CANNIBALISM. -
I. HISTORY OF KNOWLEDGE AND DISTRIBUTION
The term, synonymous with anthropophagy, derives from the name Caribales, Canibales (Caribs), by which were designated the inhabitants of the Lesser Antilles, discovered by Columbus in 1493. These islanders, now extinct, were suspected of eating human flesh; hence the extension of their ethnic name to indicate generically the anthropophages of the New World, and thus of other continents. In the age preceding the great voyages of discovery, cannibalism was known in Europe only through the vague accounts of classical authors, or through sporadic references by some travelers who, like Marco Polo, had observed its existence in distant regions.The Homeric allusions (Od., IX, 285 sq.; X, 116 sq.) to 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 Padei, the Kalati and other peoples of India kill the sick and even their own parents when they grow old, to devour them (III, 38, 99). Strabo makes similar accusations 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 also given by Aristotle, Diodorus Siculus, Ptolemy, etc.
Among Latin authors, Caesar reports on the cannibalism practiced by the Cimbri and Teutones besieged by his armies (VII, 77); Juvenal describes with indignation a terrible case of collective anthropophagy among the Egyptians of Tentyra, almost excusing by comparison the cannibalism of the starving Gascons during a siege (Sat., XV). Pliny confirms the cannibalism of the Scythians (Iazyges), and notes it on the Upper Nile (Nat. hist., VII, 12; VI, 195); Silius Italicus denounces it among the Cantabrians; and for Gaul, in the full 4th century, we have the eyewitness testimony of St. Jerome, who observed the practice in its macabre details among the Scots, a British people who had immigrated there (Contra Jovin., II, 7).
The Romanization of the ancient world and the spread of Christianity undoubtedly caused cannibalism to disappear for a time from many European and Mediterranean regions, if indeed it was still practiced there, so much so that its memory was almost lost. Throughout the European Middle Ages and until the Renaissance, it was believed to have survived only in exceptional cases, linked to other nefarious and diabolical practices of witches, sorcerers and werewolves, in almost all European countries.
The discovery and gradual exploration of new continents revealed to Europeans the presence of entire peoples still openly and often publicly devoted to cannibalism, and gradually made known the customs, rites and conceptions connected with II. The realization of such widespread anthropophagy made a very strong impression on the minds of Europeans at the time: this led to the beginning of the decline of cannibalism, under the dual influence of the repressive laws imposed by white colonizers and Christian preaching. Recent studies, however, have led to the conclusion that, independently of the action of whites, anthropophagy was already in decline among more than one of the peoples who still practiced II. Today, under the impulse of so-called civilizing forces, and indirectly as a consequence of the weakening of sociological and animistic conceptions connected with anthropophagy, it is everywhere disappearing: among numerous peoples, already cannibalistic, in various parts of the ecumene, it has become repugnant even to the mentality of the younger generations.
Despite this, the very nature of the custom allows us to trace with sufficient completeness a map of the distribution of cannibalism across the globe as it was a few centuries ago. Indeed, unlike other cultural elements that may in the past have escaped the notice of unprepared observers, cannibalism so struck the minds of even the most superficial travelers that it can be considered to have been reported wherever it occurred. Even sporadic or poorly attested cases, or even mere suspicions and rumors, were collected and generalized against peoples.
that, taken as a whole, they did not practice cannibalism; hence the need for caution in weighing the evidence. Moreover, eyewitness accounts are rare. Fear and revulsion on the part of observers, and distrust on the part of the indigenous peoples, often prevented an accurate assessment of the facts and of the conceptions connected with them.
The geographical distribution of cannibalism—while bearing in mind that the environment itself is not a determining factor of custom—shows that it is more intensely widespread in equatorial and tropical zones. In Africa, the area of greatest intensity coincides with the central belt of the continent. Asia is substantially free from cannibalism in its continental regions, while more frequent reports come from the peninsular and insular zones. The diffusion is much more intense in Oceania, particularly in Melanesia and in many islands of Polynesia, including New Zealand; in Australia, the areas of greatest 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 FOR CANNIBALISM
Only in recent times, with the possibility of critical and comparative study of a vast quantity of observations on peoples from all continents, has it become possible to consider, on the one hand, the intrinsic nature of anthropophagy in its causes and underlying spirit, and on the other, its origins, diffusion, and development in a historical-cultural sense. In the most exhaustive study conducted to date on the subject—which, however, concerns only the first of the mentioned aspects—Volhard (1939) identified the following fundamental forms:1) Profane cannibalism, whose determining motive consists in the desire or physiological necessity to eat human flesh, either due to a lack of other food (cannibalism out of hunger or necessity) or because of a depraved taste that makes human flesh appetizing in itself for its particular flavor (so-called “gastronomic” cannibalism). Victims are mostly slaves, captured enemies, or foreigners in general; it is therefore a predominantly “exocannibalic” form.
It is well known that extreme necessity has often provoked aberrant cases of anthropophagy, in times of war, famine, etc., even among European peoples in recent ages.
2) Judicial cannibalism: this has its roots in the collective will to give extreme emphasis to the feelings of hatred and execration felt by the community toward individuals guilty of crimes or serious violations of tribal ethics. Thus, in New Caledonia, criminals—especially those 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 thieves, insolvent debtors are also eaten. Among certain tribes of the Congo, individuals suspected of black magic who succumb to the ordeal by poison are often eaten. A mitigated form of judicial cannibalism is the custom, preserved among some Islamized Berber peoples of Morocco and the Beja, of ritually drinking the blood of a condemned criminal.
This is mostly an “endo-cannibalic” form.
3) Magical cannibalism. In this form, human flesh is consumed because it is believed to confer supernatural qualities or to transmit to the eater certain virtues of the deceased. It is much more widespread than the previous forms and is practiced by witches and sorcerers even among non-cannibalistic peoples. In southern Australia, sorcerers must eat human flesh to acquire magical power; in certain regions of India, witches are believed to derive their supernatural abilities from the corpses they consume at night. Here, as in Burma, Malaysia, and many parts of Africa, cannibalism is thought to grant witches and sorcerers the ability to transform periodically into beasts (tigers, hyenas, leopards, etc.). Sometimes, human flesh is considered to possess magical medicinal virtues: thus, the Wahehe of Tanganyika believe that eating it renders one invulnerable; documented cases of such therapeutic cannibalism, suggested by sorcerers, have been recorded from Abyssinia. Another widespread motive for magical cannibalism is the belief that eating a particular organ of the human body transmits the virtues attributed to that organ: the Ashanti of Upper Guinea and the Ovambo of south-western Africa eat the hearts of slain enemies to assimilate their courage, while in other places the liver is chosen for the same purpose; in Polynesia, the eye is often preferred, as it is considered the seat of life or of “mana.”
4) Ritual cannibalism. A quite different psychological and animistic complex underlies this form, in which human flesh is eaten due to a ritual obligation and in relation to a cultural process. Here, cannibalism is no longer an act performed at the whim of anyone, but a compulsory custom, involving a duty, linked to rigid ritual practices. The most obvious cases are those in which cannibalism constitutes an essential part of the cult of a deity conceived as anthropophagous. Thus, in Tahiti, “man-eaters” is synonymous with “gods,” since these are believed to devour the souls of the dead. Well known is the form assumed by cannibalism in pre-Columbian Mexico, linked to complex astral conceptions: just as the sun devours at its rising the stars of the firmament, and as the eagle, symbol of the solar deity, feeds on the hearts of enemy prisoners, so the priests ritually devoured the flesh of the victims, whose hearts were offered to the Sun-God.
More often than not, ritual anthropophagy is linked not to the cult of divine beings but to that of the dead, which constitutes, for example, a fundamental element in the religion of many cannibalistic African peoples. Among the Jagas of Angola, during funeral ceremonies a human victim is beheaded, and his blood is allowed to drip onto the grave to quench the thirst of the deceased; the bystanders also drink some of the blood, while a portion of the flesh is buried with the corpse, and the rest is eaten by those present. To this conception are linked others, according to which cannibalism has deep connections with the success of harvests, rites of maturity for the young, the supplicatory faculties of men and women, and the life and death cycles of plants and human beings. Similar ideologies are connected, among numerous peoples, to the practice of eating, out of a duty of piety, the flesh of deceased relatives. Among the Angos of Nigeria, the elderly are killed and eaten to free their spirits from all illness. The same practice occurs in Australia and in certain regions of South-East Asia. Among the Botocudos of Brazil, who have a strong sense of family affection, it is the father himself, feeling death approaching, who begs his weeping children to kill and eat him.
III. CANNIBALISM IN THE HISTORICAL SUCCESSION OF CULTURES
In the early days of ethnological science, the question was long debated whether cannibalism should be considered a custom proper to all humanity at some ancient stage of its development. Scholars did not reach an agreement on the issue, but the very formulation of the question demonstrates its evolutionary inspiration: a custom so barbaric and repellent to modern eyes lent itself well to being part of that hypothetical heritage of feral customs which the materialists of the evolutionary school attributed wholesale to primitive humanity. ThisThe theory, enunciated by Vogt (1873), was developed, among others, by Steinmetz (1896), who sought to demonstrate how an indiscriminate and general endocannibalism could be attributed to primitive man, who would have lacked "all the motives that deter more highly evolved men from feeding on corpses." Similar a priori inferences are found again in MacCulloch (1912). It should be noted, however, that even certain authoritative exponents of evolutionism were skeptical about the supposed universal diffusion of cannibalism among the earliest humanity: thus, for example, Tylor, who concluded that "primitive prehistoric savages were in this respect like those of modern times, neither exempt from cannibalism nor universally practicing it."
In reality, the evolutionists, at least initially, lacked two things: on the one hand, secure factual knowledge about the presence or absence of cannibalism in prehistory (the most notable and debated evidence in this regard comes from recent excavations), and on the other, an objective criterion for determining the greater or lesser ethnological antiquity of living primitives—a criterion that was introduced by the historical-cultural school only at the beginning of the 20th century.
As regards prehistory, it must be noted that the remains from the greatest antiquity are neither numerous nor sufficiently reliable to justify, at present, generalizations either for or against the thesis of a widespread Paleolithic cannibalism. In the human remains from Krapina (Yugoslavia), La Quina (southern France), Taubach Ehringsdorf (Germany), Monte Circeo (Italy), Ngandong (Java), and recently Whaley (southern England), signs of cannibalism have been thought to be discernible; but not all authors agree on this point. When, on the other hand, one examines present-day hunter-gatherer peoples, to which an ethnological antiquity corresponding to the Paleolithic is usually attributed, it is found that, apart from rare cases (perhaps due to borrowing), cannibalism is almost unknown among them. The greatest development of cannibalism is instead found among peoples at a later stage of culture, especially among matriarchal agriculturalists, and secondarily among totemists and peoples with mixed matriarchal-totemic cultures. With the late matriarchate, one arrives at the extreme forms of "head-hunting" (Dayak in Borneo, Marind-anim, etc.).
It is therefore established that cannibalism is a relatively late cultural phenomenon, not at all connected with present forms of bestial primordiality. This is also confirmed by the richness and complexity of the sociological and ideological conceptions associated with it, which are foreign to truly primitive cultures. This observation had been made unconsciously by a scholar not under suspicion, Lubbock, regarding the cannibals of the Pacific: "the mind is struck with wonder and terror when it considers the mixture of complicated and carefully devised 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 practice (profane cannibalism), which some have sought to interpret as indices of extreme primitiveness, have now been judged by Vellhard as late forms that have secondarily lost their magical or spiritual foundation.