How to Serve Man: On Cannibalism, Sex, Sacrifice, & the Nature of Eating

Edited by Sam Dresser. From Le Livre des merveilles de Marco Polo. Cannibalism is not uncommon. Humans have long enshrined the consumption of human flesh in sacred ritual — not just a few times, but again and again, in almost every corner of the globe. Evidence for cannibalistic practices has been found in South America, on many Pacific Islands, among some ancient Native American tribes, and in many other regions of the world.

Nor is cannibalism a distant historical fact. Since then, the ritual has become more common. By the early s, sacred cannibalism was a common practice in this near-anarchic country, where violence, rape and drug-abuse are widespread. In such war-torn areas, participants in ritual cannibalism are often happy to make their motivations clear.

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They draw spiritual and physical power from the consumption of human flesh. The practice serves an obvious propagandistic value as well, striking fear into the hearts of enemies. And in child armies, cannibalism is an initiation ritual, an ordeal that transforms a boy into a man, and makes him feel sanctified, empowered and safe under the hails of bullets. Cannibalism has no single, ubiquitous meaning. For ancient Egyptian pharaohs, it guaranteed an eternal afterlife.

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For Druids, it might have been connected with agriculture and fertility. For others, cannibalism has served as a tool of empowerment, intimidation, and a way to honour the beloved dead. But most of all, cannibalism deals in taboo. We often think of taboo in terms of proscribed action: The earliest Homo sapiens bones found in Ethiopia also show signs of de-fleshing by other humans.

Eating people is wrong – but it’s also widespread and sacred

Some anthropologists argue that food shortages must have been a factor, along with the fact that corpses left to rot would attract man-eating predators such as leopards and lions. This was not mere cannibalism-for-survival; it was cannibalism as a sacred practice. Ritualised cannibalism not only survived well into historical times, but was also enshrined in some of the earliest literate cultures — particularly ancient Egypt.

In , the French archaeologist Gaston Maspero broke into a tomb in the vast Egyptian burial ground of Saqqara, outside of Cairo. Cannibalism, as a subject, both fascinates and repels us.

Like a car wreck, we want to look, but hate ourselves for wanting to look -- but it turns out that there's a good reason for thinking about cannibals. They can tell us about many of the most mysterious aspects of our lives, things that are everywhere, but exist beneath our notice. How to Serve Man may make you ask q Cannibalism, as a subject, both fascinates and repels us. How to Serve Man may make you ask questions for which you never knew you wanted answers -- and find that some questions are worthwhile, even when they don't lead to definitive answers.

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Cannibalism - Wikipedia

Lists with This Book. This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Mar 06, Gary Allen added it. Obviously, I've read this Khan rated it it was amazing Jul 28, Kate rated it it was amazing Sep 17, Joanne Parsons added it Apr 30, Size-structured cannibalism has commonly been observed in the wild for a variety of taxa. Vertebrate examples include chimpanzees , where groups of adult males have been observed to attack and consume infants. Filial cannibalism is a specific type of size-structured cannibalism in which adults eat their own offspring.

Vertebrate examples include pigs , where savaging accounts for a sizable percentage of total piglet deaths, and cats. Filial cannibalism is particularly common in teleost fishes, appearing in at least seventeen different families of teleosts. One of these is the energy-based hypothesis, which suggests that fish eat their offspring when they are low on energy as an investment in future reproductive success. In other words, when males of a fish species are low on energy, it might sometimes be beneficial for them to feed on their own offspring to survive and invest in future reproductive success.

Another hypothesis as to the adaptive value of filial cannibalism in teleosts is that it increases density-dependent egg survivorship.

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In other words, filial cannibalism simply increases overall reproductive success by helping the other eggs make it to maturity by thinning out the numbers. Possible explanations as to why this is so include increasing oxygen availability to the remaining eggs, [38] the negative effects of accumulating embryo waste, [39] and predation. In some species of eusocial wasps, such as Polistes chinensis , the reproducing female will kill and feed younger larvae to her older brood.

This occurs under food stressed conditions in order to ensure that the first generation of workers emerges without delay. Males consume broods, which may include their own offspring, when they believe a certain percentage of the brood contains genetic material that is not theirs. The dinosaur Coelophysis was once suspected to practice this form of cannibalism but this turned out to be wrong, although Deinonychus may have done. Skeletal remains from subadults with missing parts are suspected of having been eaten by other Deinonychus , mainly full-grown adults.

Infanticide is the killing of a non-adult animal by an adult of the same species. Infanticide is often, but not always, accompanied by cannibalism.

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It is often displayed in lions ; a male lion encroaching on the territory of a rival pride will often kill any existing cubs fathered by other males; this brings the lionesses into heat more quickly, enabling the invading lion to sire his own young. This is a good example of cannibalistic behavior in a genetic context. In many species of Lepidoptera , such as Cupido minimus and the Indian mealmoth , the first larvae to hatch will consume the other eggs or smaller larvae on the host plant to decrease competition.

Intrauterine cannibalism is a behaviour in some carnivorous species, in which multiple embryos are created at impregnation, but only one or two are born.

The larger or stronger ones consume their less-developed siblings as a source of nutrients. In adelphophagy or embryophagy, the fetus eats sibling embryos, while in oophagy it feeds on eggs. Adelphophagy occurs in some marine gastropods calyptraeids , muricids , vermetids , and buccinids and in some marine annelids Boccardia proboscidia in Spionidae. Intrauterine cannibalism is known to occur in lamnoid sharks [47] such as the sand tiger shark , and in the fire salamander , [48] as well as in some teleost fishes.

Animals have evolved protection to prevent and deter potential predators such as those from their own kind. Often, adults would lay their eggs in crevices, holes, or empty nesting sites to hide their eggs from potential conspecific predators which tend to ingest the eggs for an additional nutritional benefit or to get rid of genetic competition.

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In amphibians, the development of non-aquatic egg deposition has helped increase the survival rates of their young by the evolution of viviparity or direct development. Parental investment in newborns are generally higher during their early stages of development whereby behaviours such as aggression, territorial behaviour, and pregnancy blocking become more apparent. Morphological plasticity helps an individual account for different predation stresses, thereby increasing individual survival rates.

Shifting their morphology plays a key role in their survival, creating bulkier bodies when put into environments where more developed tadpoles were present, to make it difficult for the individuals to swallow them whole. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For other uses, see Cannibalism disambiguation.

The Anthropology of Cannibalism.