

W. Arens

Bibliography

Arens, W. (1979). The man-eating myth. Oxford University Press, New York.
Gajdusek, D. C. (1977). Unconventional viruses and the origin and disappearance of kuru. Science, 197, 943–60.

cannibalism [Span. caníbal, referring to the Carib], eating of human flesh by other humans. The charge of cannibalism is a common insult, and it is likely that some alleged cannibal groups have merely been victims of popular fear and misrepresentation. Nevertheless, archaeological research suggests that ancient societies did practice cannibalism, and it has been observed in Africa, North and South America, the South Pacific islands, and the West Indies. Widespread cannibalism is usually not found in state-level societies, which have the means to tax and control surplus labor. Nevertheless, one of the most famous cases of cannibalism is that of the Aztecs, who sacrificed their prisoners of war and undoubtedly ate some of them. According to available evidence, most authorities consider the partaking of human flesh almost always to be a ritual practice. A minority of anthropologists, however, believe cannibalism emerged as a cultural response to chronic protein shortages. In modern Western society, cannibalism is commited only by the deranged or by people who otherwise face death from starvation (see Donner Party ). In contrast, various traditional cultures are known to have encouraged their members to eat part of their kinsmen's corpses out of respect for the deceased in a practice known as endocannibalism. For example, Foré women of New Guinea, who dispose of the dead, ritually ate their deceased relatives' brains. Some anthropologists believe that head-hunting evolved from cannibalism. Among a few peoples the head of the enemy is preserved and the rest of the body or selected parts of it are eaten; this may represent a connecting link between cannibalism and head-hunting. The term cannibalism is also used in zoology to describe species who prey upon their own kind, such as lions, crabs, ants, and some kinds of fish.

Bibliography: See P. Brown and D. Tuzin, ed., The Ethnography of Cannibalism (1983); A. W. B. Simpson, Cannibalism and the Common Law (1984).

95. Cannibalism

1. Alive account of cannibalism among air crash survivors. [Am. Lit.: Alive ]
2. Antiphates chieftain of Laestrygones, man-eating giants of Italy. [Gk. Lit.: Odyssey ; Rom. Lit.: Metamorphoses ]
3. Beane, Sawney highwayman who fed his gang on victims’ flesh. [Br. Culture: Misc.]
4. black giants kill, roast, and devour Sindbad’s companions. [Arab. Lit.: Arabian Nights in Magill II, 50]
5. Caliban his name is anagram of cannibal. [Br. Lit.: The Tempest ]
6. Clymenus eats child who is product of incestuous union with daughter Harpalyce. [Gk. Myth.: Howe, 114]
7. Cronos swallowed his children at birth; they lived again when he was forced by Zeus to disgorge them. [Gk. Myth.: EB (1963) VI, 747]
8. Donner Party of 89 emigrants to California, 47 survive by eating others (1846-1847). [Am. Hist.: EB, III: 623]
9. Hansel and Gretel fattened up for child-eating witch. [Ger. Fairy Tale: Grimm, 56]
10. Laestrygones man-eating giants encountered by Odysseus. [Gk. Lit.: Odyssey ]
11. Lamia female spirit in serpent form; devours children. [Gk. Myth.: Zimmerman, 146; Br. Lit.: “Lamia” in Benét, 563]
12. Lycaon turned to wolf for cannibalistic activities; whence, lycanthropy. [Gk. Myth.: Espy, 37]
13. Modest Proposal, A Swift’s satire suggesting that children of the poor be used as food for the rich (1729). [Br. Lit.: “A Modest Proposal” in Harvey, 793]
14. Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, The for four days, survivors feed on Parker’s flesh. [Am. Lit.: Poe, “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym” in Magill I, 640–643]
15. Pelops cut up and served as meal to gods. [Gk. Myth.: Brewer Dictionary, 817]
16. Tereus wife Procne murders son Itys and serves him to Tereus. [Gk. Myth.: Howe, 144]
17. Thyestean banquet banquet where Atreus serves Thyestes’ sons to him as food. [Gk. Myth.: Brewer Dictionary, 1081]
18. Ugolino when his children die of starvation in prison, he devours them. [Ital. Poetry: Inferno ]

cannibalism The eating by an animal of members of its own species. It is known to occur in nearly 140 species, most commonly among invertebrates, and often (but not always) in response to stress or to a reduction in the availability of other food.

cannibalism The eating by an animal of members of its own species. It is known to occur in nearly 140 species, most commonly among invertebrates, and often (but not always) in response to stress or a reduction in the availability of other food.

67. Cannibalism

androphagy

the consumption of human flesh; cannibalism. —androphagous, adj.

anthropophagism, anthropophagy

the consumption of human flesh; cannibalism. —anthropophagous, adj.