What can you tell me about cannibalism?

I can only teach you this : Cannibalism is when I eat you. Or vice versa.

Not my area of expertise, but I remember reading somewhere that there are a few nasty physical side-effects from cannibalism due to parasites we carry around. Maybe cooking would take care of that, I don’t know.
Somehow, though, all the lore seems to be associated with power in one way or another.

For one, it is damn disgusting.

I don’t know much about it. I’ve heard it done as a practice for power, consuming the heart of your enemy or something.

Uh, when I visited a colonial home thingy, there was this dude there who dressed up as a Native American, and was apparently pretty well versed in their culture. He mentioned that if you were taken alive, you would likely be made to eat the flesh of anyone who was captured with you. Whilst being burned to death, somehow over the course of a couple days…

Oh, and if you ever need to cannibalize somebody for some reason, eat their butt cheeks first.

There are still some cannibalistic tribes in South America, but that is not solely what they eat. They only eat the person if they have committed wrong towards the tribe (Such as casting a spell or hurting another tribe member.)

According to the tribes, human tastes like cassowary and pigs. Also, the cheeks are the best part.

I also have a diagram that shows you the parts of the human you can eat, if that’s not weird at all. :P

@KatetheGreat Can I see? And yeah, from what I know, cannibal tribes are excellent hunters and gatherers. Them eating human flesh is probably pretty rare actually.

There are several cannibalistic tribes throughout the world, and several others with cannibalistic like tendencies. There is one culture that still exists in South America (mainly Peru and Chile) that upon the death of a deceased family member, with cut out a few of the bones of the deceased, carve it into a flute, eat the marrow, and keep that flute with them at all times. They believe that it is a way to communicate with their dead family, and to keep close to them their family spirits in the manner of guardian angels. that’s the little tidbit I’ll share.

@Winters I heard Aztecs practiced a similar thing. Making flutes from leg bones, although I’m unsure if they ate the flesh or marrow. Interesting though.

@Symbeline I actually have it as a poster on my wall at home, so I will try to upload a picture later. It’s quite interesting!

@Winters: That flute thing is kinda sweet, in a macabre kind of way…

@JilltheTooth It’s awesome. :D

Here is a very fascinating, yet very disturbing article about an old (shutdown 9 years ago) social networking site for cannibals.

If you can handle the graphic details in spots, this really is one of the most interesting articles I have read this year.

I’ll have to ask KatawaGrey if she wants a tibia…

@rpm_pseud0name I actually knew someone that belonged to that website. No lie.

@rpm_pseud0name Wow…I’m nowhere near done reading, but now I know where that movie, Grimm Love got its ideas from. Thank you, this is pretty interesting. Plus you can actually see the site, it’s archived. O_O

I find it to be a complex cultural practice, like any other practice, that some peoples practice. I find NatGeo’s sensationalist programming about cannibalism to be deeply problematic and encouraging of the arrogant western mentality that ‘others are barbaric somewhere out there and nothing like that would ever happen amongst civilized white people.’

@Simone_De_Beauvoir Haha wll they better think again, cannibalism happens here too. @rpm_pseud0name posted a link that proves just that.

@Symbeline Of course it does occur everywhere but people’s cultural misunderstanding has little to do with facts, reality or logic.

Don’t quote me on this, but I recall learning about groups (in India or thereabouts?) that cremate their relatives and use the ashes on their food as a way to keep their body in the family.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir Yeah. I mean what is roughly known about cannibalism revolves around beliefs and stuff, but in modern societies that shouldn’t happen so many cases where it does are like, hidden away. Kinda sad how modern societies don’t want to explore things further, and just make movies about it that pretty much defines the subject for people.

@incendiary_dan Which I find to be sweet and compassionate. @Symbeline There was a case not long ago involving cannibalism in a kind of modern way. Two people posted requests online: one wanting to be eaten, another wanting to eat someone and they met and I forget what happened exactly but I’m pretty sure the guy ate the other guy. Anyway, everyone flipped a shit but I thought this is great, they each got what they wanted. What, your sister can use craigslist to get someone to stick a speculum up her ass but when two people consent to do cannibalism, all of a sudden you remember God.

Tastes like chicken.

Really, I was the first to say it?

It solves world hunger.

@jaytkay I heard it tastes like bacon if you cook it.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir Yup, heard about that too, it’s on that link. It is odd. It seems the principle matters more than the action. :/

@Vunessuh Priceless. :) and true

I’ve heard human meat referred to as “long pork”.

I heard it tastes like bacon if you cook it.

Polynesians called it “long pig”.

This is a bit off topic, but I once heard that most carnivorous animals are turned off by human meat. To things like sharks and tigers, we smell like we’re rotten, and they’d rather not eat us. Well sharks ’‘smell’’ by biting, but still, they don’t like us.

Check out a documentary called Keep the River on Your Right. It is about an old Jewish, gay anthropologist who lived at times with Amazonian tribes that practiced cannibalism and he partook in their rituals. There are clips of him being interviewed on the Dick Cavette show.

@Symbeline I wonder if that’s just industrial humans, due to the poor diets. Our body chemistry is not what it’s supposed to be.

Also, I think it’s kind of funny that @jaytkay posted that right after me saying I’d heard it; I’m part Polynesian. :P

@incendiary_dan I heard that before, yeah. We live much older than before through medication and food, but it’s not supposed to be a very healthy form of maintenance.

It’s delicious.

Also, there was a 19th century scientist can’t recall his name who rather scientifically ingested some cooked human and reported on his findings. He said that people are rather gamey in their flavor.

Gamey? You mean people can have a lot of different tastes?

I actually saw this thing on the show MANswers that told what each type of human tasted like. It was interesting.

Here’s the link to the clip.

@Symbeline, yes, I imagine. Depending on their diet.

Here’s the link to the clip.

Ain’t gonna watch that. No way. No how.

@jaytkay It’s really funny!

I don’t watch horror movies, either. Never, ever, ever.

Anyone hear the one about the cannibal who passed his wife on the road?

In the first Sin City, there was Kevin, a guy who ate women because he thought he could get a spiritual bond with them from doing so.

Without looking I can add this:

—There was a Russian fellow that killed and ate someone a few years back, a teenage girl I think. When questioned as to why he did it (at his trial) he said, “I was hungry.” Or something to that effect.

—Windegos (cannibal spirits in some Native American mythology) were narrative form of a cannibalism taboo. You see, according to the myth if you ate human flesh you would turn into one. Disincentive you know.

—Archeologists can identify the practice of cannibalism by looking at bones and poop. If human bones are found in a non-burial location, or more tellingly a cooking or trash disposal site they were very likely eaten. The archeologist can check the bones for the knife marks left on bones from de-fleshing. These marks are unique to the action of de-fleshing a bone and almost universally a sign that the owner of those bones was eaten. Poop, or human coprolite can be checked for specific proteins (or something like that) that will only be present if human flesh was consumed.

—Cannibalism used to be practiced medicinally.

In old school homeopathy (the kind that doesn’t involve dilution) the principle was to treat the problem with a like cure. So if your foot was borked you might be eating powdered foot to get better.

During the crusades the Christians at least once paused long enough to make jerky out of their fallen enemies (Turk-jerky) which they though would make a fantastic cure for…something. I don’t know what.

Somewhere in Asia they had a thing for the medicinal value of honey people. A honey person was a volunteer (as far as I know) who agreed to live on nothing but honey until they were so full of honey and nothing but honey that it was eventually all they excreted. They would died of malnutrition be packed away in honey for a hundreds year and then they would be ready to be served up as prescriptions.

—I love the movie Ravenous.

I know a few of my ancestors were known to eat people. They were starving when the USSR started it’s collective farming, so they resorted to cannibalism. It’s so sad…

I’m cool with cannibalism so long as there isn’t any murder involved. It’s an efficient use of resources.

@Symbeline I know that when cows eat (or are fed) eachother’s brains, it supposedly causes Mad Cow Disease, or Kreutzfelt-Jakobsen or something like that disorder, which is basically the cow’s body attacking the proteins in its own brain (an autoimmune thing)...so therefore, what do humans get if they eat each other’s flesh?

In fact, there is a disease that acts similarly in humans called Fatal Familial Insomnia. The cases documented have not come from people eating each other, but rather from some warped and twisted gene that gets passed down through one branch of a family. The disease progresses like this: a person begins having insomnia, which leads to paranoia, phobias, and panic attacks. These panic attacks last for about five months, and often the person will begin having hallucinations. Since the person CANNOT sleep in any way, weight loss and delirium develop. Eventually, in about six months, full-on dementia will happen, and then the person goes mute, and then is basically stuck inside oneself unable to react or speak, and then…death. Sick way to die, huh?

It’s pretty much the same thing as Mad Cow Disease…the human’s body destroying its own brain. So if we ate each other’s brains…would we get FFI?

Kind of a lengthy side note, but interesting…to me.

Waaay too many calories, go’s straight to the hips.

@ladymia69 So if we ate each other’s brains…would we get FFI?

I don’t see any reason to expect human cannibalism to lead to FFI just because it bears some similarity to mad cow. They are different diseases with different causes and mad cow isn’t even caused by cannibalism, it’s transmitted by it. Cows couldn’t get it from cannibalizing their own kind unless the flesh was infected. FFI isn’t even caused by an infection, it’s the result of a genetic mutation. Last I heard mutation wasn’t contagious.

Unless there is some sort of toxin, contaminant or infection in the human flesh consumed it shouldn’t be any more dangerous than any other sort of meat.

@fundevogel I guess my point is that maybe something similar would occur, some sort of inner protein-eating insanity-causing reaction…I suppose if families ate the brains of their own it would be more likely, but then those who were in the Donner party survived by imbibing flesh, and they went on to California to lead normal (sort of) lives.

@ladymia69 Aye, that’s quite interesting. ...and freaky as shit. I doubt one would get this by eating human brain though. If it’s genes, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work that way. Still, freaky.

I once saw this documentary in school that said that a cause for MCD was what the cows were being fed, but in this case, it was sheep carcasses being mixed into their normal food. A good way to get rid of the dead sheep…until that went on. That same documentary also said that if a human eats meat from a cow that had MCD, they can get some variation of it. Some poor teenage girl was all over the news because of that. That was long ago and I may be mixing shit up though. But if MCD is transferred rather than it being genetic, maybe it makes sense?

@fundevogel WOW…those are some very interesting things you mentioned. Honey people…goddamn. That cannibalism as a way to cure something sounds a bit similar to that thing I read on albino huntings.

Also why am I eating a pizza pop while being in this question…XD

When I was ten I read about people thinking mummies were made of bitumen and eating them as medicine, only to have it worsen their health. I even shared this knowledge with my high school art class (didn’t tell them about the Aztecs removing a person’s heart and showing it to the person before blood stopped flowing to the brain or using human fat to make soap).

In the 1800s a group of pioneers, the Donner Party, got snowed in while traveling to California. Many of them reportedly resorted to cannibalism for survival. I know more since for some reason I read about this stuff and watch stuff about it on TV (one of my favorite movies is “Silence of the Lambs” and I once brought it to school in my senior year of high school by accident).

@V_Scofield We spoke of the Donner Party above…but what are you saying about the Aztecs? Run that by me one more time…

I didn’t notice that the Donner Party was mentioned. I learned about the Aztec thing from my sixth grade Social Studies teacher.

The brain continues working for a moment after the heart stops; basically long enough for the person to think “oh, shit”. For a sacrifice, the Aztecs would have the person they were sacrificing on an altar, wide awake, and they’d cut the person’s beating heart out then show it to the victim before the brain stopped working.

@V_Scofield Are you sure your teacher didn’t get that out of The Temple of Doom?

Even if a person could briefly survive without a heart they would surely pass out from pain during its removal. That would make showing them said heart pretty difficult.

Yes, I’m sure. I’m majoring in history (considering getting a Ph.D) and I had a near perfect grade in Biology. Back in the day before anesthesia surgeries were performed with the patient conscious. They even used to put holes in a person’s skull to relieve pressure from the brain while the person was awake (the patients usually survived for a few years after the procedure). It’s actually lack of oxygen going to the brain that causes loss of consciousness, not pain. Oxygenated blood still flows long enough to sustain bodily functions for a few moments before it flows to where the heart should be. If oxygenated blood didn’t continue flowing to the brain nobody would survive a heart transplant; they’d be brain dead and once the brain stops functioning so does everything else without artificial support (brain dead people are used as organ donors or just taken off support and allowed to die completely).

http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/aztecs/sacrifice.htm
http://health.howstuffworks.com/diseases-conditions/death-dying/brain-death5.htm

@fundevogel Yes, the Aztecs definitely did do this, and sometimes they would burn the heart as an offering to the gods. Basically, they would take a person, usually a captive, and take them up the steps of those grand Aztec pyramid temples, and four priests would hold each limb firmly, and the fifth priest cut open the captive’s chest with an obsidian blade and would take out the heart (some witnessed the heart still beating). The heart would be put into a vessel and burned to (hopefully) satisfy the gods. Then the victim would be rolled down the steps of the temple (this is why the steps are so steep), and the deceased would be taken back to the compound where the body was cut up and cooked with chilies in a stew. Then it was fed to the people. The warrior who killed the captive would not eat it because he was a substitute for all the sins he had committed in war.

This was a normal practice for the Aztecs.

@Ladymia69 My doubt concerned showing the the victim his own heart to freak him out. I just don’t think the human body is resilient enough to remain alive and conscious long enough for the victim to witness and freak out at the sight of their excised heart.

@V_Scofield Still not buying it. Just because some surgeries can be preformed with the patient conscious doesn’t mean you can just bust through a ribcage and remove a heart without the person passing out. The heart wasn’t exactly designed for easy access, especially in a time before electric bone saws.

@fundevogel Every human is slightly different…why do some people go through extreme bodily and mental trauma and come out the other side of it alive, when others don’t? I am sure if you read eyewitness accounts of the Spaniards who came into the Aztec community and watched these sacrificial offerings, one or two would tell you they saw the victim eyeing his own heart before the brain and consciousness faded.

@Ladymia69 “I am sure if you read eyewitness accounts of the Spaniards who came into the Aztec community and watched these sacrificial offerings, one or two would tell you they saw the victim eyeing his own heart before the brain and consciousness faded.”

Yes, and eye witness testimony is universally known to be horribly unreliable. [1] [2] [3] When it sounds impossible as well I’m not likely to believe it’s claims without corroborating evidence.

What sort of evidence can you glean from that time that doesn’t have to do with quickly disintegrating tissues?

@Ladymia69 All kinds of things! And don’t don’t write off forensics. They’ve confirmed cannibalism in the past by analyzing the proteins (or was it amino acids?) in human coprolites (fossilized poo).

Forensics is also a very new science and highly open to individual interpretation, as well as wildly wrong conclusions.

It is true that facts can be interpreted in different ways, not all of them valid. But they are ultimately based on concrete evidence which can always be returned to. The same can not be said of witness statements.

And science is rather brutal when it comes to vetting itself. Scientists loving proving each other wrong so poor conclusions don’t tend to last long.

I can tell you cannibals won’t eat clowns. They taste funny.