Cannibalism

Cannibalism, Brazil. Engraving by Theodor de Bry for Hans Staden's account of his 1557 captivity.

Cannibalism | Five hundred years ago, Europeans began to explore the rest of the world with their sailing ships. They discovered many lands and people, and the people that they discovered had many new customs. Because the Europeans knew only their own culture, most of them thought that these newly discovered peoples and their cultures and customs were disgusting or wrong. One of the customs that most shocked the Europeans was that of cannibalism or people eating other people.

There seem to be three kinds of cannibalism. There is the kind that happens when a group of people is isolated from other people and has no other source of food. One example was survivors of a plane crash high in the mountains who were not found for several weeks. It can also happen with people in a life raft at sea after a shipwreck. In these situations, as people die of starvation, their bodies are eaten by those who are still alive.

The spread of human cannibalism (anthropophagy) in the late 19th century.

A second kind of cannibalism occurs when the bodies or parts of the bodies of friends or relatives are eaten. Often only a particular part- the heart of bones- is eaten. This part is often burned and then ground up, and the ashes are then used in a drink. This is usually cannibalism of a special kind. This kind of cannibalism obviously has no nutritional value. The idea behind it seems to be to have some sort of continuity with the dead. Some peoples believe that it is possible to acquire the bravery or intelligence of dead people by a ceremonial eating of a small part of their bodies.

The third kind of cannibalism is the killing and eating of enemies for food. This is what most people think of when they think of cannibalism. Nevertheless, at least one anthropologist believes that there has never been cannibalism of this kind. According to this anthropologist, the reports of cannibalism arise because one tribe of people describes another tribe as evil. It is always someone else who is a cannibal, not the tribe that is speaking. There have been a number of supposedly eye-witness reports of cannibalism. However, people who do not believe that there has ever been any kind of cannibalism say that some reason can be found to doubt these reports.

Cannibalism which took place in Russia and Lithuania during the famine of 1571

It is probably quite true that many reports of cannibalism were exaggerated or false. Undoubtedly, in the early days of Europeans exploration, many explorers simply called all dark-skinned peoples “cannibals”. Thinking of these people as cannibals gave the Europeans an excuse for the bad way that they treated many of these people by killing or enslaving them.

In spite of this, many people believe that cannibalism existed under certain situations. A number of seemingly reliable witnesses in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (1500-1700) have reported it. It was probably not common, however, because those people who practice cannibalism do not often capture prisoners in a war, and it was these prisoners who were the usual victims.

People in the present-day societies do not usually practice cannibalism. This is not because people today are any nicer than people used to be. What seems to have happened as history progressed is that prisoners of war became more valuable as slaves then they were as meat. Now, even the enslavement of prisoners of war is rare, although it has happened, as, for example, in Germany in World War II.

There was one large and complex society that was unusual because they used humans of food. It was that of the Aztecs of Mexico, who lived four hundred to seven hundred years ago. Victims were taken to the tops of the Aztecs pyramids where they were held by four priests while a fifth cut out the victim’s hearts. The body was then pushed down the stairs to the base of the pyramid where it was cut up for eating. In this way, the Aztecs killed between 15.000 and 25.000 people a year.

Were the Aztecs particularly savage? Perhaps not. A number of anthropologists believe that there was a continual shortage of animals for food in the valley of Mexico. As a result, the Aztecs ate humans flesh because it was a source of meat and protein for them.

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