Cannibalism

CANNIBALISMO. - I. STORIA DELLE CONO-
SCENZE E DISTRIBUZIONE. - The term, synonymous with anthropophagy, derives from the name Caribales, Canibales (Caribs), used to designate the inhabitants of the Lesser Antilles, discovered by Columbus in 1493. These islanders, now extinct, were suspected of feeding on human flesh; hence the extension of their ethnic name to generically indicate the anthropophagi of the New World, and subsequently of the other continents. In the age preceding the great voyages of discovery, cannibalism was known in Europe only through the nebulous accounts of classical authors, or through sporadic mentions by occasional travelers who, like Marco Polo, had verified its existence in distant regions.

Homeric mentions (Od., IX, 285 ff.; X, 116 ff.) of the anthropophagy of the Cyclopes and the Laestrygonians are still entirely legendary; but already in Herodotus there is an attempt at more precise information: the Massagetae and Issedones, inhabitants east of the Caucasus, kill their relatives to eat their flesh (I, 216; IV, 26); the Padaei, the Callanti, and other peoples of India, are accustomed to kill the sick and their very parents when they grow old, in order to devour them (III, 38, 99). Similar accusations were leveled by Strabo against the Irish (IV, 5, 4), the Carmanians west of the Indus (XV, 2, 14), and the inhabitants of the Caucasus. Reports of this kind are recorded by Aristotle, Diodorus Siculus, Ptolemy, etc. Among Latin authors, Caesar reports cannibalism practiced by the Cimbri and Teutones besieged by his armies (VII, 77); Juvenal describes with indignation an atrocious case of collective anthropophagy among the Egyptians of Tentyra, almost excusing by comparison the cannibalism of the Gascons starved by a siege (Sat., XV). Pliny confirms the cannibalism of the Scythians (Iazyges), and reports it on the upper Nile (Nat. hist., VII, 12; VI, 195); Silius Italicus denounces it among the Cantabri; and for Gaul we have, in the mid-4th century, the eyewitness testimony of St. Jerome, who verified the practice in its macabre details among the "Scots," a British people who had immigrated thither (Contra Jovin., II, 7).

The Romanization of the ancient world and the spread of Christianity undoubtedly caused cannibalism to disappear early from many European and Mediterranean regions, even if it was still practiced there, to the point of making its memory almost lost. Throughout the European Middle Ages, and up to the Renaissance, it was believed to have survived in exceptional cases, connected with other nefarious and diabolical practices of witches, sorcerers, and werewolves, in virtually all European countries.

The discovery and gradual exploration of new continents revealed to Europeans the presence of entire peoples still given to cannibalism in an overt and often even public form, and gradually brought to light the realities of the customs, rites, and concepts connected with II. The realization of such widespread anthropophagy produced a very strong impression on the minds of Europeans of the era: thus began the decline of cannibalism, under the dual influence of repressive laws imposed by white colonizers and Christian preaching. Recent studies have nonetheless led to the belief that, independently of the actions of whites, anthropophagy was already in a phase of decline among more than one of the peoples who still practiced II. Today, under the impetus of the aforementioned forces, and indirectly as a consequence of the weakening of the sociological and animological conceptions connected with anthropophagy, it is disappearing everywhere: among numerous formerly cannibalistic peoples in various parts of the oikoumene, it has become repulsive to the very mentality of the younger generations.

Despite this, the very nature of the custom allows us to trace with sufficient completeness the distribution map of cannibalism across the globe as it was a few centuries ago. In fact, unlike other cultural elements that might, especially in the past, have escaped the attention of unprepared observers, cannibalism struck the minds of even the most superficial travelers to such a degree that it can be assumed to have been reported wherever it occurred. Even sporadic or poorly ascertained cases, or even mere suspicions and rumors, were collected and generalized against peoples who, as a whole, did not practice cannibalism; hence the need for caution in evaluating information. Eyewitness accounts are rare. Fear and revulsion on the part of observers, and distrust on the part of the natives, often hindered an accurate assessment of the facts and the concepts associated with them.

The geographical distribution of cannibalism — with the caveat that the environment is not in itself a determining factor of the custom — demonstrates that it is more intensely distributed in the equatorial and tropical zones. In Africa, the area of maximum intensity coincides with the central belt of the continent. Asia is substantially free from cannibalism in its continental part, while more frequent reports come from the peninsular and insular zones. Much more intense is its distribution in Oceania, and particularly in Melanesia and many islands of Polynesia, including New Zealand; in Australia, the areas of maximum intensity are the central, eastern, and south-eastern regions. In the Americas, another area of intensity is the Amazon basin and the western zone of Colombia, as well as various regions of Central America.

II. THE MOTIVES OF C

1) profane c., whose determining motive consists in the physiological desire or necessity to feed on human flesh, either due to a lack of other foods (c. out of hunger or necessity), or due to a depravity of taste that makes human flesh desirable in itself for its particular flavor ("gastronomical" c.). The victims are mostly slaves, captured enemies, and foreigners in general: it is therefore a predominantly "exocannibalic" form.

It is well known that extreme necessity has often provoked aberrant cases of anthropophagy, on the occasion of wars, famines, etc., even among European peoples and in recent times.

2) judicial c.: it has its roots in the collective will to give extreme prominence to the feelings of hatred and execration felt by the community toward individuals who are criminals or have otherwise rendered themselves guilty of serious infractions of tribal ethics. Thus in New Caledonia wrongdoers, especially individuals convicted of witchcraft, are executed and then eaten by the chief; similarly, thieves are punished in the New Hebrides, and among the Batak of Sumatra, in addition to these, insolvent debtors as well. Among certain tribes of the Congo, individuals suspected of black magic who succumb to the poison ordeal are often eaten. An attenuated form of judicial c. is the custom, preserved among islamized Hamitic peoples (Berbers of Morocco, Beja), of ritually drinking the blood of the guilty party condemned to death. This is mostly an "endo-cannibalic" form.

3) magical c. This form, in which human flesh is consumed because it is believed to confer supernatural qualities, or to transmit certain virtues of the deceased to the person who eats it, is much more widespread than the preceding ones, and is practiced by witches and sorcerers even among non-cannibalistic peoples. In southern Australia, sorcerers must eat human flesh to acquire magical strength; in certain regions of India, witches are believed to draw their supernatural gifts from the corpses they feed upon at night. Here, as in Burma, Malaysia, and many parts of Africa, c. is believed to provide witches and magicians with the ability to periodically transform themselves into beasts (tigers, hyenas, leopards, etc.). Sometimes, human flesh is considered to have magical medicinal virtues: thus the Wahche (Tanganyika) believe that eating it renders one invulnerable; cases of similar therapeutic c., suggested by sorcerers, are found in Abyssinia. A very widespread motive for magical c. is the belief that eating a specific organ of the human body transmits the virtues reputed to reside therein: the Ashanti of upper Guinea, the Ovambo of south-western Africa eat the heart of slain enemies in order to assimilate their courage, while elsewhere the liver is chosen for the same purpose; in Polynesia, the eye is often preferred, considered the seat of life or of "mana".

4) ritual c. A completely different psychological and animological complex underlies this form, in which human flesh is eaten because of a ritual obligation and in connection with a cultic process. Here c. is no longer an action performed at the whim of anyone whatsoever, but rather an obligatory custom, implying a duty, linked to rigid ritual practices. The most obvious cases are those in which c. constitutes an essential part of the cult of a divinity conceived as anthropophagous. Thus in Tahiti "man-eaters" is synonymous with "gods" since the latter are believed to devour the souls of the deceased. Well known is the form that c. assumed in pre-Columbian Mexico, linked to complex astral conceptions: just as the sun at its rising devours the stars of the firmament, and just as the eagle, symbol of the solar divinity, feeds on the hearts of enemy prisoners, so the priests ritually devoured the flesh of the victims, whose heart was offered to the Sun-God. More often than not, rather than to the cult of divine beings, ritual anthropophagy is linked to the manistic cult, which constitutes, for example, a fundamental element in the religion of many African cannibal peoples. Among the Jagga of Angola, during funeral ceremonies a human victim is decapitated, whose blood is allowed to trickle onto the tomb to quench the thirst of the deceased: those present also drink part of the blood, while a portion of the flesh is buried near the corpse, and the remainder is eaten by the bystanders. Linked to this conception are others, according to which c. has deep connections with the success of the crops, the rites of passage of youths, the procreative faculties of man and woman, and the vital and mortal cycle of plants and human beings. Connected to similar ideologies among numerous peoples is the custom of eating the flesh of deceased relatives out of a duty of filial piety. Among the Ango of Nigeria, old people are killed and eaten to release their spirit from all illness. Likewise in Australia, and in certain regions of south-eastern Asia. Among the Botocudos of Brazil, who nonetheless have a great sense of family affection, it is the father himself who, feeling himself dying, begs his weeping children to kill and eat him.

V. GROTTANELLI
III. C. IN THE HISTORICAL SUCCESSION OF CULTURES. — At the dawn of ethnological science, the problem was long debated whether c. should be considered a custom proper to all humanity at some early stage of its development. Scholars did not reach an agreement on the question, but the very formulation of such a query demonstrates its evolutionistic inspiration: such a barbarous and repulsive custom to the eyes of modern man lent itself well to forming part of that hypothetical heritage of bestial customs that the materialists of the evolutionistic school attributed en bloc to primitive humanity. This

theory, formulated by Vogt (1873), was developed, among others, by Steinmetz (1896), who sought to demonstrate how indiscriminate and general endocannibalism could be attributed to original man, who lacked "all the motives that restrain more highly evolved men from feeding on corpses." Similar aprioristic deductions are still found in Mac Culloch (1912). It should be noted, however, that even certain authoritative exponents of evolutionism proved skeptical regarding the alleged universal diffusion of c. among the most ancient humanity: thus, for example, Tylor, who concluded that "prehistoric savages were in this respect like those of modern times, neither exempt from c. nor practicing it universally."

The evolutionists in fact lacked, at least initially, on the one hand, secure factual knowledge concerning the presence or absence of c. in prehistory (the most notable and debated testimonies in this regard are due to recent excavations), and on the other hand, an objective criterion to determine the greater or lesser ethnological antiquity of living primitives, a criterion that was introduced by the culture-historical school only at the beginning of the 20th century.

As regards prehistory, it must be noted that findings from the greatest antiquity are neither numerous nor certain enough to justify generalizations for or against the thesis of the existence of widespread Paleolithic c. In the human remains of Krapina (Yugoslavia), La Quina (southern France), Taubach Ehringsdorf (Germany), Monte Circeo (Italy), Ngandong (Java), and recently Whaley (southern England), indices of anthropophagy have been believed to be discerned; but not all authors agree in this regard. When, on the other hand, current hunter-gatherer peoples are examined, to whom an ethnological antiquity corresponding to the Paleolithic is usually attributed, it is found that, apart from rare cases (perhaps due to borrowing), c. is almost unknown to them. The maximum development of c. is instead found among peoples at a further stage of culture, especially among matriarchal agriculturists, and secondarily among totemists and peoples having mixed matriarchal-totemic cultures. With late matriarchy, one reaches the extreme forms of "headhunting" (Dayak in Borneo, Marind-anim, etc.).

It is therefore established that c. is a relatively late cultural phenomenon, and not at all connected to supposed forms of bestial primogeniture. This is also confirmed by the richness and complexity of the sociological and ideological conceptions seen above that are mostly united with it, and that are extraneous to truly primitive cultures. This observation had been unconsciously made by an unsuspected scholar, Lubbock, regarding the cannibals of the Pacific: "the mind is struck with wonder and terror when it considers the mixture of complicated and carefully contrived political systems, highly refined manners, and ceremonious courtesy, with a ferocity and practice of savage vices that probably have no parallel..." Finally, it should be recalled that the simplest and most bestial forms of the custom (profane c.) that some wished to interpret as indices of extreme primitivity, are now judged by Volhard as late forms, having only secondarily lost their magical or spiritual background.