Anthropophagy [encyclopedia Entry]

The SAGE Encyclopedia of Food Issues Anthropophagy

Contributors: Arianna Huhn Editors: Ken Albala Book Title: The SAGE Encyclopedia of Food Issues Chapter Title: "Anthropophagy" Pub. Date: 2015 Access Date: August 11, 2015 Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc. City: Thousand Oaks, Print ISBN: 9781452243016 Online ISBN: 9781483346304 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781483346304.n20 Print pages: 43-46

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http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781483346304.n20 Anthropophagy (from Greek, anthropos meaning “human being” and phagein meaning “to eat”) is the ingestion of human tissue by a fellow human being. The practice is more popularly referred to as “cannibalism,” which denotes same-species consumption broadly. Taboos against anthropophagy are a human universal, although some societies sanction eating the dead for ritual or medicinal purpose. The practice is also typically less stigmatized where eating one’s fellows is the only available means for survival. Academics debate the practice of anthropophagy in human evolutionary history as evidence of violent and symbolic behaviors, while confessed, alleged, and conspiring cannibals regularly capture the public’s imagination. In recent decades, anthropophagy has additionally surfaced as an issue of public and personal health, a venue for artistic expression, and a symbol of the atrocities of warfare. This entry discusses all of these topics. It begins with a background on historical evidence of anthropophagy.

Evidence of Anthropophagy Paleoanthropologists suggest that humans have long engaged in anthropophagy, thought to predate the evolution of Homo sapiens in the hominin lineage. Evidence is drawn from several telltale signatures, such as butchering marks on human bones, similar to those found on animals prepared for meals, which suggest marrow extraction, skinning, defleshing, and/or evisceration. Based on remains found in Gran Dolina (Spain), Homo antecessor may have eaten their own kind roughly 780,000 years ago. Charred bones discarded alongside food remains at Klasies River (South Africa) provide evidence of anthropophagy among anatomically modern humans roughly 125,000 years ago. The site of Moula-Guercy (France) additionally yields support for cannibalism among Neanderthals some 100,000 years ago. Archaeologists provide evidence of anthropophagy in more recent human history. Remains found in Gough’s Cave suggest cannibalism among the first settlers to repopulate England following the last Ice Age (approximately 14,700 years ago), for example, and some interpret the disposal and butchery of human remains found in Cowboy Wash, Colorado (United States), as evidence that the Anasazi roasted human flesh over fire in the mid-1100s. Distinguishing cannibalism from ritual treatment can be difficult in the archaeological record, and many supposed cases of cannibalism have Page 3 of 9

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ultimately been refuted or rejected by the scholarly community for lack of sufficient proof. Written reports of anthropophagy among human populations in the modern era are common. These are, however, often unsubstantiated, and sometimes clearly fabricated as a mechanism for dehumanizing neighbors or strangers in foreign lands and justifying their subjugation. Other accounts, such as those found in the Bible, are widely interpreted as allegorical. Several [p. 43 ↓ ] populations self-report practicing ritualized anthropophagy, where a cadaver is consumed for the purpose of absorbing the deceased’s life force or personal characteristics, forgetting the dead, or guiding his or her soul.

Survival and Medicinal Anthropophagy Taboos against anthropophagy are sometimes suspended in situations where no alternative source of sustenance is available. Such was the case during the harsh winter of 1609–1610 in Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in the Americas. Residents cannibalized a 14-year-old girl, dubbed “Jane” by the forensic anthropologists who reconstructed her skeleton, and possibly others. Additional wellknown cases of famished individuals preparing or exhuming corpses for consumption include the 87-person Donner Party, stranded in the Sierra Nevada mountain range en route from Missouri to California (United States) in 1846, and the 1972 crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 that left survivors isolated in the Andes for more than 2 months. Other cases of survival cannibalism involve murder. Alferd Packer, for one, allegedly killed and admittedly ate from his five companions when their prospecting trip was stymied by harsh winter weather in Colorado in 1874. A student cafeteria at the University of Colorado at Boulder memorializes Packer in name and with the sardonic slogan, “Have a friend for lunch.” The 1884 sinking of the Mignonette, an English yacht, is another infamous example of starvation-inspired manslaughter. One survivor was killed by the others and consumed for sustenance after he went unconscious. Two men were tried and convicted for the crime, setting Common Law precedent that made necessity an inadequate defense for murder. Page 4 of 9

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Apart from situations of starvation, culturally permitted consumption of human tissue is predominantly restricted to medicinal contexts. Advocates of placentophagy, for example, argue that ingesting one’s own placenta after giving birth to it can reduce postpartum depression, stimulate milk expression, shrink the uterus, and replenish nutrients. Placentophagy gained much media attention in 2013, when the blogosphere was atwitter with rumors that celebrity moms were embracing the fad, several opting to consume the placenta after it had been dried, ground, and encapsulated. Chinese traditional herbalists have also long used dried placenta for its purported healing properties, and European physicians widely prescribed corpse-derived medicines throughout the Victorian era.

In Popular Culture: “Zombie Apocalypse” The prominence of anthropophagy in popular culture is most notable in the fictional character of zombies—animated human corpses that seek out and devour the living, transforming victims into fellow zombies. The moniker and basic premise of a zombie may be drawn from African-based spiritual traditions (from Haitian Creole, zonbi), but the stock horror fiction character (and their affection for brains) was popularized in George A. Romero’s 1968 film Night of the Living Dead. Beyond the silver screen, the cannibalistic undead feature prominently in comic books and popfiction, and choreographed zombies made Michael Jackson’s 1983 music video Thriller an instant classic. In 2012, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Homeland Security played into fictional depictions of a coming zombie apocalypse (a moment of societal breakdown at which zombies take over the world) and presented separate tongue-in-cheek “zombie preparedness” and “zombie alert” social media campaigns in an effort to increase interest in disaster preparedness.

Prion Diseases There is no veritable evidence of the existence of resurrected “undead” anthropophagous corpses (zombies) or zombie-causing illnesses. Prion diseases (like mad cow disease), however, can spread through cannibalism, effecting spongiform

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encephalopathies (spongy brain), which leads to uncontrolled and uncoordinated muscle movements, [p. 44 ↓ ] painful neurodegeneration, and dementia. Examples of human prion diseases include Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, kuru, and scrapie. Researchers at the University College London controversially asserted in 2003 that common human genetic propensity for resistance to prion diseases is an evolutionary holdover from a period when cannibalism was a regular human source of protein, and only those who could resist prion disease were able to survive.

Anthropophagous Criminals Intermittent news stories of cannibalistic acts emerge from all corners of the globe. Infamous perpetrators include American serial killers Jeffrey Dahmer, who murdered and consumed flesh from 17 victims between 1978 and 1991, and Albert Fish, executed in 1936 for the rape and murder of children he ultimately cannibalized. Other murderers have fed the flesh of their victims to unsuspecting consumers. For example, the German serial killer Fritz Haarmann, the “Butcher of Hannover,” is rumored to have peddled his victims’ flesh as black market pork in the early 20th century. In 2012, Brazilian police apprehended three persons for killing a woman and using her flesh to make empanadas (stuffed pastries) sold as street fare. The case was arrestingly similar to the penny dreadful (a serial fiction publication) exploits of Sweeny Todd, a fictional barber whose murder victims’ flesh is cooked into meat pies. In 2012, there was a spate of flesh-eating crimes in North America. Among these, in January, police arrested Tyree Smith for killing a homeless man, Angel Gonzalez, the previous December. Immediately following the crime, Smith allegedly ate Gonzalez’s brain and eyeball. In May, police enforcement shot dead Rudy Eugene as he chewed on the face of a homeless man, Ronald Poppo, in Miami, Florida. Media initially reported Eugene’s actions as motivated by the consumption of bath salts, a substance contemporaneously in the news for arousing violent behavior. Toxicology reports, however, did not support these claims. The same week in May, a Maryland student admitted to murdering and consuming the brain and heart of his former roommate. Shortly thereafter, a Canadian actor was accused of murdering and cannibalizing a foreign student. Rounding out the year, authorities arrested New York police officer Gilberto Valle for allegedly plotting to kidnap, kill, and eat six women he knew, including Page 6 of 9

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his wife. Valle was convicted in 2013, a decision his defense lawyers argued set dangerous precedent for prosecution based on thoughts, rather than actions. Other anthropophagous criminals are notable for the legal quandaries involved in their cases. Prosecutors of German national Armin Meiwes, for example, struggled to charge him for killing and consuming 20 kilograms of flesh from the body of Bernd Brandes, with the latter’s consent, in 2001. In Germany, as in much of the world, anthropophagy is not in itself illegal, though many who engage in the practice are ultimately tried for murder or, as in the case of Meiwes, lesser crimes such as euthanasia, defiling a corpse, or disturbing the dead. A different sort of quagmire characterized the case of Issei Sagawa, a Japanese national living in France in 1981, when he killed his classmate, Dutch national Renée Hartevelt, had sex with her body, and then consumed her flesh. The French court branded Sagawa insane and extradited him to Japan but refused to release his court documents. Japanese physicians found Sagawa to be sane, though sexually perverted. With no evidence on which to try him and no reason to keep him in a mental health facility, Sagawa was released without serving a sentence and proceeded to live as a minor celebrity in Tokyo.

Art and Politics Some animal rights advocates promote placentophagy as the only acceptable form of carnivory, asserting placenta as the lone animal-derived protein that can be harvested without loss of life. Others are less narrow-minded in their cannibalistic experimentations. In 2007, the Chilean shock-artist Marco Evaristti served an exclusive dinner featuring meatballs cooked in his own fat, which had been removed during an elective liposuction surgery the previous year. He implored his guests to dine by pronouncing them not cannibals if what they were eating was considered to [p. 45 ↓ ] be art. The Tokyo chef Mao Sugiyama, who underwent elective genital-removal surgery in line with his denial of an affiliation with either the male or female gender, cooked and served his penis shaft, testicles, and scrotal skin to five diners in 2012, at the price of $250 per plate. Eating human flesh can also be an act of terror and ultimate sublimation during times of war. Many societies report consuming the flesh of fallen enemies in an effort to Page 7 of 9

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deplete enemy morale and strength. Documents leaked by the dissident Chinese writer Zheng Yi in the early 1990s suggest that members of the Chinese Red Guards and Communist officials in Guangxi province tortured and ate at least 137 accused counterrevolutionaries during the Cultural Revolution. The former Liberian president Charles Taylor was accused at the Hague, the Netherlands, of ordering militia soldiers to eat the flesh of captured soldiers during regional warfare, reportedly so as to “set an example for the people to be afraid.” The rogue rebel leader of the Farouk Brigades, Khalid al Hamad, made headlines in 2013 when images were made public of his biting into a heart he had just cut out from a Syrian regime soldier. While al Hamad’s actions did not characterize those of the broader Syrian opposition, many used them to underscore the ugliness and brutality of the escalating civil war. See alsoDisgust; Famines; Holistic Medicine (New Age) and Diet; Hunger; Mad Cow Disease; Performance Art Using Food AriannaHuhn http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781483346304.n20 Further Readings Arens, W. (1979). The man-eating myth: Anthropology and anthropophagy . New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Askenasy, H. (1994). Cannibalism: From sacrifice to survival . Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. Constantine, N. (2006). A history of cannibalism: From ancient cultures to survival stories and modern psychopaths . Edison, NJ: Chartwell Books. Parrado, N., & Rause, V. (2006). Miracle in the Andes: 72 days on the mountain range and my long trek home . New York, NY: Three Rivers Press. Sanday, P. R. (1986). Divine hunger: Cannibalism as a cultural system . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

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Sugg, R. (2011). Mummies, cannibals, and vampires: The history of corpse medicine from the renaissance to the Victorians . New York, NY: Routledge. Travis-Henikoff, C. A. (2008). Dinner with a cannibal: The complete history of mankind’s oldest taboo . Santa Monica, CA: Santa Monica Press. Walton, P. L. (2004). Our cannibals, ourselves . Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Yi, Z. (1996). Scarlet memorial: Tales of cannibalism in modern China . Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

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