SO WE'RE CANNIBALS, ARE WE? PART II

I promised to examine two aspects of cannibalism in my previous posting. The first one was the claim that some medicine men use children’s body parts in their medicines. I shall examine this in the next article. This one’s just too long. The second thing I promised to examine is the historical accounts of cannibalism. How did this thing start and how had it come to be accepted as a fact that it did occur on the scale on which it is described? In my next and hopefully last posting on cannibalism, I will examine in some detail the case of reports of cannibalism in Africa.

In this article, I will start with the historical accounts of the practice. There is such a plethora of “evidence” that I shall have to limit my rant to two cases. Let us start with this quotation from J. Q. Jacobs , who wrote a really interesting study of portrayals of cannibalism. You can read the entire article here:

Given the degree of reliance on reports of explorers, conquerors, and missionaries in purported cases of cannibalism and sacrifice, it is important to examine and analyze the context of the sources, their particular historical and cultural settings, the paradigms, prejudices, and biases that inform their statements, the political, social, and religious context of their experience, and the motivations underlying their activities and viewpoints. It is also important to examine the history of the documentation containing the hearsay evidence so critical to contemporary paradigms. Such a critical analysis is essential before relying on ethnohistorical data when inferring anthropophagic (human-eating) practices in archaeological contexts.

That should set the context nicely. Jacobs has researched cannibalism and the attitudes underlying its reporting in great detail, and I could hardly hope to outdo him. I shall just, er, “cannibalise” what he has written. His research is valuable in that it quotes and analyses a large and representative body of material. His article is worth reading in its entirety.

The reports of cannibalism that are most present the public consciousness can, in my view, be credited to Christopher Columbus, the man who “discovered” many places that were there before, and gave them wrong names. He’s the guy who called the Caribs cannibals. The name “Carib”
was corrupted into the Spanish word “canibal”, which Columbus used to describe the people he claimed ate human flesh.   As I indicated in my previous article, the Caribs do not find this to be an accurate description.

The next big group of cannibals we hear of is the one “documented” by the Spanish conquistadors, who fought, lied to, cheated, massacred and maligned the Aztecs for their gold.  The Aztecs were overthrown by Cortes, El Conquistador par excellence, in the early 16th century. The Aztecs are said to have eaten human flesh in prodigious quantities, and some of their nobles took a liking to it. Jacobs’s article sheds more light on this purported cannibalism.

But why?

The Caribs think this is the reason:

People with reputation of being cannibals were fair game for exploitation. In 1503, Queen Isabella of Spain decreed that Spaniards could legally enslave only those American Indians who were cannibals (Whitehead, 1984: 70). Spanish colonists thus had a vested economic interest in representing many New World natives as people eaters.

And they go on to say:

Where people-eating savages did not exist, they could be fabricated. There is little doubt that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, some Spanish writers spread unsubstantiated reports of cannibalism in certain native populations (especially those that resisted European domination) as a pretext to justify slave-raiding and as a device to head off interference from Catholic clergy or government officials in Madrid. . Many other colonial-era writings also are of dubious veracity, being secondhand accounts based on rumor and innuendo, not the writer’s own observations. Even when there was no supporting evidence, historical documents tended to treat such allegations as facts.

Even Wikipedia says:

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 anthropophagy were related to distant, non-Hellenic barbarians, or else relegated in myth to the 'primitive' chthonic 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 of his son Pelops. In 1994, printed booklets reported that in a Yugoslavian concentration camp of Manjaca the Bosnian refugees were forced to eat each other's bodies. The reports were false.

Furthermore there is a persistent myth in some Christian circles that Jews  used to and still kill and eat babies. Now, who really believes that Jews kill and eat babies? Anyone out there? Go and kill yourself. You’re not fit to live.

Talking of Christians, the missionaries were often the worst, most inaccurate reporters of native practice. How else could they justify being apostles of greed, self-aggrandisement and exploitation? Here’s  one of them at work.

Even people who make nice movies for children perpetuate these destructive myths. The Carib nation was justifiably irate when Disney shot its Pirates of the Caribbean movie, because they felt they were misrepresented. They were scathing in their criticism of Disney:

Walt Disney Pictures is premising its sequel to its film ''Pirates of the Caribbean'' on the supposed cannibalism of Carib Indians. This is disgusting. It is a bit beyond the time when the present-day children of the Carib people of the Antilles need to be hit in the face, one more time, with the wanton and highly-disputed idea that they descend from cannibals.

To take another tack, I find an interesting parallel between stories of cannibalism practiced by “natives” and the Loch Ness monster. People have not actually provided real documented evidence of its existence, but it is believed to exist.

To put it nicely, knowing how varied our culinary arsenal is in the southern hemisphere, I expect even our least discerning ancestors would have found the palatability of sun-dried white explorers and missionaries debatable.

Sick and twisted minds make money out of this kind of fiction. It is on a par with the sort of thrills one associates with snuff films and completely bizarre sexual practices. See this   page of www.crimelibrary.com about the psychological aspects of cannibalism. I shall have to quote you a little of it. The author is careful to describe it as speculation, but heh, heh, heh, it’s too funny:

Moreover, schizophrenia may also be a significant component in historical accounts of tribal cannibalism. The psychotic features related to schizophrenia have been found to have a significant genetic component, thus it can be passed from generation to generation. Therefore, it is not unlikely that schizophrenia may take root in some small indigenous tribes, which pull from a small gene pool. However, this theory is speculative and has not fully been explored.

This cannibalism branding makes one so angry, one does odd things. I once went to an online forum where some lost soul was waxing condescending about his inherent superiority and how his ancestors had explored the land of my ancestors and so on and so forth. Here is a somewhat amended version of our chat:

“Oh hail, long-lost cousin!” said I.
“What?”
“Yes, we’re cousins. If your ancestor came to the coast around where my people live and never returned, then he was probably eaten by one of my ancestors. So we’re related, because your blood runs in my veins.”

He never chatted with me again.

Comments

[Kwensi]

Rosemary,

Have I you told you lately that I like your style? Your prose is witty, free flowing and relaxed with just a pinch of humour sprinkled on top. Keep up the good work! I really like the way you dealt with your supremacist "cousin". In this era of negative protrayal of people of African descent, we could all use a bit of sarcasm.

[susan]

I found some great fiction book reviews. You can also see those reviews in Historical fiction

[Nkosi]

FETISH KILLERS DISMEMBER NIGERIAN WOMAN
Wed Aug 22, 2007 5:55PM BST

By Tume Ahemba

LAGOS (Reuters) - Killers in search of body parts to make magic charms hacked up a woman and severely injured two girls on remote farmland in central Nigeria, police said on Wednesday.

Scores of people fled villages in the Oju district of Benue state, near the border with Cameroon, as word of the killing spread, prompting authorities to impose a dusk-to-dawn curfew.

"The woman's two ears were cut off, her hands were chopped off, her stomach was ripped open, her heart removed and her vagina was taken away," said a police spokesman from the state capital Makurdi.

Two girls who were with the woman also suffered deep machete cuts but survived the attack and are recovering in a local hospital, he added.

The attack occurred on August 11, but the report reached state police command only on Tuesday because of poor communications.

Killing for rituals is common in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, where many believe witchcraft involving the use of human organs can make them instant millionaires or provide protection.

[well-duh]

Agreed the prevalence of cannibalism have always been inflated in popular reports. Often for political reasons in ancient times.

However, there is a similar downplay of cannibalism in modern "Public Relations" oriented people. Cannibalism did happen and
often for practical reasons (agricultural and military) as well as later religious sophistication.

Anthropologically cannibalism can be proven when bones are gnawed or cooked and broken open. Cannibalism as a social practice is NEITHER unique nor universal to any given race when you look back 2000-5000 years.

We do know Mayans practiced wide scale cannibalism as well as human sacrifice. The Aztec practiced human sacrifice on a large scale. I do not think anthropologists have direct evidence of Spanish claims of cannibalism -- because in fact the Spanish claimed that the cannibalism was limited to elite citizens and certain organs (heart & brain) rather than whole person cookouts.

The Picts are ancient white people who anthropolgists have in fact been proven to practice cannibalism as reported by the Romans...though maybe not for all the reasons assigned by the Romans.

When cannibalism stopped as a rough function of technology advancement and not a function of intelligence. The politically correct historians will have to wait a few score years before claiming universally equal advancement of technology.

Cannibalism generally is limited to a certain level of technological (versus scientific or philosophical or governmental) development. That is cannibalism is usually the result of a combination sporadic agricultural disaster, extremely strong hierarchical rulership, and military superiority. Technology tends to limit strength of government and ameliorate agricultural disaster at least from reaching the top of society.

In fact cannibalism is as often an embarrassment to nations and races as a reminder of recent low rankings in technology and social development as for the act itself.

[well-duh]

Note that claims of cannibalism in Nigeria are based on 3 things.

#1 Cannibalistic governed areas existed in Nigeria as recently as 105 years ago. Thus it is unreasonable to expect that the passing of cannibal traditions from living official practitioner to presently living hidden practitioner has been completely been eliminated. I cite the KKK in the USA is a typical example that strong hidden practice will continue for over 100 years and often will not become isolated practice within 150 years.

The 1904 Niger campaigns were one of the last European colonial military actions against large scale societies that did practice some cannibalism. I really doubt that the cannibalism was a total fabrication though the scale might well have been sensationalized.

Thus Nigeria is stuck as poster child for cannibalism until all but isolated sociopaths and psychopaths are eliminated (no rebels or secret societies).

#2 The resurgence of terror as an accepted military necessity by rebels...a result of perceived low technological ranking versus potential enemies, US or UN as well as government.

Thus we have reports by terrified Nigerians to foreign journalists. Government suppression of unofficial reports is NOT how you convince people it is not happening...especially when the Nigerian government is also suppressing reports of rebel action when foreign reporters can hear the shelling.

#3 Periodic food shortages in some outlying Nigerian areas under going desertification...though this is probably in part rebel hype to make regular Nigerian citizens believe cannibalism is likely.