Cannibalism
Encyclopedia
Human
Humans are the only living species in the Homo genus...
s eating the flesh of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy. A person who practices cannibalism is called a cannibal.
While the expression "cannibalism" has origins in the act of humans eating other humans, it has extended into zoology
Zoology
Zoology |zoölogy]]), is the branch of biology that relates to the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct...
to mean the act of any animal consuming members of its own type or kind
Cannibalism (zoology)
In zoology, cannibalism is the act of one individual of a species consuming all or part of another individual of the same species as food. Cannibalism is a common ecological interaction in the animal kingdom and has been recorded for more than 1500 species...
, including the consumption of mates
Sexual cannibalism
Sexual cannibalism is a special case of cannibalism in which a female organism kills and consumes a male of the same species before, during, or after copulation. On rare occasions, these roles are reversed.-Prevalence:...
.
A related word, "cannibalize" (from which "cannibalization
Cannibalization of machine parts
Cannibalization of machine parts, in maintenance of mechanical or electronic systems with interchangeable parts, refers to the practice of removing parts or subsystems necessary for repair from another similar device, rather than from inventory, usually when resources become limited...
" is derived), has several meanings which are metaphor
Metaphor
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
ically derived from cannibalism and originally referred to the reuse of military parts. In manufacturing
Manufacturing
Manufacturing is the use of machines, tools and labor to produce goods for use or sale. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial production, in which raw materials are transformed into finished goods on a large scale...
, it can refer to reuse of salvageable parts. In marketing
Marketing
Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments...
, it may refer to the loss of a product's market share
Market share
Market share is the percentage of a market accounted for by a specific entity. In a survey of nearly 200 senior marketing managers, 67 percent responded that they found the "dollar market share" metric very useful, while 61% found "unit market share" very useful.Marketers need to be able to...
to another product from the same company. In publishing
Publishing
Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature or information—the activity of making information available to the general public...
, it can mean drawing on material from another source.
Cannibalism was widespread in the past among humans in many parts of the world, continuing into the 19th century in some isolated South Pacific
Australasia
Australasia is a region of Oceania comprising Australia, New Zealand, the island of New Guinea, and neighbouring islands in the Pacific Ocean. The term was coined by Charles de Brosses in Histoire des navigations aux terres australes...
cultures, and to the present day in parts of tropical Africa. In a few cases in insular Melanesia
Melanesia
Melanesia is a subregion of Oceania extending from the western end of the Pacific Ocean to the Arafura Sea, and eastward to Fiji. The region comprises most of the islands immediately north and northeast of Australia...
, indigenous flesh-markets existed. Fiji
Fiji
Fiji , officially the Republic of Fiji , is an island nation in Melanesia in the South Pacific Ocean about northeast of New Zealand's North Island...
was once known as the 'Cannibal Isles'. Cannibalism has been well documented around the world, from Fiji to the Amazon Basin
Amazon Basin
The Amazon Basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributaries that drains an area of about , or roughly 40 percent of South America. The basin is located in the countries of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, and Venezuela...
to the Congo
Congo Basin
The Congo Basin is the sedimentary basin that is the drainage of the Congo River of west equatorial Africa. The basin begins in the highlands of the East African Rift system with input from the Chambeshi River, the Uele and Ubangi Rivers in the upper reaches and the Lualaba River draining wetlands...
to Māori New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
. Neanderthal
Neanderthal
The Neanderthal is an extinct member of the Homo genus known from Pleistocene specimens found in Europe and parts of western and central Asia...
s are believed to have practiced cannibalism, and they may have been eaten by modern humans.
Cannibalism has recently been both practiced and fiercely condemned in several wars, especially in Liberia and Congo. Today, the Korowai
Korowai
The korowai, also called the Kolufo, are a people of southeastern Papua . They number about 3,000. Until 1970, they were unaware of the existence of any people besides themselves....
are one of very few tribes still believed to eat human flesh as a cultural practice. It is also still known to be practiced as a ritual and in war in various Melanesian tribes
Melanesians
Melanesians are an ethnic group in Melanesia. The original inhabitants of the group of islands now named Melanesia were likely the ancestors of the present-day Papuan-speaking people...
. Historically, allegations of cannibalism were used by the colonial powers to justify the enslavement of what were seen as primitive peoples; cannibalism has been said to test the bounds of cultural relativism
Cultural relativism
Cultural relativism is the principle that an individual human's beliefs and activities should be understood by others in terms of that individual's own culture. This principle was established as axiomatic in anthropological research by Franz Boas in the first few decades of the 20th century and...
as it challenges anthropologists "to define what is or is not beyond the pale of acceptable human behavior". Anthropophagy is an uncommon act that is not illegal in most US states nor in most countries. People who eat human flesh are usually charged with crimes not relating to anthropophagy, such as murder or desecration of a body.
Cannibalism has been occasionally practiced as a last resort by people suffering from famine
Famine
A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including crop failure, overpopulation, or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompanied or followed by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality. Every continent in the world has...
. Occasionally it has occurred in modern times. A famous example is the crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571
Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571
Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, also known as the Andes flight disaster, and in South America as Miracle in the Andes was a chartered flight carrying 45 people, including a rugby team, their friends, family and associates that crashed in the Andes on October 13, 1972...
, after which some survivors ate the bodies of dead passengers. Also, some mentally ill individuals obsess about eating others and actually do so, such as Jeffrey Dahmer
Jeffrey Dahmer
Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer was an American serial killer and sex offender. Dahmer murdered 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991, with the majority of the murders occurring between 1987 and 1991. His murders involved rape, dismemberment, necrophilia and cannibalism...
and Albert Fish
Albert Fish
Hamilton Howard "Albert" Fish was an American serial killer. He was also known as the Gray Man, the Werewolf of Wysteria, the Brooklyn Vampire, the Moon Maniac and The Boogey Man. A child rapist and cannibal, he boasted that he "had children in every state," and at one time put the figure at...
. There is a resistance to formally labelling cannibalism as a mental disorder.
The theme of cannibalism has been featured in religion, mythology, fairy stories and in works of art; for example, cannibalism has been depicted in The Raft of the Medusa by the French lithographer Théodore Géricault
Théodore Géricault
Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault was a profoundly influential French artist, painter and lithographer, known for The Raft of the Medusa and other paintings...
in 1819. It has been satirized in popular culture, as in Monty Python's Lifeboat sketch
Lifeboat sketch
Monty Python's Lifeboat sketch appeared on Monty Python's Flying Circus in Episode 26. It was also performed on the album, Another Monty Python Record, retitled Still No Sign Of Land. The sketch was inspired by the famous 1884 English criminal law case of The Queen v...
.
Reasons for cannibalism
The reasons for cannibalism include the following:- sanction by a cultural norm
- necessity in extreme situations of famineFamineA famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including crop failure, overpopulation, or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompanied or followed by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality. Every continent in the world has...
- mental illness - self-cannibalismSelf-cannibalismSelf-cannibalism is the practice of eating oneself, also called autocannibalism, or autosarcophagy. A similar term which is applied differently is autophagy, which specifically denotes the normal process of self-degradation by cells...
is a form of major self-injury usually as a result of major mental illness. - insanityInsanityInsanity, craziness or madness is a spectrum of behaviors characterized by certain abnormal mental or behavioral patterns. Insanity may manifest as violations of societal norms, including becoming a danger to themselves and others, though not all such acts are considered insanity...
or social deviancy - (Cannibalism is not mentioned in the formal index of mental disorders, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental DisordersDiagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental DisordersThe Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is published by the American Psychiatric Association and provides a common language and standard criteria for the classification of mental disorders...
. The medical literature on the topic is likewise sparse.)
There are fundamentally two kinds of cannibalistic social behavior: endocannibalism
Endocannibalism
Endocannibalism is the term which describes the practice of eating dead members of one's own culture, tribe or social group...
(eating humans from the same community) and exocannibalism
Exocannibalism
Exocannibalism , as opposed to endocannibalism, is the practice of eating human corpses from people outside one's own community, tribe or social group—most notably their flesh and some organs such as the heart...
(eating humans from other communities).
Cannibalism as an evolutionary strategy of predator control
Joseph JordaniaJoseph Jordania
Joseph Jordania is an Australian-Georgian ethnomusicologist and evolutionary musicologist. In some early publications his name was spelled as Zhordania...
recently suggested that removing the dead bodies through ritual cannibalism might have had a function of predator control in hominids and early humans, aiming to eliminate predators' and scavengers' access to hominid (and human) bodies.
Homicidal cannibalism and necro-cannibalism
A separate ethical distinction can be made between killingMurder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
a human for food (homicidal cannibalism) and eating the flesh of a person who was already dead (necro-cannibalism).
Cannibalism by performance artist
In 1988 performance artist Rick GibsonRick Gibson
Rick Gibson is a Canadian sculptor and artist. He was born in Montreal, Quebec and he studied Psychology at the University of Victoria. Between 1973 and 1974 he drew weekly comics for the student newspaper. After completing his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1974 he moved to Vancouver, Canada. He...
became the first person in British history to legally perform an act of cannibalism by eating a canapé
Canapé
A canapé is a small, prepared and usually decorative food, held in the fingers and often eaten in one bite.- Details :...
of donated human tonsils in Walthamstow High Street, London, England. A year later he publicly ate a slice of legally purchased human testicle in Lewisham High Street, London, England. When he tried to eat another slice of human testicle in Vancouver, Canada in 1989, he was stopped by the police. However, the charge was dropped and he finally ate a testicle hors d'œuvre in Vancouver in 1989.
Overview
The Carib tribe in the Lesser AntillesLesser Antilles
The Lesser Antilles are a long, partly volcanic island arc in the Western Hemisphere. Most of its islands form the eastern boundary of the Caribbean Sea with the Atlantic Ocean, with the remainder located in the southern Caribbean just north of South America...
, from whom the word cannibalism derives, for example, acquired a long-standing reputation as cannibals following the recording of their legends 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
Pope Innocent IV
Pope Innocent IV , born Sinibaldo Fieschi, was pope from June 25, 1243 until his death in 1254.-Early life:...
declared cannibalism a sin deserving to be punished by Christians through force of arms and Queen Isabella
Isabella I of Castile
Isabella I was Queen of Castile and León. She and her husband Ferdinand II of Aragon brought stability to both kingdoms that became the basis for the unification of Spain. Later the two laid the foundations for the political unification of Spain under their grandson, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor...
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 cannibals who lived in the Caribbean islands and parts of South America called the Caniba, which gave us the word cannibal.
A well known case of mortuary cannibalism is that of the Fore tribe in New Guinea
New Guinea
New Guinea is the world's second largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 786,000 km2. Located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, it lies geographically to the east of the Malay Archipelago, with which it is sometimes included as part of a greater Indo-Australian Archipelago...
which resulted in the spread of the prion
Prion
A prion is an infectious agent composed of protein in a misfolded form. This is in contrast to all other known infectious agents which must contain nucleic acids . The word prion, coined in 1982 by Stanley B. Prusiner, is a portmanteau derived from the words protein and infection...
disease kuru
Kuru (disease)
Kuru is an incurable degenerative neurological disorder that is a type of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, caused by a prion found in humans...
. Although the Fore's mortuary cannibalism was well documented, the practice had ceased before the cause of the disease was recognized. However, some scholars argue that although post-mortem dismemberment was the practice during funeral rites, cannibalism was not. Marvin Harris
Marvin Harris
Marvin Harris was an American anthropologist. He was born in Brooklyn, New York. A prolific writer, he was highly influential in the development of cultural materialism...
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
Four humours
Four Temperaments is a theory of proto-psychology that stems from the ancient medical concept of humorism and suggests that four bodily fluids affect human personality traits and behaviors.- History and development :...
, which, being lodged in the linings of the ventricle
Ventricle (heart)
In the heart, a ventricle is one of two large chambers that collect and expel blood received from an atrium towards the peripheral beds within the body and lungs. The Atria primes the Pump...
, produced the voracity for human flesh.
In 2003 a publication in Science received a large amount of press attention when it suggested that early humans may have practiced extensive cannibalism. According to this research, genetic markers commonly found in modern humans worldwide suggest that today many people carry a gene that evolved as protection against the brain diseases
Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy
Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies , also known as prion diseases, are a group of progressive conditions that affect the brain and nervous system of many animals, including humans. According to the most widespread hypothesis they are transmitted by prions, though some other data suggest an...
that can be spread by consuming human brain tissue. A 2006 reanalysis of the data questioned this hypothesis, as it claimed to have found a data collection bias, which led to an erroneous conclusion. This claimed bias came from incidents of cannibalism used in the analysis not being due to local cultures, but having been carried out by explorers, stranded seafarers or escaped convicts. The original authors published a subsequent paper in 2008 defending their conclusions.
Human meat is thought to be unsafe if eaten, especially if the human being eaten has any kind of disease or infection that could be passed on through consumption. According to the book The Hundred Year Lie
The Hundred Year Lie
thumb|200px|The Hundred Year Lie, hardback editionThe Hundred Year Lie: How Food And Medicine Are Destroying Your Health is a book by investigative journalist Randall Fitzgerald that examines the rise of the local and global influence of the United States food and chemical industries, and argues...
by investigative journalist Randall Fitzgerald, our modern diet is so full of additives and chemicals that it would be toxic to consume human meat.
During starvation
Cannibalism has been occasionally practiced as a last resort by people suffering from famineFamine
A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including crop failure, overpopulation, or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompanied or followed by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality. Every continent in the world has...
.
- In colonial JamestownJamestown, VirginiaJamestown was a settlement in the Colony of Virginia. Established by the Virginia Company of London as "James Fort" on May 14, 1607 , it was the first permanent English settlement in what is now the United States, following several earlier failed attempts, including the Lost Colony of Roanoke...
, 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 was tortured until he confessed to having killed, salted, and eaten his pregnant wife before he was burned alive as punishment. - The accounts of the sinking of the Luxborough GalleyLuxborough GalleyThe Luxborough Galley was an English ship involved in a notorious maritime incident during the 18th century.The vessel, commanded by William Kellaway, was 340 tonne and fitted to carry 26 guns. She was employed by the South Sea Company in a triangular trade route, transporting cotton goods, slaves...
in 1727 reported cannibalism amongst the survivors during their two weeks on a small boat in the mid-Atlantic. - The Essex was sunk by a sperm whale in the Pacific Ocean in 1820. The survivors of Captain Pollard's boat spent 90 days in a small whaling boat before being rescued. All the members who died during the 90 days were eaten. When the boat was found there were two members remaining; they were found sucking on the marrow of a human bone. The tale of the Essex inspired Herman MelvilleHerman MelvilleHerman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumous novella Billy Budd....
to write his novel Moby-DickMoby-DickMoby-Dick; or, The Whale, was written by American author Herman Melville and first published in 1851. It is considered by some to be a Great American Novel and a treasure of world literature. The story tells the adventures of wandering sailor Ishmael, and his voyage on the whaleship Pequod,...
. - In 1822 Alexander PearceAlexander PearceAlexander Pearce was an Irish convict who was transported to Van Diemen's Land for theft. He escaped from prison several times, but eventually was captured and was hanged and dissected in Hobart for murder....
, an Irish convict, led an escape from Macquarie Harbour Penal Settlement in Tasmania. Pearce was captured near Hobart and confessed that he and the other escapees had successively killed and cannibalised members of their group over a period of weeks, he being the last survivor. - In the US, the group of settlers known as the Donner PartyDonner PartyThe Donner Party was a group of American pioneers who set out for California in a wagon train. Delayed by a series of mishaps, they spent the winter of 1846–47 snowbound in the Sierra Nevada...
resorted to cannibalism while snowbound in the mountains for the winter of 1846–47. - The last survivors of Sir John FranklinJohn FranklinRear-Admiral Sir John Franklin KCH FRGS RN was a British Royal Navy officer and Arctic explorer. Franklin also served as governor of Tasmania for several years. In his last expedition, he disappeared while attempting to chart and navigate a section of the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic...
's expedition 1848 were found to have resorted to cannibalismRae-Richardson Arctic ExpeditionThe Rae-Richardson Polar Expedition of 1848 was an early British effort to determine the fate of the lost Franklin Polar Expedition. Led overland by Sir John Richardson and John Rae, the team explored the accessible areas along Franklin's proposed route near the Mackenzie and Coppermine rivers...
in their final push across King William IslandKing William IslandKing William Island is an island in the Kitikmeot Region of Nunavut and forms part of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. In area it is between and making it the 61st largest island in the world and Canada's 15th largest island...
, Canada towards the Back RiverBack RiverThe Back River , is a river in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut in Canada...
. - There are many claims that cannibalism was widespread during the famine of UkraineHolodomorThe Holodomor was a man-made famine in the Ukrainian SSR between 1932 and 1933. During the famine, which is also known as the "terror-famine in Ukraine" and "famine-genocide in Ukraine", millions of Ukrainians died of starvation in a peacetime catastrophe unprecedented in the history of...
in the 1930s, during the Siege of LeningradSiege of LeningradThe Siege of Leningrad, also known as the Leningrad Blockade was a prolonged military operation resulting from the failure of the German Army Group North to capture Leningrad, now known as Saint Petersburg, in the Eastern Front theatre of World War II. It started on 8 September 1941, when the last...
in World War II, and during the Chinese Civil WarChinese Civil WarThe Chinese Civil War was a civil war fought between the Kuomintang , the governing party of the Republic of China, and the Communist Party of China , for the control of China which eventually led to China's division into two Chinas, Republic of China and People's Republic of...
and the Great Chinese Famine (1958–1961), following the Great Leap ForwardGreat Leap ForwardThe Great Leap Forward of the People's Republic of China was an economic and social campaign of the Communist Party of China , reflected in planning decisions from 1958 to 1961, which aimed to use China's vast population to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy into a modern...
in the People's Republic of China. - There were also rumors of several cannibalism outbreaks during World War II in the Nazi concentration campsNazi concentration campsNazi Germany maintained concentration camps throughout the territories it controlled. The first Nazi concentration camps set up in Germany were greatly expanded after the Reichstag fire of 1933, and were intended to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime...
where the prisoners were malnourished. - Cannibalism was also practiced by Japanese troopsImperial Japanese Army-Foundation:During the Meiji Restoration, the military forces loyal to the Emperor were samurai drawn primarily from the loyalist feudal domains of Satsuma and Chōshū...
as recently as World War II in the Pacific theater. - 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.
- Lowell ThomasLowell ThomasLowell Jackson Thomas was an American writer, broadcaster, and traveler, best known as the man who made Lawrence of Arabia famous...
records the cannibalization of some of the surviving crew members of the ship DumaruDumaruThe Dumaru was a Hough-type wooden steam ship launched on April 17, 1918, in Portland, Oregon, as part of the United States Shipping Board Merchant Fleet Corporation...
after it 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 MedusaMedusa (ship)The Méduse was a 40-gun Pallas-class frigate of the French Navy, launched in 1810. She took part in the Napoleonic wars, namely in the late stages of the Mauritius campaign of 1809–1811 and in raids in the Caribbean....
, 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 571Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, also known as the Andes flight disaster, and in South America as Miracle in the Andes was a chartered flight carrying 45 people, including a rugby team, their friends, family and associates that crashed in the Andes on October 13, 1972...
, consisting of the rugby team from Stella Maris CollegeStella Maris College (Montevideo)The Stella Maris College of Montevideo, commonly referred as Christian Brothers College – Stella Maris or just Christian, is a private, co-educational, not-for-profit Catholic school run by the Christian Brothers of Ireland...
in MontevideoMontevideoMontevideo is the largest city, the capital, and the chief port of Uruguay. The settlement was established in 1726 by Bruno Mauricio de Zabala, as a strategic move amidst a Spanish-Portuguese dispute over the platine region, and as a counter to the Portuguese colony at Colonia del Sacramento...
and some of their family members, resorted to cannibalism while trapped at the crash site. They had been stranded since 13 October 1972 and rescue operations at the crash site did not begin until 22 December 1972. The story of the survivors was chronicled in Piers Paul ReadPiers Paul ReadPiers Paul Read, FRSL is a British novelist and non-fiction writer.-Background:Read was born in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire...
's 1974 book, Alive: The Story of the Andes SurvivorsAlive: The Story of the Andes SurvivorsAlive: The Story of the Andes Survivors is a 1974 book by the British writer Piers Paul Read documenting the events of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571.-Story:...
, in a 1993 film adaptation of the book, called simply AliveAlive (1993 film)Alive is a 1993 American movie based upon Piers Paul Read's 1974 book Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, which details the story of a Uruguayan rugby team who were involved in the crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, which crashed into the Andes mountains on October 13, 1972.The film was...
, and in a 2008 documentary: Stranded: I’ve Come From a Plane That Crashed on the MountainsStranded: I Have Come From A Plane that Crashed in the MountainsStranded: I've Come from a Plane that Crashed on the Mountains is a 2008 documentary film which tells the story of a rugby team from Uruguay who boarded Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571. The film features interviews with the survivors who recount their struggle to survive after the plane crashed in...
. - Jared Diamond has suggested in his book Collapse that cannibalism took place on Easter IslandEaster IslandEaster Island is a Polynesian island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian triangle. A special territory of Chile that was annexed in 1888, Easter Island is famous for its 887 extant monumental statues, called moai, created by the early Rapanui people...
after the construction of the MoaiMoaiMoai , or mo‘ai, are monolithic human figures carved from rock on the Chilean Polynesian island of Easter Island between the years 1250 and 1500. Nearly half are still at Rano Raraku, the main moai quarry, but hundreds were transported from there and set on stone platforms called ahu around the...
contributed to environmentalNatural environmentThe natural environment encompasses all living and non-living things occurring naturally on Earth or some region thereof. It is an environment that encompasses the interaction of all living species....
degradation when extreme deforestationDeforestationDeforestation is the removal of a forest or stand of trees where the land is thereafter converted to a nonforest use. Examples of deforestation include conversion of forestland to farms, ranches, or urban use....
destabilized an already precarious ecosystemEcosystemAn ecosystem is a biological environment consisting of all the organisms living in a particular area, as well as all the nonliving , physical components of the environment with which the organisms interact, such as air, soil, water and sunlight....
. (The suggestion is contested by ethnographers and archaeologists who argue that the introduction of diseases carried by EuropeEuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an colonizers and slave raidingSlave raidingSlave raiding is the military practise of performing a raid for the purpose of capturing people and bring them out of the raid area to serve as slaves. Sometimes seen as a normal part of warfare it is nowadays widely considered a crime. The practise of slave raiding is known to have occurred since...
had a much greater social impact than environmental decline.)
Themes in mythology and religion
Cannibalismfeatures 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
Hansel and Gretel
"Hansel and Gretel" is a well-known fairy tale of German origin, recorded by the Brothers Grimm and published in 1812. Hansel and Gretel are a young brother and sister threatened by a cannibalistic hag living deep in the forest in a house constructed of cake and confectionery. The two children...
and Baba Yaga
Baba Yaga
Baba Yaga or Baba Roga is a haggish or witchlike character in Slavic folklore. She flies around on a giant pestle, kidnaps small children, and lives in a hut that stands on chicken legs...
of Slavic folklore.
A number of stories in Greek mythology
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
involve cannibalism, in particular cannibalism of close family members, for example the stories of Thyestes
Thyestes
In Greek mythology, Thyestes was the son of Pelops and Hippodamia, King of Olympia, and father of Pelopia and Aegisthus. Thyestes and his twin brother, Atreus, were exiled by their father for having murdered their half-brother, Chrysippus, in their desire for the throne of Olympia...
, Tereus
Tereus
In Greek mythology, Tereus was a Thracian king, the son of Ares and husband of Procne. Procne and Tereus had a son, Itys.Tereus desired his wife's sister, Philomela. He forced himself upon her, then cut her tongue out and held her captive so she could never tell anyone. He told his wife that her...
and especially Cronus
Cronus
In Greek mythology, Cronus or Kronos was the leader and the youngest of the first generation of Titans, divine descendants of Gaia, the earth, and Uranus, the sky...
, who was Saturn
Saturn (mythology)
In ancient Roman religion and myth, Saturn was a major god presiding over agriculture and the harvest time. His reign was depicted as a Golden Age of abundance and peace by many Roman authors. In medieval times he was known as the Roman god of agriculture, justice and strength. He held a sickle in...
in the Roman pantheon. The story of Tantalus
Tantalus
Tantalus was the ruler of an ancient western Anatolian city called either after his name, as "Tantalís", "the city of Tantalus", or as "Sipylus", in reference to Mount Sipylus, at the foot of which his city was located and whose ruins were reported to be still visible in the beginning of the...
also parallels this. These mythologies inspired Shakespeare's cannibalism scene in Titus Andronicus
Titus Andronicus
Titus Andronicus is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, and possibly George Peele, believed to have been written between 1588 and 1593. It is thought to be Shakespeare's first tragedy, and is often seen as his attempt to emulate the violent and bloody revenge plays of his contemporaries, which were...
.
Hindu
Hindu
Hindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. As used in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" is also attributed to all persons professing any Indian religion...
mythology describes evil demons called "asura
Asura
-In Hinduism:In Hinduism, the Asuras constitute a group of power-seeking deities, sometimes considered sinful and materialistic. The Daityas and Danavas were combinedly known as Asuras. The Asura were opposed to the Devas. Both groups are children of Kasyapa...
" or "rakshasa
Rakshasa
A Rakshasa or alternatively rakshas, is a race of mythological humanoid beings or unrighteous spirit in Hindu and Buddhist religion...
" 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
Wendigo
The Wendigo 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...
(also Windigo, Weendigo, Windago, Windiga, Witiko, Wihtikow, and numerous other variants) is a mythical creature appearing in the mythology
Native American mythology
Native American mythology is the body of traditional narratives associated with Native American religion from a mythographical perspective. Native American belief systems include many sacred narratives. Such spiritual stories are deeply based in Nature and are rich with the symbolism of seasons,...
of the Algonquian
Algonquian peoples
The Algonquian are one of the most populous and widespread North American native language groups, with tribes originally numbering in the hundreds. Today hundreds of thousands of individuals identify with various Algonquian peoples...
people. It is a malevolent cannibalistic spirit into which humans could transform, or which could possess
Spiritual possession
Spirit possession is a paranormal or supernatural event in which it is said that spirits, gods, demons, animas, extraterrestrials, or other disincarnate or extraterrestrial entities take control of a human body, resulting in noticeable changes in health and behaviour...
humans. Those who indulged in cannibalism were at particular risk, and the legend appears to have reinforced this practice as taboo
Taboo
A taboo is a strong social prohibition relating to any area of human activity or social custom that is sacred and or forbidden based on moral judgment, religious beliefs and or scientific consensus. Breaking the taboo is usually considered objectionable or abhorrent by society...
. The name is Wiindigoo in the Ojibwe language (the source of the English word), Wìdjigò in the Algonquin language
Algonquin language
Algonquin is either a distinct Algonquian language closely related to the Ojibwe language or a particularly divergent Ojibwe dialect. It is spoken, alongside French and to some extent English, by the Algonquin First Nations of Quebec and Ontario...
, and Wīhtikōw in the Cree language
Cree language
Cree is an Algonquian language spoken by approximately 117,000 people across Canada, from the Northwest Territories and Alberta to Labrador, making it the aboriginal language with the highest number of speakers in Canada. It is also spoken in the U.S. state of Montana...
; the Proto-Algonquian
Proto-Algonquian language
Proto-Algonquian is the name given to the proto-language from which the various languages of the Algonquian family are descended. It is generally estimated to have been spoken around 2,500 to 3,000 years ago, but on the question of where it was spoken there is less agreement...
term was *wi·nteko·wa, which probably originally meant "owl".
As used to demonize colonized or other groups
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 mythologyGreek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
to the 'primitive' chthonic
Chthonic
Chthonic designates, or pertains to, deities or spirits of the underworld, especially in relation to Greek religion. The Greek word khthon is one of several for "earth"; it typically refers to the interior of the soil, rather than the living surface of the land or the land as territory...
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
Tantalus
Tantalus was the ruler of an ancient western Anatolian city called either after his name, as "Tantalís", "the city of Tantalus", or as "Sipylus", in reference to Mount Sipylus, at the foot of which his city was located and whose ruins were reported to be still visible in the beginning of the...
of his son Pelops
Pelops
In Greek mythology, Pelops , was king of Pisa in the Peloponnesus. He was the founder of the House of Atreus through his son of that name....
. All South Sea Islanders were cannibals so far as their enemies were concerned. When the whaleship Essex
Whaleship Essex
Obed HendricksBenjamin LawrenceStewardWilliam BondSailorsOwen CoffinIsaac ColeHenry De Witt*Richard PetersonCharles RamsdellBarzillai RaySamuel ReedIsaiah SheppardCharles ShorterLawson ThomasSeth WeeksJoseph WestWilliam Wright...
was rammed and sunk by a whale in 1820, the captain opted to sail 3000 miles upwind to Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
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
Herman Melville
Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumous novella Billy Budd....
happily lived with the Marquesan Typees (Taipi), rumored to have been the most vicious of the island group's cannibal tribes, but also may have witnessed evidence of cannibalism. In his semi-autobiographical novel Typee
Typee
Typee is American writer Herman Melville's first book, a classic in the literature of travel and adventure partly based on his actual experiences as a captive on the island Nuku Hiva in the South Pacific Marquesas Islands, in 1842...
, he reports seeing shrunken heads
Shrunken Heads
Shrunken Heads is a 1994 English language film directed by Richard Elfman and written by Matthew Bright.Shrunken Heads is Walt Disney meets West Side Story meets Dead End meets Richard Elfman. The good kids are bullied by the bad kids in what seems like a family-film drama…until notorious female...
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, 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
Cultural imperialism
Cultural imperialism is the domination of one culture over another. Cultural imperialism can take the form of a general attitude or an active, formal and deliberate policy, including military action. Economic or technological factors may also play a role...
. 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:
Arens' findings are controversial, and have been cited as an example of postcolonial revisionism
Historical revisionism
In historiography, historical revisionism is the reinterpretation of orthodox views on evidence, motivations, and decision-making processes surrounding a historical event...
. His argument is often mischaracterized as "cannibals do not and never did exist", 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
Michel de Montaigne
Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne , February 28, 1533 – September 13, 1592, was one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance, known for popularising the essay as a literary genre and is popularly thought of as the father of Modern Skepticism...
'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.
Accounts
Among modern humans it has been practiced by various groups.In the past, it has been practiced by humans in Europe
Prehistoric Europe
Prehistoric Europe refers to the prehistorical period of Europe, usually taken to refer to human prehistory since the Lower Paleolithic, but in principle also extending to geological time scale - for which see Geological history of Europe....
, South America, among Iroquoian peoples in North America, Maori in New Zealand, the Solomon Islands
Solomon Islands
Solomon Islands is a sovereign state in Oceania, east of Papua New Guinea, consisting of nearly one thousand islands. It covers a land mass of . The capital, Honiara, is located on the island of Guadalcanal...
, parts of West Africa
West Africa
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. Geopolitically, the UN definition of Western Africa includes the following 16 countries and an area of approximately 5 million square km:-Flags of West Africa:...
and Central Africa
Central Africa
Central Africa is a core region of the African continent which includes Burundi, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Rwanda....
, some of the islands of Polynesia
Polynesia
Polynesia is a subregion of Oceania, made up of over 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are termed Polynesians and they share many similar traits including language, culture and beliefs...
, New Guinea
New Guinea
New Guinea is the world's second largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 786,000 km2. Located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, it lies geographically to the east of the Malay Archipelago, with which it is sometimes included as part of a greater Indo-Australian Archipelago...
, Sumatra
Sumatra
Sumatra is an island in western Indonesia, westernmost of the Sunda Islands. It is the largest island entirely in Indonesia , and the sixth largest island in the world at 473,481 km2 with a population of 50,365,538...
, and Fiji
Fiji
Fiji , officially the Republic of Fiji , is an island nation in Melanesia in the South Pacific Ocean about northeast of New Zealand's North Island...
. Evidence of cannibalism has been found in ruins associated with the Anasazi culture of the Southwestern United States as well.
Pre-history
Some anthropologists, such as Tim WhiteTim White (anthropologist)
Tim D. White is an American Paleoanthropologist and Professor of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is most famous for his work on Lucy as Australopithecus afarensis with discoverer Donald Johanson.-Career:White was born in Los Angeles County, California...
, suggest that cannibalism was common in human societies prior to the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic
Upper Paleolithic
The Upper Paleolithic is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age as it is understood in Europe, Africa and Asia. Very broadly it dates to between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago, roughly coinciding with the appearance of behavioral modernity and before the advent of...
period. This theory is based on the large amount of "butchered human" bones found in Neanderthal
Neanderthal
The Neanderthal is an extinct member of the Homo genus known from Pleistocene specimens found in Europe and parts of western and central Asia...
and other Lower/Middle Paleolithic sites. Cannibalism in the Lower and Middle Paleolithic may have occurred because of food shortages.
In Gough's Cave
Gough's Cave
Gough's Cave is located in Cheddar Gorge on the Mendip Hills, in Cheddar, Somerset, England. The cave is deep and is long,and contains a variety of large chambers and rock formations. It contains the Cheddar Yeo, the largest underground river system in Britain.- History :The initial sections of...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, remains of human bones and skulls, around 15,000 years old, suggest that cannibalism took place amongst the people living in or visiting the cave, and that they may have used human skulls as drinking vessels
Skull cup
A skull cup is a drinking vessel or eating bowl made from an inverted human calvaria that has been cut away from the rest of the skull. The use of a human skull as a drinking cup in ritual use or as a trophy is reported in numerous sources throughout history and among various peoples, and among...
.
According to one historical account, aboriginal tribes of Australia were most certainly cannibals, never failing to eat persons killed in a fight and always eating men noted for their fighting ability who died natural deaths. "... out of pity and consideration for the body."
Early history
Cannibalism is mentioned many times in early history and literature. It is reported in the BibleBible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
during the siege of Samaria
Samaria
Samaria, or the Shomron is a term used for a mountainous region roughly corresponding to the northern part of the West Bank.- Etymology :...
(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
Siege of Numantia
The Celtiberian oppidum of Numantia was attacked more than once by Roman forces, but the Siege of Numantia refers to the culminating and pacifying action of the long-running Numantine War between the forces of the Roman Republic and those of the native population of Hispania Citerior. The...
in the 2nd century BC was reduced to cannibalism and suicide.
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
Against Jovinianus
Against Jovinianus is a two-volume treatise by the Church Father Saint Jerome.-Jovinianus' propositions:Jovinianus, about whom little more is known than what is to be found in Jerome's treatise, published a Latin treatise outlining several opinions:...
, 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
Attacotti
Attacotti refers to a people who despoiled Roman Britain between 364 and 368, along with Scotti, Picts, Saxons, Roman military deserters, and the indigenous Britons themselves. The marauders were defeated by Count Theodosius in 368...
eat human flesh and that Massagetae
Massagetae
The Massageteans or Massagetaeans were an Iranian nomadic confederation in antiquity known primarily from the writings of Herodotus. Their name was probably akin to Thyssagetae.-Name:...
and Derbices (a people on the borders of India) kill and eat old people.(The Tibareni
Tibareni
The Tibareni were a people referred to in Herodotus, Xenophon, Strabo and other classical authors. In classical times, they and other related tribes, the Chalybes and the Mossynoeci, were considered the founders of metallurgy...
crucify those whom they have loved before when they have grown old). This points to the likelihood that St. Jerome's writing came from rumors and does not represent the situation accurately.
Researchers have found physical evidence of cannibalism in ancient times. In 2001, archaeologists at the University of Bristol found evidence of Iron Age
Iron Age
The Iron Age is the archaeological period generally occurring after the Bronze Age, marked by the prevalent use of iron. The early period of the age is characterized by the widespread use of iron or steel. The adoption of such material coincided with other changes in society, including differing...
cannibalism in Gloucestershire. Cannibalism was practiced as recently as 2000 years ago in Great Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
. In Germany, Emil Carthaus and Dr. Bruno Bernhard have observed 1,891 signs of cannibalism in the caves at the Hönne
Hönne
The Hönne is a left tributary river to the Ruhr, flowing through the northern Sauerland hills in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The spring of the Hönne is located in the west of Neuenrade at 437m above sea level. After 33 km the river ends near the town of Fröndenberg...
(1000 - 700 BC).
Middle Ages
During the Muslim-Qurayš wars in the early 7th century, cases of cannibalism have been reported. Following at the Battle of UhudBattle of Uhud
The Battle of Uhud was fought on March 19, 625 at the valley located in front of Mount Uhud, in what is now northwestern Arabia. It occurred between a force from the Muslim community of Medina led by the Islamic prophet Muhammad, and a force led by Abu Sufyan ibn Harb from Mecca, the town from...
in 625, it is said that after killing Hamzah ibn Abdu l-Muṭṭalib, his liver was consumed by Hind bint ‘Utbah
Hind bint Utbah
Hind bint ‘Utbah was an Arab woman who lived in the late 6th and early 7th centuries CE; she was the wife of Abu Sufyan ibn Harb, a powerful man of Mecca, in western Arabia. Both Abu Sufyan and Hind originally opposed the Islamic prophet Muhammad...
(the wife of Abû Sufyan ibn Harb one of the commanders of the Qurayš army) who later reportedly converted to Islam and became the mother of Muawiyah I
Muawiyah I
Muawiyah I was the first Caliph of the Umayyad Dynasty. After the conquest of Mecca by the Muslims, Muawiyah's family converted to Islam. Muawiyah is brother-in-law to Muhammad who married his sister Ramlah bint Abi-Sufyan in 1AH...
founder of the Islamic Umayyad Caliphate.
Reports of cannibalism were also recorded during the First Crusade
First Crusade
The First Crusade was a military expedition by Western Christianity to regain the Holy Lands taken in the Muslim conquest of the Levant, ultimately resulting in the recapture of Jerusalem...
, as Crusaders fed on the bodies of their dead opponents following the Siege of Ma'arrat al-Numan
Siege of Ma'arrat al-Numan
The Siege of Maarat, or Ma'arra, occurred in 1098 in the city of Ma'arrat al-Numan, in what is modern-day Syria, during the First Crusade...
. Amin Maalouf
Amin Maalouf
Amin Maalouf , born 25 February 1949 in Beirut, is a Lebanese-born French author. Although his native language is Arabic, he writes in French, and his works have been translated into many languages. He received the Prix Goncourt in 1993 for his novel The Rock of Tanios...
also discusses further cannibalism incidents on the march to Jerusalem, and to the efforts made to delete mention of these from western history. The inhabitants of Hungary (which the Crusaders marched through to reach the Holy Land ) were also reported to be cannibals, as the Hungarians had only converted from paganism to Christianity in the 10th century.
In fact, the French word for Hungarian, hongre, may be the source of the English word ogre. During Europe's Great Famine of 1315–1317
Great Famine of 1315–1317
The Great Famine of 1315–1317 was the first of a series of large scale crises that struck Northern Europe early in the fourteenth century...
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
Famine
A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including crop failure, overpopulation, or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompanied or followed by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality. Every continent in the world has...
.
The Moroccan Muslim explorer Ibn Batutta reported that one African king advised him that nearby people were cannibals (though this may have been a prank played on Ibn Batutta by the king in order to fluster his guest). However Batutta reported that Arabs and Christians were safe , as their flesh was "unripe" and would cause the eater to fall ill.
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. The practice developed into a wide-scale business which flourished until the late 16th century. This "fad" ended because the mummies were revealed actually to 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
Mellified Man
Mellified man, or human mummy confection, was a legendary medicinal substance created by steeping a human cadaver in honey. The concoction is mentioned only in Chinese sources, most significantly the Bencao Gangmu of the 16th-century Chinese pharmacologist Li Shizhen...
).
In China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
during the Tang Dynasty
Tang Dynasty
The Tang Dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China preceded by the Sui Dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. It was founded by the Li family, who seized power during the decline and collapse of the Sui Empire...
, cannibalism was supposedly resorted to by rebel forces early in the period (who were said to raid neighboring areas for victims to eat), as well as both soldiers and civilians besieged during the rebellion of An Lushan. Eating an enemy's heart and liver was also claimed to be a feature of both official punishments and private vengeance. References to cannibalizing the enemy has also been seen in poetry written in the Song Dynasty
Song Dynasty
The Song Dynasty was a ruling dynasty in China between 960 and 1279; it succeeded the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period, and was followed by the Yuan Dynasty. It was the first government in world history to issue banknotes or paper money, and the first Chinese government to establish a...
, though the cannibalizing is perhaps poetic symbolism, expressing hatred towards the enemy (see Man Jiang Hong
Man Jiang Hong
Mǎn Jīang Hóng is the title of a set of lyrical poems sharing the same pattern. If unspecified, it most often refers to the one normally attributed to legendary Song Dynasty general and Chinese national hero Yue Fei...
).
While there is universal agreement that some Mesoamerican people practiced human sacrifice
Human sacrifice
Human sacrifice is the act of killing one or more human beings as part of a religious ritual . Its typology closely parallels the various practices of ritual slaughter of animals and of religious sacrifice in general. Human sacrifice has been practised in various cultures throughout history...
, there is a lack of scholarly consensus as to whether cannibalism in pre-Columbian America
Cannibalism in pre-Columbian America
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...
was widespread. At one extreme, anthropologist Marvin Harris, author of Cannibals and Kings
Cannibals and Kings
Cannibals and Kings is a book written by anthropologist Marvin Harris. The book presents a systematic discussion of ideas about the reasons for a culture making a transition by stages from egalitarian hunter-gatherer to hierarchically based states as population density increases.According to...
, has suggested that the flesh of the victims was a part of an aristocratic diet as a reward, since the Aztec
Aztec
The Aztec people were certain ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, a period referred to as the late post-classic period in Mesoamerican chronology.Aztec is the...
diet was lacking in protein
Protein
Proteins are biochemical compounds consisting of one or more polypeptides typically folded into a globular or fibrous form, facilitating a biological function. A polypeptide is a single linear polymer chain of amino acids bonded together by peptide bonds between the carboxyl and amino groups of...
s. 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. Others have hypothesized that cannibalism was part of a blood revenge in war.
Early modern era
European explorers and colonizers brought home many stories of cannibalism practiced by the native peoples they encountered. The friar Diego de LandaDiego de Landa
Diego de Landa Calderón was a Spanish Bishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Yucatán. He left future generations with a mixed legacy in his writings, which contain much valuable information on pre-Columbian Maya civilization, and his actions which destroyed much of that civilization's...
reported about Yucatán
Yucatán
Yucatán officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Yucatán is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 106 municipalities and its capital city is Mérida....
instances, and there have been similar reports by Purchas from Popayán, Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
, and from the Marquesas Islands
Marquesas Islands
The Marquesas Islands enana and Te Fenua `Enata , both meaning "The Land of Men") are a group of volcanic islands in French Polynesia, an overseas collectivity of France in the southern Pacific Ocean. The Marquesas are located at 9° 00S, 139° 30W...
of Polynesia
Polynesia
Polynesia is a subregion of Oceania, made up of over 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are termed Polynesians and they share many similar traits including language, culture and beliefs...
, where human flesh was called long pig. According to Hans Egede
Hans Egede
Hans Poulsen Egede was a Norwegian-Danish Lutheran missionary who launched mission efforts to Greenland, which led him to be styled the Apostle of Greenland. He established a successful mission among the Inuit and is credited with revitalizing Dano-Norwegian interest in the island after contact...
, the Inuit
Inuit
The Inuit are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic regions of Canada , Denmark , Russia and the United States . Inuit means “the people” in the Inuktitut language...
s, when they killed a witch, ate a portion of her heart. It is recorded about the natives of the captaincy of Sergipe
Sergipe
Sergipe , is the smallest state of the Brazilian Federation, located on the northeastern Atlantic coast of the country. It borders on two other states, Bahia to the south and west and Alagoas to the north, and to the east is the Atlantic Ocean...
in Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
, "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
Umbilical cord
In placental mammals, the umbilical cord is the connecting cord from the developing embryo or fetus to the placenta...
with a shell
Seashell
A seashell or sea shell, also known simply as a shell, is a hard, protective outer layer created by an animal that lives in the sea. The shell is part of the body of the animal. Empty seashells are often found washed up on beaches by beachcombers...
, which she boils along with the secondine
Placenta
The placenta is an organ that connects the developing fetus to the uterine wall to allow nutrient uptake, waste elimination, and gas exchange via the mother's blood supply. "True" placentas are a defining characteristic of eutherian or "placental" mammals, but are also found in some snakes and...
, and eats them both.'"
The 1913 Handbook of Indians of Canada, (reprinting 1907 material from the Bureau of American Ethnology) claims that North American natives practicing cannibalism included "...the Montagnais
Innu
The Innu are the indigenous inhabitants of an area they refer to as Nitassinan , which comprises most of the northeastern portions of the provinces of Quebec and some western portions of Labrador...
, and some of the tribes of Maine
Maine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
; the Algonkin, Armouchiquois, Iroquois
Iroquois
The Iroquois , also known as the Haudenosaunee or the "People of the Longhouse", are an association of several tribes of indigenous people of North America...
, and Micmac; farther west the Assiniboine, Cree
Cree
The Cree are one of the largest groups of First Nations / Native Americans in North America, with 200,000 members living in Canada. In Canada, the major proportion of Cree live north and west of Lake Superior, in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and the Northwest Territories, although...
, Foxes, Chippewa, Miami, Ottawa
Ottawa (tribe)
The Odawa or Ottawa, said to mean "traders," are a Native American and First Nations people. They are one of the Anishinaabeg, related to but distinct from the Ojibwe nation. Their original homelands are located on Manitoulin Island, near the northern shores of Lake Huron, on the Bruce Peninsula in...
, Kickapoo, Illinois, Sioux
Sioux
The Sioux are Native American and First Nations people in North America. The term can refer to any ethnic group within the Great Sioux Nation or any of the nation's many language dialects...
, and Winnebago
Ho-Chunk
The Ho-Chunk, also known as Winnebago, are a tribe of Native Americans, native to what is now Wisconsin and Illinois. There are two federally recognized Ho-Chunk tribes, the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin and Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska....
; in the South the people who built the mounds in Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
, and the Tonkawa
Tonkawa
The Tickanwa•tic Tribe , better known as the Tonkawa , are a Native American people indigenous to present-day Oklahoma and Texas. They once spoke the now-extinct Tonkawa language believed to have been a language isolate not related to any other indigenous tongues...
, Attacapa, Karankawa
Karankawa
Karankawa were a group of Native American peoples, now extinct as a tribal group, who played a pivotal part in early Texas history....
, Caddo
Caddo
The Caddo Nation is a confederacy of several Southeastern Native American tribes, who traditionally inhabited much of what is now East Texas, northern Louisiana and portions of southern Arkansas and Oklahoma. Today the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma is a cohesive tribe with its capital at Binger, Oklahoma...
, and Comanche
Comanche
The Comanche are a Native American ethnic group whose historic range consisted of present-day eastern New Mexico, southern Colorado, northeastern Arizona, southern Kansas, all of Oklahoma, and most of northwest Texas. Historically, the Comanches were hunter-gatherers, with a typical Plains Indian...
(?); in the Northwest and West, portions of the continent, the Thlingchadinneh and other Athapascan tribes, the Tlingit, Heiltsuk, Kwakiutl
Kwakiutl
The term Kwakiutl, historically applied to the entire Kwakwaka'wakw ethno-linguistic group of originally 28 tribes, comes from one of the Kwakwaka'wakw tribes, the Kwagu'ł or Kwagyeulth, at Fort Rupert, with whom Franz Boas did most of his anthropological work and whose Indian Act Band government...
, Tsimshian
Tsimshian
The Tsimshian are an indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast. Tsimshian translates to Inside the Skeena River. Their communities are in British Columbia and Alaska, around Terrace and Prince Rupert and the southernmost corner of Alaska on Annette Island. There are approximately 10,000...
, Nootka, Siksika, some of the California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
n tribes, and the Ute
Ute Tribe
The Ute are an American Indian people now living primarily in Utah and Colorado. There are three Ute tribal reservations: Uintah-Ouray in northeastern Utah ; Southern Ute in Colorado ; and Ute Mountain which primarily lies in Colorado, but extends to Utah and New Mexico . The name of the state of...
. There is also a tradition of the practice among the Hopi
Hopi
The Hopi are a federally recognized tribe of indigenous Native American people, who primarily live on the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona. The Hopi area according to the 2000 census has a population of 6,946 people. Their Hopi language is one of the 30 of the Uto-Aztecan language...
, and mentions of the custom among other tribes of New Mexico
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
and Arizona
Arizona
Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...
. The Mohawk
Mohawk nation
Mohawk are the most easterly tribe of the Iroquois confederation. They call themselves Kanien'gehaga, people of the place of the flint...
, and the Attacapa, Tonkawa
Tonkawa
The Tickanwa•tic Tribe , better known as the Tonkawa , are a Native American people indigenous to present-day Oklahoma and Texas. They once spoke the now-extinct Tonkawa language believed to have been a language isolate not related to any other indigenous tongues...
, and other Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
tribes were known to their neighbours as 'man-eaters.'" The forms of cannibalism described included both resorting to human flesh during famines and ritual cannibalism, the latter usually consisting of eating a small portion of an enemy warrior. See also Captives in American Indian Wars
Captives in American Indian Wars
Treatment applied to captives in the American Indian Wars was specific to the local culture of each tribe. Captive adults might be killed, while children were, most of time, kept alive and adopted...
.
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 Māori. In one infamous 1809 incident,about 66 passengers and crew of the ship the Boyd were killed and eaten by Māori on the Whangaroa peninsula, Northland. (See also: Boyd massacre
Boyd massacre
The Boyd Massacre took place in 1809 when Māori residents of Whangaroa Harbour in northern New Zealand killed and ate between 66 and 70 people as revenge for the whipping of a young Māori chief by the crew of the sailing ship Boyd...
) Cannibalism was already a regular practice in Māori wars. 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". Māori warriors fighting the New Zealand government in Titokowaru's War
Titokowaru's War
-Cause and background of the war:The immediate cause of the war was the confiscation of vast areas of Māori land in Taranaki by the Government under the powers of the punitive New Zealand Settlements Act 1863...
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
Pai Marire
The Pai Mārire movement was a syncretic Māori religion that flourished in New Zealand from about 1863 to 1874. Founded in Taranaki by the prophet Te Ua Haumene, it incorporated Biblical and Māori spiritual elements and promised its followers deliverance from Pākehā domination, providing a...
religion.
Other islands in the Pacific were home to cultures that allowed cannibalism to some degree. In parts of Melanesia
Melanesia
Melanesia is a subregion of Oceania extending from the western end of the Pacific Ocean to the Arafura Sea, and eastward to Fiji. The region comprises most of the islands immediately north and northeast of Australia...
, 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. One tribal chief, Ratu Udre Udre
Udre Udre
Ratu Udre Udre was a Fijian chief. He holds the Guinness World Record for “most prolific cannibal”. During the 19th century, Udre Udre reportedly ate between 872 and 999 people. He kept a stone for each body he ate; the stones were placed alongside his tomb in Rakiraki, in northern Viti Levu...
in Rakiraki, Fiji
Fiji
Fiji , officially the Republic of Fiji , is an island nation in Melanesia in the South Pacific Ocean about northeast of New Zealand's North Island...
, is said to have consumed 872 people and to have made a pile of stones to record his achievement. The ferocity of the cannibal lifestyle deterred European sailors from going near Fijian waters, giving Fiji the name Cannibal Isles. The dense population of Marquesas Islands
Marquesas Islands
The Marquesas Islands enana and Te Fenua `Enata , both meaning "The Land of Men") are a group of volcanic islands in French Polynesia, an overseas collectivity of France in the southern Pacific Ocean. The Marquesas are located at 9° 00S, 139° 30W...
, Polynesia
Polynesia
Polynesia is a subregion of Oceania, made up of over 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are termed Polynesians and they share many similar traits including language, culture and beliefs...
, was concentrated in the narrow valleys, and consisted of warring tribes, who sometimes practiced cannibalism on their enemies. W. D. Rubinstein wrote:
"It was considered a great triumph among the Marquesans to eat the body of a dead man. They treated their captives with great cruelty. They broke their legs to prevent them from attempting to escape before being eaten, but kept them alive so that they could brood over their impending fate. ... With this tribe, as with many others, the bodies of women were in great demand. ... "
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 Méduse in 1816 resorted to cannibalism after four days adrift on a raft and their plight was made famous by Théodore Géricault
Théodore Géricault
Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault was a profoundly influential French artist, painter and lithographer, known for The Raft of the Medusa and other paintings...
's painting Raft of the Medusa
Raft of the Medusa
For other uses, See: Radeau The Raft of the Medusa is an oil painting of 1818–1819 by the French Romantic painter and lithographer Théodore Géricault . Completed when the artist was 27, the work has become an icon of French Romanticism...
. After the sinking of the Essex of Nantucket by a whale, on November 20, 1820, (an important source event for Herman Melville
Herman Melville
Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumous novella Billy Budd....
's Moby-Dick
Moby-Dick
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, was written by American author Herman Melville and first published in 1851. It is considered by some to be a Great American Novel and a treasure of world literature. The story tells the adventures of wandering sailor Ishmael, and his voyage on the whaleship Pequod,...
) the survivors, in three small boats, resorted, by common consent, to cannibalism in order for some to survive. Sir John Franklin
John Franklin
Rear-Admiral Sir John Franklin KCH FRGS RN was a British Royal Navy officer and Arctic explorer. Franklin also served as governor of Tasmania for several years. In his last expedition, he disappeared while attempting to chart and navigate a section of the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic...
's lost polar expedition is another example of cannibalism out of desperation. On land, the Donner Party
Donner Party
The Donner Party was a group of American pioneers who set out for California in a wagon train. Delayed by a series of mishaps, they spent the winter of 1846–47 snowbound in the Sierra Nevada...
found itself stranded by snow in a high mountain pass
Donner Pass
Donner Pass is a mountain pass in the northern Sierra Nevada, located above Donner Lake about nine miles west of Truckee, California. It has a steep approach from the east and a gradual approach from the west....
in California without adequate supplies during the Mexican-American War, leading to several instances of cannibalism. Another notorious cannibal was mountain man
Mountain man
Mountain men were trappers and explorers who roamed the North American Rocky Mountains from about 1810 through the 1880s where they were instrumental in opening up the various Emigrant Trails allowing Americans in the east to settle the new territories of the far west by organized wagon trains...
Boone Helm
Boone Helm
Boone Helm was a mountain man and gunfighter of the American West known as the Kentucky Cannibal. Helm was also a serial killer who gained his nickname for his opportunistic and unrepentant proclivity for the consumption of human flesh taken from the bodies of enemies and traveling companions...
, who was known as "The Kentucky Cannibal," for eating several of his fellow travelers from 1850 until his eventual hanging in 1864.
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, who were cast away in a storm some 1600 miles (2,574.9 km) from the Cape of Good Hope
Cape of Good Hope
The Cape of Good Hope is a rocky headland on the Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula, South Africa.There is a misconception that the Cape of Good Hope is the southern tip of Africa, because it was once believed to be the dividing point between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. In fact, the...
. 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
Necessity
In U.S. criminal law, necessity may be either a possible justification or an exculpation for breaking the law. Defendants seeking to rely on this defense argue that they should not be held liable for their actions as a crime because their conduct was necessary to prevent some greater harm and when...
was determined to be no defence against a charge of murder.
American consul James W. Davidson
James W. Davidson
James Wheeler Davidson was an explorer, writer, United States diplomat, businessman and philanthropist...
described in his 1903 book, The Island of Formosa how the Chinese in Taiwan ate and traded in the flesh of Taiwanese aboriginals.
Roger Casement
Roger Casement
Roger David Casement —Sir Roger Casement CMG between 1911 and shortly before his execution for treason, when he was stripped of his British honours—was an Irish patriot, poet, revolutionary, and nationalist....
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)
World War II
Many instances of cannibalism by necessity were recorded during World War II. For example, during the 872-day Siege of LeningradSiege of Leningrad
The Siege of Leningrad, also known as the Leningrad Blockade was a prolonged military operation resulting from the failure of the German Army Group North to capture Leningrad, now known as Saint Petersburg, in the Eastern Front theatre of World War II. It started on 8 September 1941, when the last...
, 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. Following the Soviet victory at Stalingrad
Battle of Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad was a major battle of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in southwestern Russia. The battle took place between 23 August 1942 and 2 February 1943...
it was found that some German soldiers in the besieged city, cut off from supplies, resorted to cannibalism.
Later following the German surrender in February 1945, roughly 100,000 German soldiers were taken prisoner of war
Prisoner of war
A prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...
(POW). Almost all of them were sent to POW camps in Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
or Central Asia
Central Asia
Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...
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.
The Australian War Crimes Section of the Tokyo tribunal, led by prosecutor William Webb (the future Judge-in-Chief), collected numerous written reports and testimonies that documented Japanese soldiers' acts of cannibalism among their own troops, on enemy dead, and on Allied prisoners of war in many parts of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere
Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere
The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was a concept created and promulgated during the Shōwa era by the government and military of the Empire of Japan. It represented the desire to create a self-sufficient "bloc of Asian nations led by the Japanese and free of Western powers"...
.In September 1942, Japanese daily rations on New Guinea consisted of 800 grams of rice and tinned meat. However, by December, this had fallen to 50 grams. Happell (2008), p. 78. According to historian Yuki Tanaka, "cannibalism was often a systematic activity conducted by whole squads and under the command of officers".
In some cases, flesh was cut from living people. An Indian POW, Lance Naik
Lance Naik
Lance Naik is the equivalent rank to Lance Corporal in the Pakistan and Indian Armies and before 1947, in the British Indian Army, ranking below Naik. In cavalry units the equivalent is Acting Lance Daffadar. Like a British Lance Corporal, he wore a single rank chevron....
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."
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. In his book Flyboys: A True Story of Courage
Flyboys: A True Story of Courage
Flyboys: A True Story of Courage is a nonfiction book by writer James Bradley, and a national bestseller in the U.S. This book details a World War II incident of the execution and cannibalism of five of eight American P.O.W.s on the Pacific island of Chichi-jima, one of the Ogasawara Islands .-...
, James Bradley
James Bradley (author)
James Bradley is an American author, specializing in historical nonfiction chronicling the Pacific theatre of World War II. His father, John Bradley, was one of six men who became famous for being photographed raising the American flag on Mt. Suribachi...
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.
Papua New Guinea
The KorowaiKorowai
The korowai, also called the Kolufo, are a people of southeastern Papua . They number about 3,000. Until 1970, they were unaware of the existence of any people besides themselves....
tribe of south-eastern Papua
Papua (Indonesian province)
Papua comprises most of the western half of the island of New Guinea and nearby islands. Its capital is Jayapura. It's the largest and easternmost province of Indonesia. The province originally covered the entire western half of New Guinea...
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 to intimidate child soldiers or captives.
Marvin Harris
Marvin Harris
Marvin Harris was an American anthropologist. He was born in Brooklyn, New York. A prolific writer, he was highly influential in the development of cultural materialism...
has analysed cannibalism and other food taboos
Taboo food and drink
Taboo food and drink are food and beverages which people abstain from consuming for religious, cultural or hygienic reasons. Many food taboos forbid the meat of a particular animal, including mammals, rodents, reptiles, amphibians, bony fish, and crustaceans...
.
He argued that it was common when humans lived in small bands, but disappeared in the transition to states, the Aztecs being an exception.
Other cases
Further instances include cannibalism as ritual practice, and in times of drought, famine and other destitutions, as well as those being criminal acts and war crimes throughout the 20th century.In West Africa
West Africa
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. Geopolitically, the UN definition of Western Africa includes the following 16 countries and an area of approximately 5 million square km:-Flags of West Africa:...
, the Leopard Society was a secret society active into the mid-1900s and one that practiced cannibalism. Centred in Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone , officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Guinea to the north and east, Liberia to the southeast, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west and southwest. Sierra Leone covers a total area of and has an estimated population between 5.4 and 6.4...
, Liberia
Liberia
Liberia , officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Sierra Leone on the west, Guinea on the north and Côte d'Ivoire on the east. Liberia's coastline is composed of mostly mangrove forests while the more sparsely populated inland consists of forests that open...
and Côte d'Ivoire
Côte d'Ivoire
The Republic of Côte d'Ivoire or Ivory Coast is a country in West Africa. It has an area of , and borders the countries Liberia, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana; its southern boundary is along the Gulf of Guinea. The country's population was 15,366,672 in 1998 and was estimated to be...
, the Leopard men would dress in leopard
Leopard
The leopard , Panthera pardus, is a member of the Felidae family and the smallest of the four "big cats" in the genus Panthera, the other three being the tiger, lion, and jaguar. The leopard was once distributed across eastern and southern Asia and Africa, from Siberia to South Africa, but its...
skins, waylaying travelers with sharp claw-like weapons in the form of leopards' claws and teeth. The victims' flesh would be cut from their bodies and distributed to members of the society.
The Aghori
Aghori
The Aghori or Aghora are a Hindu sect believed to have split off from the Kapalika order in the fourteenth century AD. Many mainstream Hindus condemn them as non-Hindu because of their taboo violation of orthodox practices...
s of northern India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
are a splinter sect of Hinduism
Hinduism
Hinduism is the predominant and indigenous religious tradition of the Indian Subcontinent. Hinduism is known to its followers as , amongst many other expressions...
who practice cannibalism in which they consume the flesh of the dead floated in the Ganges in pursuit of immortality
Immortality
Immortality is the ability to live forever. It is unknown whether human physical immortality is an achievable condition. Biological forms have inherent limitations which may or may not be able to be overcome through medical interventions or engineering...
and supernatural powers. Members of the Aghori drink from human skull
Human skull
The human skull is a bony structure, skeleton, that is in the human head and which supports the structures of the face and forms a cavity for the brain.In humans, the adult skull is normally made up of 22 bones...
s and practice cannibalism in the belief that eating human flesh confers spiritual and physical benefits, such as prevention of aging.
During the 1930s, multiple acts of cannibalism were reported from Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
and Russia's Volga, South Siberian and Kuban regions during the Soviet famine of 1932–1933.
Survival was a moral as well as a physical struggle. A woman doctor wrote to a friend in June 1933 that she had not yet become a cannibal, but was “not sure that I shall not be one by the time my letter reaches you.” The good people died first. Those who refused to steal or to prostitute themselves died. Those who gave food to others died. Those who refused to eat corpses died. Those who refused to kill their fellow man died. ... At least 2,505 people were sentenced for cannibalism in the years 1932 and 1933 in Ukraine, though the actual number of cases was certainly much greater.
Cannibalism was proven to have occurred in China during the Great Leap Forward
Great Leap Forward
The Great Leap Forward of the People's Republic of China was an economic and social campaign of the Communist Party of China , reflected in planning decisions from 1958 to 1961, which aimed to use China's vast population to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy into a modern...
, when rural China was hit hard by drought
Drought
A drought is an extended period of months or years when a region notes a deficiency in its water supply. Generally, this occurs when a region receives consistently below average precipitation. It can have a substantial impact on the ecosystem and agriculture of the affected region...
and famine
Famine
A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including crop failure, overpopulation, or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompanied or followed by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality. Every continent in the world has...
.
Prior to 1931, New York Times reporter William Buehler Seabrook
William Buehler Seabrook
William Buehler Seabrook was an American Lost Generation occultist, explorer, traveller, cannibal, and journalist, born in Westminster, Maryland. He began his career as a reporter and City Editor of the Augusta Chronicle in Georgia...
, allegedly in the interests of research, obtained from a hospital intern at the Sorbonne
Sorbonne
The Sorbonne is an edifice of the Latin Quarter, in Paris, France, which has been the historical house of the former University of Paris...
a chunk of human meat from the body of a healthy human killed in an accident, then cooked and ate it. He reported, "It was like good, fully-developed veal
Veal
Veal is the meat of young cattle , as opposed to meat from older cattle. Though veal can be produced from a calf of either sex and any breed, most veal comes from male calves of dairy cattle breeds...
, 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."
In the gulag
Gulag
The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...
, the Soviet writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was aRussian and Soviet novelist, dramatist, and historian. Through his often-suppressed writings, he helped to raise global awareness of the Gulag, the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system – particularly in The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of...
knew cases of cannibalism. In his book The Gulag Archipelago
The Gulag Archipelago
The Gulag Archipelago is a book by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn based on the Soviet forced labor and concentration camp system. The three-volume book is a narrative relying on eyewitness testimony and primary research material, as well as the author's own experiences as a prisoner in a gulag labor camp...
Solzhenitsyn described cases of cannibalism in 20th-century USSR. Of the famine in Povolzhie
Russian famine of 1921
The Russian famine of 1921, also known as Povolzhye famine, which began in the early spring of that year, and lasted through 1922, was a severe famine that occurred in Bolshevik Russia...
(1921–1922) he wrote: "That horrible famine was up to cannibalism, up to consuming children by their own parents — the famine, which Russia had never known even in Time of Troubles
Time of Troubles
The Time of Troubles was a period of Russian history comprising the years of interregnum between the death of the last Russian Tsar of the Rurik Dynasty, Feodor Ivanovich, in 1598, and the establishment of the Romanov Dynasty in 1613. In 1601-1603, Russia suffered a famine that killed one-third...
[in 1601–1603]..."
He said of the Siege of Leningrad
Siege of Leningrad
The Siege of Leningrad, also known as the Leningrad Blockade was a prolonged military operation resulting from the failure of the German Army Group North to capture Leningrad, now known as Saint Petersburg, in the Eastern Front theatre of World War II. It started on 8 September 1941, when the last...
(1941–1944): "Those who consumed human flesh, or dealt with the human liver trading from dissecting rooms... were accounted as the political criminals..." And of the building of Northern Railway Prisoners Camp ("SevZhelDorLag") Solzhenitsyn reports, "An ordinary hard working political prisoner almost could not survive at that penal camp. In the camp SevZhelDorLag (chief: colonel Klyuchkin) in 1946–47 there were many cases of cannibalism: they cut human bodies, cooked and ate."
The Soviet journalist Yevgenia Ginzburg
Yevgenia Ginzburg
Yevgenia Ginzburg was a Russian author who served an 18-year sentence in the Gulag. Her given name is often Latinized to Eugenia.-Family and early career:...
was a former long-term political prisoner who spent time in the Soviet prisons, Gulag
Gulag
The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...
camps and settlements from 1938 to 1955. She described in her memoir
Memoir
A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...
, Harsh Route (or Steep Route) of a case, which she was directly involved in the late 1940s, after she had been moved to the prisoners' hospital.
...The chief warder shows me the black smoked pot, filled with some food: 'I need your medical expertise regarding this meat.' I look into the pot, and hardly hold vomiting. The fibres of that meat are very small, and don't resemble me anything I have seen before. The skin on some pieces bristles with black hair (...) A former smith from Poltava, Kulesh worked together with Centurashvili. At this time, Centurashvili was only one month away from being discharged from the camp (...) And suddenly he surprisingly disappeared. The wardens looked around the hills, stated Kulesh's evidence, that last time Kulesh had seen his workmate near the fireplace, Kulesh went out to work and Centurashvili left to warm himself more; but when Kulesh returned to the fireplace, Centurashvili had vanished; who knows, maybe he got frozen somewhere in snow, he was a weak guy (...) The wardens searched for two more days, and then assumed that it was an escape case, though they wondered why, since his imprisonment period was almost over (...) The crime was there. Approaching the fireplace, Kulesh killed Centurashvili with an axe, burned his clothes, then dismembered him and hid the pieces in snow, in different places, putting specific marks on each burial place. ... Just yesterday, one body part was found under two crossed logs.
During the 1973 Yom Kippur War, it was reported that a Syrian recruit from Aleppo
Aleppo
Aleppo is the largest city in Syria and the capital of Aleppo Governorate, the most populous Syrian governorate. With an official population of 2,301,570 , expanding to over 2.5 million in the metropolitan area, it is also one of the largest cities in the Levant...
"butchered three [Israeli soldiers] with an ax and decapitated them... He struggled face to face with one of them and, throwing down his ax, managed to break his neck and devour his flesh in front of his comrades." The recruit was subsequently awarded the Medal of the Republic for this "deed of supreme valor".
When Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571
Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571
Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, also known as the Andes flight disaster, and in South America as Miracle in the Andes was a chartered flight carrying 45 people, including a rugby team, their friends, family and associates that crashed in the Andes on October 13, 1972...
crashed into the Andes
Andes
The Andes is the world's longest continental mountain range. It is a continual range of highlands along the western coast of South America. This range is about long, about to wide , and of an average height of about .Along its length, the Andes is split into several ranges, which are separated...
on October 13, 1972, the survivors resorted to eating the deceased during their 72 days in the mountains. Their story was later recounted in the books Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors
Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors
Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors is a 1974 book by the British writer Piers Paul Read documenting the events of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571.-Story:...
and Miracle in the Andes
Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home
Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home is a 2006 book by Nando Parrado and Vince Rause.-Story:Parrado co-wrote the 2006 book Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home, with Vince Rause...
as well as the film Alive
Alive (1993 film)
Alive is a 1993 American movie based upon Piers Paul Read's 1974 book Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, which details the story of a Uruguayan rugby team who were involved in the crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, which crashed into the Andes mountains on October 13, 1972.The film was...
, by Frank Marshall, and the documentaries Alive: 20 Years Later
Alive: 20 Years Later
Alive: 20 Years Later is a 1993 documentary film produced, directed and written by Jill Fullerton-Smith and narrated by Martin Sheen.-Content:...
(1993) and Stranded: I've Come from a Plane that Crashed in the Mountains (2008).
Cannibalism was reported by the journalist Neil Davis during the South East Asian wars of the 1960s and 1970s. Davis reported that Cambodia
Cambodia
Cambodia , officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia...
n troops ritually ate portions of the slain enemy, typically the liver
Liver
The liver is a vital organ present in vertebrates and some other animals. It has a wide range of functions, including detoxification, protein synthesis, and production of biochemicals necessary for digestion...
. 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
Khmer Rouge
The Khmer Rouge literally translated as Red Cambodians was the name given to the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, who were the ruling party in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, led by Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen and Khieu Samphan...
control, and food was strictly rationed, leading to widespread starvation. Any civilian caught participating in cannibalism would have been immediately executed.
North Korea
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea , , is a country in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea...
.
African reports
In the 1980s, Médecins Sans FrontièresMédecins Sans Frontières
' , or Doctors Without Borders, is a secular humanitarian-aid non-governmental organization best known for its projects in war-torn regions and developing countries facing endemic diseases. Its headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland...
, the international medical charity, supplied photographic and other documentary evidence of ritualized cannibal feasts among the participants in Liberia
Liberia
Liberia , officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Sierra Leone on the west, Guinea on the north and Côte d'Ivoire on the east. Liberia's coastline is composed of mostly mangrove forests while the more sparsely populated inland consists of forests that open...
's internecine strife to representatives of Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
who were on a fact-finding mission to the neighboring state of Guinea
Guinea
Guinea , officially the Republic of Guinea , is a country in West Africa. Formerly known as French Guinea , it is today sometimes called Guinea-Conakry to distinguish it from its neighbour Guinea-Bissau. Guinea is divided into eight administrative regions and subdivided into thirty-three prefectures...
. However, Amnesty International declined to publicize this material; the Secretary-General of the organization, Pierre Sane
Pierre Sané
Pierre Sané was UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General for Social and Human Sciences from May 2001 - June 2010. He was Secretary General of Amnesty International from October 1992 to April 2001.-Biography:Born in Dakar, Senegal, in 1949...
, 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.
The self-declared Emperor of the Central African Republic
Central African Republic
The Central African Republic , is a landlocked country in Central Africa. It borders Chad in the north, Sudan in the north east, South Sudan in the east, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo in the south, and Cameroon in the west. The CAR covers a land area of about ,...
, Jean-Bédel Bokassa
Jean-Bédel Bokassa
Jean-Bédel Bokassa , a military officer, was the head of state of the Central African Republic and its successor state, the Central African Empire, from his coup d'état on 1 January 1966 until 20 September 1979...
(Emperor Bokassa I), was tried on 24 October 1986 for several cases of cannibalism although he was never convicted. Between 17 April and 19 April 1979 a number of elementary school students were arrested after they had protested against wearing the expensive, government-required school uniform
School uniform
A school uniform is an outfit—a set of standardized clothes—worn primarily for an educational institution. They are common in primary and secondary schools in various countries . When used, they form the basis of a school's dress code.Traditionally school uniforms have been largely subdued and...
s. Around 100 were killed. Bokassa is said to have participated in the massacre, beating some of the children to death with his cane and allegedly ate some of his victims.
Cannibalism has been reported in several recent African conflicts, including the Second Congo War
Second Congo War
The Second Congo War, also known as Coltan War and the Great War of Africa, began in August 1998 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo , and officially ended in July 2003 when the Transitional Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo took power; however, hostilities continue to this...
, and the civil wars in Liberia
Liberia
Liberia , officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Sierra Leone on the west, Guinea on the north and Côte d'Ivoire on the east. Liberia's coastline is composed of mostly mangrove forests while the more sparsely populated inland consists of forests that open...
and Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone , officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Guinea to the north and east, Liberia to the southeast, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west and southwest. Sierra Leone covers a total area of and has an estimated population between 5.4 and 6.4...
. A U.N. human rights expert reported in July 2007 that sexual atrocities against Congolese women go "far beyond rape" and include sexual slavery
Sexual slavery
Sexual slavery is when unwilling people are coerced into slavery for sexual exploitation. The incidence of sexual slavery by country has been studied and tabulated by UNESCO, with the cooperation of various international agencies...
, forced incest
Incest
Incest is sexual intercourse between close relatives that is usually illegal in the jurisdiction where it takes place and/or is conventionally considered a taboo. The term may apply to sexual activities between: individuals of close "blood relationship"; members of the same household; step...
, and cannibalism. This may be done in desperation, as during peacetime cannibalism is much less frequent; at other times, it is consciously directed at certain groups believed to be relatively helpless, such as Congo Pygmies, even considered subhuman by some other Congolese. It is also reported by some that witch doctor
Witch doctor
A witch doctor originally referred to a type of healer who treated ailments believed to be caused by witchcraft. It is currently used to refer to healers in some third world regions, who use traditional healing rather than contemporary medicine...
s sometimes use the body parts of children in their medicine.In the 1970s the Uganda
Uganda
Uganda , officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. Uganda is also known as the "Pearl of Africa". It is bordered on the east by Kenya, on the north by South Sudan, on the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the southwest by Rwanda, and on the south by...
n dictator Idi Amin
Idi Amin
Idi Amin Dada was a military leader and President of Uganda from 1971 to 1979. Amin joined the British colonial regiment, the King's African Rifles in 1946. Eventually he held the rank of Major General in the post-colonial Ugandan Army and became its Commander before seizing power in the military...
was reputed to practice cannibalism.
In Uganda
Uganda
Uganda , officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. Uganda is also known as the "Pearl of Africa". It is bordered on the east by Kenya, on the north by South Sudan, on the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the southwest by Rwanda, and on the south by...
, the Lord's Liberation Army routinely engage in ritual or magical cannibalism.
Recent examples
Albert FishAlbert Fish
Hamilton Howard "Albert" Fish was an American serial killer. He was also known as the Gray Man, the Werewolf of Wysteria, the Brooklyn Vampire, the Moon Maniac and The Boogey Man. A child rapist and cannibal, he boasted that he "had children in every state," and at one time put the figure at...
(first known victim, 1924) caused much argument over whether he was insane because he consumed his victims. He confessed to molesting more than four hundred children over twenty years and is believed to have murdered somewhere between six and fifteen children. Psychiatrist Frederick Wertham described Fish as looking like “a meek and innocuous little old man, gentle and benevolent, friendly and polite. If you wanted someone to entrust your child to, he would be the one you would choose”. Fish’s most infamous murder is that of a little girl whose flesh he cut into strips, cooked with carrots, onions, and strips of bacon. This excited him sexually. Wertham described how Fish’s account of the culinary process was “like a housewife describing her favorite methods of cooking. You had to remind yourself that this was a little girl he was talking about”. When the same psychiatrist declared Fish mad, Fish disagreed and stated he was just “queer”.
Michael Woodmansee
Michael Woodmansee
Michael Woodmansee was convicted in 1982 of the 1975 murder and cannibalism of Jason Foreman, a five-year-old boy, in Rhode Island.Woodmansee was sentenced to 40 years in prison as a result of a plea bargain, which the prosecutor negotiated to avoid a gruesome trial.Woodmansee was released from...
was convicted in 1983 of kidnapping and killing 5 year old Jason Foreman in 1975 in South Kingstown, Rhode Island
Rhode Island
The state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, more commonly referred to as Rhode Island , is a state in the New England region of the United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area...
. There was evidence at the time that Woodmansee wrote in his journal of eating the flesh of young Jason.
Another serial killer, Jeffrey Dahmer
Jeffrey Dahmer
Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer was an American serial killer and sex offender. Dahmer murdered 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991, with the majority of the murders occurring between 1987 and 1991. His murders involved rape, dismemberment, necrophilia and cannibalism...
of the United States, experimented with cannibalism before his arrest and imprisonment in 1991.
For Andrei Chikatilo
Andrei Chikatilo
Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo was a Ukrainian-born Soviet serial killer, nicknamed the Butcher of Rostov, The Red Ripper or The Rostov Ripper who murdered a minimum of 52 women and children between 1978 and 1990...
(convicted in 1992), eating formed part of the sexual frenzy. It was an extreme extension of the love-bite. It involved biting off his victims' nipples, progressed to slicing off the tips of tongues, cutting off sexual organs, or biting off the boys’ testicles. With female victims, he removed the uterus. Chikatilo said, “I did not so much chew them as bite them, they were so beautiful and elastic”.
A court submission at the trial of perpetrators of the Bodies in barrels murders in South Australia
South Australia
South Australia is a state of Australia in the southern central part of the country. It covers some of the most arid parts of the continent; with a total land area of , it is the fourth largest of Australia's six states and two territories.South Australia shares borders with all of the mainland...
revealed that two of the murderers fried and ate a part of their final victim in 1999.
Dorangel Vargas known as "El comegente", Spanish for "people-eater", was a serial killer
Serial killer
A serial killer, as typically defined, is an individual who has murdered three or more people over a period of more than a month, with down time between the murders, and whose motivation for killing is usually based on psychological gratification...
and cannibal in Venezuela
Venezuela
Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...
. Vargas killed and ate at least 10 men in a period of two years preceding his arrest in 1999.
In March 2001 in Germany, Armin Meiwes
Armin Meiwes
Armin Meiwes is a German man who achieved international notoriety for killing and eating a voluntary victim whom he had found via the Internet. After Meiwes and the victim jointly attempted to eat the victim's severed penis, Meiwes killed his victim and proceeded to eat a large amount of his flesh...
posted an Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
ad asking for "a well-built 18 to 30 year old to be slaughtered and consumed". The ad was answered by Bernd Jürgen Brandes. Meiwes stabbed Brandes in the neck with a kitchen knife, kissing him first then chopped him up into several pieces. He placed several piece of Mr Brandes in the freezer. Over the next few weeks, Meiwes defrosted and cooked parts of Brandes in olive oil and garlic and eventually consumed 20kg of human flesh. Meiwes was convicted of manslaughter
Manslaughter
Manslaughter is a legal term for the killing of a human being, in a manner considered by law as less culpable than murder. The distinction between murder and manslaughter is said to have first been made by the Ancient Athenian lawmaker Dracon in the 7th century BC.The law generally differentiates...
and later, murder. The songs "Mein Teil" by Rammstein
Rammstein
Rammstein is a German Neue Deutsche Härte band from Berlin, formed in 1994. The band consists of members Till Lindemann , Richard Z. Kruspe , Paul H. Landers , Oliver "Ollie" Riedel , Christoph "Doom" Schneider and Christian "Flake" Lorenz...
and "Eaten" by Bloodbath
Bloodbath
Bloodbath is a Swedish death metal supergroup from Stockholm formed in 1998.-History:A year after being formed, the band, then consisting of Mikael Åkerfeldt on vocals, Dan Swanö on drums, Anders "Blakkheim" Nyström on guitar, and Jonas Renkse on bass, released their EP Breeding...
are based on this case.
In a 2003 drug-related case, the rap artist Big Lurch
Big Lurch
Antron Singleton , better known by his stage name Big Lurch, is an American rapper. He is serving a life sentence for murdering 21-year-old female roommate Tynisha Ysais and eating parts of her body while under the influence of PCP in April 2002.During his music career, Singleton worked with such...
was convicted of the murder and partial consumption of an acquaintance while both were under the influence of PCP
Phencyclidine
Phencyclidine , commonly initialized as PCP and known colloquially as angel dust, is a recreational dissociative drug...
.
In February 2004, a 39 year-old Briton named Peter Bryan
Peter Bryan
-Early life:Bryan was born In London on 4 October 1969, his parents were immigrants from Barbados. He was the youngest of seven children. He left school aged 14 or 15 and obtained employment at a clothes stall.-Background:...
from East London was caught after he killed and ate his friend. He had been arrested for murder previously, but was released shortly before this act was committed.
In 2005, in Noida
Noida
Noida , short for the New Okhla Industrial Development Area, is an area in India under the management of the New Okhla Industrial Development Authority . Noida came into administrative existence on 17 April 1976 and celebrates 17 April as "Noida Day". It was set up as part of an urbanization...
, India, a man named Pandher was charged with sexually abusing and eating body parts of children of the nearby areas.
In September 2006, Australian television crews from current affairs programs 60 Minutes and Today Tonight
Today Tonight
Today Tonight is a controversial Australian News and Current Affairs program, produced by the Seven Network and shown weeknightly at in direct competition with rival Nine Network program A Current Affair....
attempted to rescue a six year-old boy who they believed would be ritually eaten by his tribe, the Korowai
Korowai
The korowai, also called the Kolufo, are a people of southeastern Papua . They number about 3,000. Until 1970, they were unaware of the existence of any people besides themselves....
, from West Papua, Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
.
A count of 25 albino Tanzanians have been murdered since March 2007 reportedly through witch doctor
Witch doctor
A witch doctor originally referred to a type of healer who treated ailments believed to be caused by witchcraft. It is currently used to refer to healers in some third world regions, who use traditional healing rather than contemporary medicine...
butchery arising from prevailing superstition. In 2008, Tanzania
Tanzania
The United Republic of Tanzania is a country in East Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique to the south. The country's eastern borders lie on the Indian Ocean.Tanzania is a state...
's President Kikwete publicly condemned witch doctors for killing people with albinism for their body parts, which are thought to bring good luck.
On September 14, 2007, a man named Özgür Dengiz
Özgür Dengiz
Özgür Dengiz is a Turkish serial killer and cannibal. Captured on September 14, 2007 in Ankara, he admitted killing two men, attempting to murder another man and cannibalising one of his victims...
was captured in Ankara
Ankara
Ankara is the capital of Turkey and the country's second largest city after Istanbul. The city has a mean elevation of , and as of 2010 the metropolitan area in the entire Ankara Province had a population of 4.4 million....
, the Turkish
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
capital, after killing and eating a man. After cutting slices of flesh from his victim's body, Dengiz distributed the rest to stray dogs on the street, according to his own testimony. He ate some of the man's flesh raw on his way home. Dengiz, who lived with his parents, arrived at the family house and placed the remaining parts of the body in the fridge without saying a word to his parents.
In January 2008, notorious Liberian ex-rebel and reformed warlord Joshua Blahyi
Joshua Blahyi
Joshua Milton Blahyi , better known by his nom de guerre General Butt Naked, is a former leader for the Liberian warlord Roosevelt Johnson in the First Liberian Civil War known for his fierce, violent and eccentric measures in the first half of the 1990s...
, 37, confessed to participating in human sacrifice
Human sacrifice
Human sacrifice is the act of killing one or more human beings as part of a religious ritual . Its typology closely parallels the various practices of ritual slaughter of animals and of religious sacrifice in general. Human sacrifice has been practised in various cultures throughout history...
s which "included the killing of an innocent child and plucking out the heart
Human heart
The human heart is a muscular organ that provides a continuous blood circulation through the cardiac cycle and is one of the most vital organs in the human body...
, which was divided into pieces for us to eat." The cannibalism of many children occurred during the conflict in which Blahyi fought against Liberia
Liberia
Liberia , officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Sierra Leone on the west, Guinea on the north and Côte d'Ivoire on the east. Liberia's coastline is composed of mostly mangrove forests while the more sparsely populated inland consists of forests that open...
n president Charles Taylor's militia
Militia
The term militia is commonly used today to refer to a military force composed of ordinary citizens to provide defense, emergency law enforcement, or paramilitary service, in times of emergency without being paid a regular salary or committed to a fixed term of service. It is a polyseme with...
.
During the same Charles Taylor's war crime
War crime
War crimes are serious violations of the laws applicable in armed conflict giving rise to individual criminal responsibility...
s trial on March 13, 2008, Joseph Marzah, Taylor's chief of operations and head of Taylor's alleged "death squad", accused Taylor of ordering his soldiers to commit acts of cannibalism against enemies, including peacekeepers and United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
personnel.
The murder of Tim McLean
Murder of Tim McLean
The murder of Tim McLean occurred on the evening of July 30, 2008. McLean, a 22-year-old Canadian man, was stabbed, beheaded and cannibalized while riding a Greyhound Canada bus about west of Portage La Prairie, Manitoba traveling the Trans Canada Highway...
occurred on the evening of July 30, 2008. McLean, a 22-year-old Canadian man, was stabbed, beheaded and cannibalized while riding a Greyhound Canada bus. According to witnesses, McLean was sleeping with his headphones on when the man sitting next to him, Vince Weiguang Li, suddenly produced a large knife and began stabbing McLean in the neck and chest. The attacker then decapitated McLean, severed other body parts, and consumed some of McLean's flesh.
In a documentary by Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
n journalist Hollman Morris, a demobilized paramilitary
Paramilitarism in Colombia
Paramilitarism in Colombia refers to the origins and activities of far right-wing paramilitary groups in Colombia during the 20th century.Right-wing paramilitary groups are the parties considered to be most responsible for human rights violations in Colombia during the later half of the current...
confessed that during the mass killings
Mass murder
Mass murder is the act of murdering a large number of people , typically at the same time or over a relatively short period of time. According to the FBI, mass murder is defined as four or more murders occurring during a particular event with no cooling-off period between the murders...
that take place in Colombia's rural areas, many of the paras performed cannibalism. He also confesses that they were told to drink the blood of their victims in the belief that it would make them want to kill more.
In November 2008, a group of 33 illegal immigrants from the Dominican Republic
Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic is a nation on the island of La Hispaniola, part of the Greater Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean region. The western third of the island is occupied by the nation of Haiti, making Hispaniola one of two Caribbean islands that are shared by two countries...
who were en route to Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...
, resorted to cannibalism after they were lost at sea for over 15 days before being rescued by a U.S. Coast Guard
United States Coast Guard
The United States Coast Guard is a branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven U.S. uniformed services. The Coast Guard is a maritime, military, multi-mission service unique among the military branches for having a maritime law enforcement mission and a federal regulatory agency...
patrol boat.
In January 2009, Maxim Golovatskikh and Yury Mozhnov were accused of murdering and eating 16 year-old Karina Barduchian in Russia.
As of February 9, 2009, five members of the Kulina tribe in Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
were wanted by Brazilian authorities on the charge of murdering, butchering and eating a farmer in a ritual act of cannibalism.
On November 14, 2009, three homeless men in Perm, Russia were arrested for killing and eating the parts of a 25 year-old male victim. The remaining body parts were then sold to a local pie and kebab house.
In April, 2011, in the town of Darya Khan
Darya khan
Darya Khan is a town of Bhakkar District in the Punjab Province of Pakistan. The town is the headquarters of Darya Khan Tehsil. The town of Darya Khan is itself subdivided into two Union councils. During British rule the railway station at Darya Khan was built as part of the North-Western Railway...
, Punjab, Pakistan, two brothers were arrested for eating human corpses stolen from graves. They were cooking body parts for meal when arrested; the police also recovered remains of human body parts from their house.
In August 2011, the police found, along parts of other person's bodies, in Matej Curko's "fridge of horrors", body parts of two Slovakian women who disappeared in 2010.
In September 2011, German media reported that investigators were certain that Henri Haiti killed, dismembered and ate German tourist Stefan Ramin on a round-the-world trip with his partner.
See also
- Albert FishAlbert FishHamilton Howard "Albert" Fish was an American serial killer. He was also known as the Gray Man, the Werewolf of Wysteria, the Brooklyn Vampire, the Moon Maniac and The Boogey Man. A child rapist and cannibal, he boasted that he "had children in every state," and at one time put the figure at...
, an American serial killer and cannibal - Alferd PackerAlferd PackerAlfred G. "Alferd" Packer was an American prospector who was accused of cannibalism during the winter of 1873-1874. First tried for murder, Packer was eventually sentenced to 40 years in prison after being convicted of manslaughter...
, an American prospector, accused but not convicted of cannibalism - AndrophagiAndrophagiAndrophagi was an ancient nation of cannibals north of Scythia , probably in the forests between the upper waters of the Dnepr and Don...
, an ancient nation of cannibals - Armin MeiwesArmin MeiwesArmin Meiwes is a German man who achieved international notoriety for killing and eating a voluntary victim whom he had found via the Internet. After Meiwes and the victim jointly attempted to eat the victim's severed penis, Meiwes killed his victim and proceeded to eat a large amount of his flesh...
, a German cannibal - Asmat peopleAsmat peopleThe Asmat are an ethnic group of New Guinea, residing in the Papua province of Indonesia. Possessing one of the most well-known and vibrant woodcarving traditions in the Pacific, their art is sought by collectors worldwide...
, a Papua group with a reputation of cannibalism - Cannibalism in popular cultureCannibalism in popular cultureCannibalism is a recurring theme in popular culture, especially within the horror genre.-As a cultural norm:In many popular culture works that depict cannibalism, the act has been the cultural norm for a tribe or group of people, normally located in South America...
- Cannibalism (poultry)Cannibalism (poultry)Cannibalism is a behavioural problem that occurs most frequently amongst domestic hens reared for egg production, although it can also occur amongst domestic turkeys, pheasants reared as gamebirds, and other poultry species. Cannibalism occurs when one bird pecks at the skin of another and devours...
- Chijon familyChijon FamilyThe Chijon Family were a South Korean gang of cannibals. The gang was founded in 1993 by Kim Ki-hwan, a former convict, and six other former prisoners and unemployed workers who shared his grudge against the rich....
, a Korean gang that killed and ate rich people - Essex, a sunken whaleship whose sailors resorted to cannibalism for survival
- Homo antecessorHomo antecessorHomo antecessor is an extinct human species dating from 1.2 million to 800,000 years ago, that was discovered by Eudald Carbonell, Juan Luis Arsuaga and J. M. Bermúdez de Castro. H. antecessor is one of the earliest known human varieties in Europe. Various archaeologists and anthropologists have...
, an extinct human species, suspected of practising cannibalism - Issei SagawaIssei Sagawais a Japanese man who in 1981 murdered and cannibalized a Dutch woman named Renée Hartevelt. After his release, he became a minor celebrity in Japan and made a living through the public's interest in his crime.-Early life:...
, a popular Japanese celebrity who killed and ate a fellow student - Jeffrey DahmerJeffrey DahmerJeffrey Lionel Dahmer was an American serial killer and sex offender. Dahmer murdered 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991, with the majority of the murders occurring between 1987 and 1991. His murders involved rape, dismemberment, necrophilia and cannibalism...
, an American serial killer and cannibal - KuruKuru (disease)Kuru is an incurable degenerative neurological disorder that is a type of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, caused by a prion found in humans...
, a cannibalism-related brain disease amongst Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea - Manifesto AntropófagoManifesto AntropófagoThe Manifesto Antropófago was published in 1928 by the Brazilian poet and polemicist Oswald de Andrade. The essay was translated to English in 1991 by Leslie Bary....
, (Cannibal Manifesto in English), a Brazilian poem - Noida serial murders, a widely publicized instance of cannibalism in India
- PlacentophagyPlacentophagyPlacentophagy is the act of mammals eating the placenta of their young after childbirth.The placenta contains high levels of prostaglandin which stimulates involution of the uterus, in effect cleaning the uterus out...
, the act of mammals eating the placenta of their young after childbirth - R v Dudley and StephensR v Dudley and StephensR v Dudley and Stephens [1884] 14 QBD 273 DC is a leading English criminal case that established a precedent, throughout the common law world, that necessity is no defense against a charge of murder. It concerned survival cannibalism following a shipwreck and its purported justification on the...
, an important trial of two men accused of shipwreck cannibalism - Transmissible spongiform encephalopathyTransmissible spongiform encephalopathyTransmissible spongiform encephalopathies , also known as prion diseases, are a group of progressive conditions that affect the brain and nervous system of many animals, including humans. According to the most widespread hypothesis they are transmitted by prions, though some other data suggest an...
, a progressive condition that affect the brain and nervous system of many animals, including humans - Udre UdreUdre UdreRatu Udre Udre was a Fijian chief. He holds the Guinness World Record for “most prolific cannibal”. During the 19th century, Udre Udre reportedly ate between 872 and 999 people. He kept a stone for each body he ate; the stones were placed alongside his tomb in Rakiraki, in northern Viti Levu...
, a Fijian who holds the Guinnness record for cannibalism - VorarephiliaVorarephiliaVorarephilia is a sexual fetish and paraphilia where arousal occurs from the idea of being eaten, eating another, observing this process, or by the general process of eating. The fantasy most frequently involves the victim being swallowed alive, and may or may not include digestion...
, a sexual fetish and paraphilia where arousal occurs from the idea of cannibalism - Wari’ people, an Amerindian tribe that practiced cannibalism
External links
- Is there a relation between cannibalism and amyloidosis?
- All about Cannibalism: The Ancient Taboo in Modern Times (Cannibalism Psychology) at CrimeLibrary.com
- Cannibalism, Víctor Montoya
- The Straight Dope Notes arguing that routine cannibalism is myth
- Did a mob of angry Dutch kill and eat their prime minister? (from The Straight Dope)
- Harry J. Brown, 'Hans Staden among the Tupinambas.'