Pratique du Shadowing: How to Eat a Human Being - Apprendre l'anglais à l'oral avec la vidéo
Création de la leçon...
1
This video is brought to you by MUBI, a curated streaming service dedicated to elevating great cinema from all around the globe.
2
It is common to imagine cannibalism as the purview of jungle-dwelling tribes in South America
3
or other remote places in the global south.
4
Yet, virtually every continent around the world has seen some form of cannibalism and this is not only cannibalism for survival,
5
but almost every developed culture has featured socially acceptable cannibalism in one form or another.
6
Although far from commonplace today, cannibalism has existed since literally the dawn of humankind.
7
The motivations for cannibalism can be broken down into four basic types, and we will examine each of these individually.
8
We will look at examples of cannibalism all throughout history.
9
I will explain cannibalism's place within the canon of humanity, but first we have to understand the mere idea.
10
Because, surprisingly, cannibalism is a lot more complex than just humans eating humans.
11
The word cannibal comes from the Spanish word caribol.
12
When he arrived in the Caribbean, Christopher Columbus reported a tribe of man-eaters who plagued the surrounding islands.
13
He called these people the Caribs.
14
The veracity of Columbus' tale has long been debated, and the most recent science indicates that it is not true.
15
We'll talk about that more a bit later in this video.
16
The Caribs were real people, but there really is no archaeological evidence that they engaged in cannibalism.
17
In any case, the derivative word cannibal has stuck in the modern lexicon.
18
To engage in cannibalism does not necessarily only include humans.
19
In fact, cannibalism is astoundingly common in nature.
20
Jaguars, polar bears, sharks, alligators, and other animals all have been reported eating members of their own species.
21
Certain species of frogs, toads, and spiders all consume their young.
22
But I suspect the viewer of this video is more motivated by an interest in human cannibalism.
23
In the human species, cannibalism should really be taken as cannibalisms.
24
The practice can be divided into a few different types.
25
The first is endocannibalism.
26
This refers to the practice of eating individuals in one's own society or community.
27
Most often, endocannibalism exists in funerary rituals, eating the dead in the context of a funeral.
28
Then there is exocannibalism.
29
This is the opposite of endocannibalism.
30
It is the consumption of human flesh from outside one's own community.
31
This often comes in the form of consuming enemies, prisoners of war, or any invading peoples.
32
Most anthropologists categorize cannibalism in one of these two ways, endo or exo.
33
However there is also the related auto-cannibalism.
34
This is the act of eating one's own body.
35
Auto-cannibalism is a loose term.
36
Some scientists would file things like biting your fingernails or licking a paper cut under auto-cannibalism.
37
Others point to more extreme acts, ritual practice, torture, body modification, or some types of self-harm.
38
So why do people eat people?
39
In 2016, archaeologist James Cole published the most comprehensive assessment of the nutritional content of the human body to date.
40
Broadly, he found that humans offer similar sustenance as animals of our size.
41
We are not particularly nutritious or non-nutritious.
42
According to Cole, the human body provides about 125,000 calories altogether.
43
This is certainly a lot at first glance.
44
But as you consider the practical realities of cannibalizing someone, 125,000 calories becomes less impressive.
45
First, people generally exist in communities, so in pre-modern times when cannibalism was decidedly more common,
46
any single source of meat would be distributed among a dozen or likely more individuals.
47
Secondly, 2,000 calories per day may provide an at-rest person suitable nutrition.
48
In times without modern luxuries, when life was just physically more demanding, that requirement quickly would have risen to 3,000 or more calories per day.
49
Additionally, it is just difficult to kill and or butcher a human.
50
Murder would be usually met with dangerous resistance from the victim.
51
Butchery is a laborious task with not insignificant skill requirements.
52
Finally, Cole's estimate includes things like bones and teeth.
53
It would just be difficult to actually consume these parts of a human body.
54
So with all this in mind, hunting game has generally been the preferred method of nutrition for people across the world.
55
It is easier, more efficient, and less destructive to the community.
56
There are societies and cultures which we do not know and will never know. But broadly,
57
it is safe to say cannibalism has generally not been used for physical nourishment as a significant part of any diets.
58
Rather, the practice has existed to serve functions beyond regular sustenance.
59
As I mentioned earlier, there are basically four such functions.
60
The first is cannibalism as a solution.
61
That is to say, there is some problem occurring within a person
62
or a society and the consumption of human flesh is the remedy.
63
There is cannibalism as a culture.
64
This more nebulous function sees cannibalism as part of a ritual that has some significance, often religious, within a group.
65
This tends to overlap with the previous function, but not always.
66
Next is cannibalism for survival, which is probably the most acceptable context of the practice.
67
Think shipwrecks, famines, etc. Lastly, cannibalism as a crime.
68
Why is it that some serial killers go beyond murder and decide to physically consume their victims?
69
There's one more piece of the puzzle as well, one which is more cultural and abstract and maybe even more insightful.
70
But first, let's look at these functions of cannibalism.
71
One of the most significant justifications for cannibalism has been to
72
fix some type of issue to address some specific concern that it was believed consuming human flesh would resolve.
73
The Aztecs are one of the more famous examples of human cannibalism.
74
The Aztec belief system is complex and deep.
75
It could certainly be discussed for hours.
76
But in the interest of brevity, we can safely say that the Aztecs were desperate to keep the gods on their side.
77
They believed that the universe had been destroyed four times already and that their present era,
78
called the fifth sun, began with the gods voluntarily sacrificing their own blood to keep the sun in motion
79
and to maintain the universe.
80
By regularly engaging in human sacrifice, the Aztecs would continue to provide the sun god with blood and prolong the fifth sun.
81
There were a number of annual festivals for this purpose.
82
The most famous involved sacrificing war captives at the top of pyramids and offering their hearts to the sun god.
83
The limbs of these captives became the chief ingredient in a stew of peppers and tomatoes, but only a small handful of families would be allowed to consume this stew.
84
Indeed, you will notice that very little of this really involves eating humans.
85
Cannibalism was a very small part of the Aztec sacrifice.
86
There's no evidence that the Aztecs enjoyed consuming human flesh, nor that they killed people for the sole purpose of cannibalism.
87
We cannot categorically say Aztec people were particularly active or enthusiastic cannibals.
88
European medical cannibalism is also a well-documented phenomenon.
89
In historian Louis Noble's book, Medicinal Cannibalism in Early Modern English Literature and Culture,
90
the author discusses 16th and 17th century medical remedies which centered around consuming human flesh.
91
Egyptian mummies were crumbled into tonics which were said to stop internal bleeding.
92
Human skull was ground and consumed to cure headaches.
93
One famed 17th century medical pioneer brewed a drink to stop excessive bleeding that was a mixture of human skull and chocolate.
94
King Charles II of England famously drank a personal tincture which was a mixture of alcohol and human skull.
95
Drinking blood was also a remarkably popular remedy in the 16th century.
96
German Swiss physician Paracelsus believed that blood had health benefits.
97
Processed blood-based compounds could be found for sale in high-priced apothecaries.
98
The poor could not afford these luxuries, and so it was common practice to purchase cheap, warm blood immediately following public executions.
99
Basically, right from the gallows.
100
One 1679 recipe from a Franciscan apothecary describes how to turn blood into marmalade.
101
European cannibalism is striking in part because it is so well documented.
102
Historical records show that there was a long-standing belief that human flesh or blood could in some way improve one's health.
103
As we move on, though, we can find less concrete, physical justifications for the practice.
104
The Wari are an indigenous people in Brazil who live within the Amazonian rainforest.
105
In their history, the Wari people have practiced two sorts of culturally sanctioned cannibalism.
106
The first was a warfare cannibalism.
107
The body parts of dead enemies were taken back to Wari villages
108
and consumed by those who had not engaged in the fight.
109
As warriors recovered from the battle, they consumed the blood of the dead.
110
This was said to make them strong and virile.
111
Warriors themselves were not actually allowed to eat the flesh, but women and children saw it as a perfectly suitable source of nutrition on the occasions that it was available.
112
The Wari also ate their own den.
113
After a member of the tribe died, the body was laid outside to rot and decompose for several days.
114
The Wari would then cut up the pieces and cook small parts of flesh over open flame.
115
This was a ceremonial custom.
116
They did not see cannibalism as providing sustenance.
117
In fact, Wari custom did not allow for the practice of consuming the dead as a regular part of the diet.
118
The natural decomposition of the flesh prevented them from consuming much human meat anyways.
119
It made the body so disgusting and odorous that it was difficult, and sometimes impossible, to eat.
120
The Wari people still live in Brazil, but they have long since abandoned their traditional cannibalistic practices.
121
The four people of Papua New Guinea also practiced funerary cannibalism, but with devastating effects.
122
The four people observed that if they buried a body it would be eaten by worms.
123
If they left it on the ground it would be eaten by maggots.
124
So the four people believed
125
that being consumed by other members of the tribe was more honorable than either of the other options.
126
The tribe ate every part of the body except for the gallbladder.
127
It was believed that dead bodies could house dangerous spirits so the four women would be the first to consume the meat.
128
By holding the meat in their bodies, the women would essentially tame the spirit.
129
While it wasn't officially part of their custom, the four women would regularly share small scraps of human flesh with their children.
130
In the 1950s, researchers noted that among the 11,004 people, 200 were dying annually from a strange and horrific disease.
131
Tribes people People affected by this disease would have convulsions and break out into fits of uncontrollable laughter.
132
The sufferer would fall into a deep depression, lose their ability to communicate with or interpret the world around them, and eventually die.
133
The four people called the disease Kuru.
134
Researchers discovered that Kuru was a progressive brain disease caused by an infectious type of protein called a prion.
135
This prion was able to compel normal proteins in the nervous system to fold and warp, which essentially punched holes in the brain.
136
Kuru likely started when an individual from the tribe was born with a rare brain disorder called Kreutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
137
This should have only affected that individual, but when other tribespeople consumed his brain, they also consumed the prion that caused the disease.
138
It can take 10 to 15 years for a person to even show symptoms of Kuru after they have contracted it.
139
Because of this, the four people would have been unable to identify whose brain was originally contaminated and who ate it,
140
and so Kuru spread throughout generations of the tribe.
141
Clearly, cannibalism can kill, but it can also sustain,
142
it can and has saved the lives of people in dire situations.
143
Maybe the most acceptable form of cannibalism is that of survival cannibalism.
144
Certainly history has provided us with plenty examples of this phenomenon.
145
The Donner Party is probably the most well-known and well-mythologized story of survival cannibalism.
146
The Donner Party saw an expedition get stuck in California in 1846 before eventually resorting to eating dead bodies.
147
The circumstances surrounding the Donner Party are mysterious.
148
Volumes, hours, books have been produced about this particular journey.
149
In fact, so much so that covering it in detail here would feel redundant.
150
Thankfully, within nautical history, it is tremendously easy to find well-documented examples of survival cannibalism.
151
The practice has been so widespread, in fact, that it's earned its own nickname, the Custom of the Sea.
152
One particularly famous case is that of the French shipwreck the Meduse, Bound for Senegal, the ship became stuck in the sand just off the African coast.
153
There were five lifeboats and the coast was only 40 miles away.
154
The crew constructed a large life raft which accommodated about 150 people.
155
Unfortunately, these cooler heads did not prevail.
156
Violence swept through the survivors and a number of crew members were killed while others were pushed overboard off the raft.
157
Rations dwindled and survivors began to dry pieces of human flesh in the sunlight for consumption.
158
A rescue ship eventually found the raft, but only 15 men were alive of the original 150.
159
In 1820, the ship the Essex was sunk by a sperm whale, leaving its crew stranded on a nearby island.
160
There, the crew held a lottery and consumed the unlucky winner.
161
In 1844, the Francis Spate sunk and the 15 survivors also held a lottery, eventually killing and consuming two cabin boys.
162
There's also the Uxine, in
163
which the crew elected to consume a young Italian boy after their lifeboats capsized and they lost all provisions.
164
None of these survivors faced any type of legal ramifications for their acts of cannibalism.
165
But the age of sale was not as anarchical as maybe we are inclined to think.
166
Indeed, cannibalism at sea became such a prevalent issue that legal bodies were eventually all but forced to intervene.
167
In 1884, the British yacht the Minionette was en route to Sydney, Australia.
168
The yacht had four crew members, Captain Tom Dudley, first mate Edwin Stevens, Edmund Brooks, and 17-year-old cabin boy Richard Parker.
169
The crew made it onto a lifeboat and even brought with them some provisions, but the food quickly ran out, and before long they were left without food or water.
170
The cabin boy, Richard Parker, started drinking seawater and fell extremely ill.
171
Captain Tom Dudley believed Parker to be dying, so he stabbed the boy four times to death.
172
The men survived by eating the boy's body for 24 days until they were rescued by a German ship.
173
When the remaining men returned home, they were brought on criminal charges, mostly because they had not held a lottery to determine who would be eaten.
174
Ultimately, the courts did not see the act as murder, and the surviving men were sentenced to just six months in jail.
175
A more recent episode of survival cannibalism can be found in the story of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571.
176
In 1972, that flight was carrying the old Christian's rugby team en route to Chile, along with family and friends of the squad.
177
Many of the people on board could be described as social elites.
178
Among them were two of the president's nephews, the sons of a renowned heart surgeon and a famous painter.
179
The plane's route took them over the Andes Mountains, which are notoriously dangerous skies.
180
To navigate through these areas, the crew decided to take the Planchon Pass.
181
An hour after takeoff, the co-pilot was flying the plane and believed he had navigated the pass successfully.
182
He took a hard right and quickly learned that he had not completed the pass.
183
The maneuver took him directly into the mountains.
184
One wing hit a mountainside and broke off, pulling with it the tail section and seven passengers.
185
The other wing fell off immediately afterward and the cabin fell into the mountains.
186
It slid down the slopes before resting in deep pearl-white snow.
187
For the survivors, there could hardly be a worse place to be stranded.
188
They were at 11,500 feet elevation.
189
Nighttime in the area could see temperatures as low as negative 22 degrees Fahrenheit.
190
Around the plane there was only snow and mountains, no trace of anything even remotely habitable.
191
The plane was white, which made it completely invisible against the snow to any would-be rescuers from above.
192
When the plane crashed, there were 33 survivors of the original 45 passengers.
193
During the first night, five more people died.
194
The remaining 28 had very little food and water.
195
Some chocolate, a box of crackers, a jar of jam, some wine, and some brandy.
196
They also had a radio which, now broken, would receive signals but could not transmit.
197
The team heard on the radio that a search was underway.
198
So, for the first few days, they ate small portions of the food they had and hoped for a rescue.
199
No rescue came.
200
On the eighth day, another passenger died from injuries sustained in the crash.
201
Two days later, the survivors heard on their radio that the search for their plane had been stopped.
202
They were presumed dead.
203
One of the survivors, named Robert Canessa, was a medical student.
204
He had some basic understanding of human nutrition.
205
Although the group had joked about cannibalism, Canessa argued that it was time to make a decision.
206
He said that they needed to eat the bodies of their dead teammates or they too would die.
207
He They said that no one was coming to save them, so at some point, some of the survivors would need to hike to find help.
208
But without proper nutrition, they would not be able to walk.
209
Furthermore, it was now or never.
210
Without any food, they wouldn't even have the energy to cut up the bodies.
211
Knessa also knew that the frigid temperatures would have frozen the corpses, making them reasonably safe to consume.
212
There was also a religious angle to Knessa's arguments.
213
He said that it was just meat.
214
Their souls had departed their bodies and were now in heaven.
215
Some in favor compared it to Holy Communion.
216
They said that Christ died and gave his body to humankind for spiritual health.
217
Their friends had died and now could give their bodies for physical health.
218
Some in opposition noted that this was disrespectful to their memories.
219
But another passenger, Zerbino, said if his dead body could keep his friends alive, he would want them to eat it.
220
The conversation ended with most of the survivors in favor of cannibalism.
221
The next day, the final two holdouts were a couple of young parents who agreed they owed it to their children to eat the flesh.
222
Knessa used a shard of glass to cut several strips of meat from a body.
223
He laid them out in the sun to defrost and told the survivors that the strips were there.
224
If anyone wanted to eat the meat, they could have it.
225
This way, the survivors would not need to know who exactly they were eating.
226
Knessa himself was the first to eat the flesh.
227
After he broke the taboo, the other survivors did the same.
228
Some people ate it raw, others managed to cook the flesh using what little fuel they had on board.
229
Their rations were not infinite though.
230
As supplies dwindled, Knessa encouraged people to consume nutrient-dense organs like the heart and the liver.
231
A week went by without any deaths, but again, even with the advent of their new diet, the passengers would not survive forever.
232
The group resolved for an expedition to find help, but before they set out, two avalanches struck the plane in a single day, killing eight more of the survivors.
233
Eventually, though, a small group led by Knessa set out to find help.
234
At least, to find something besides snow.
235
After four days of walking, they reached the end of the snow.
236
They found grass and birds and flowers.
237
The group met a Chilean man who connected them with the local authorities.
238
After 71 days, the group was saved.
239
The story attracted media attention from around the globe news finally broke that the survivors resorted to cannibalism, public outrage was immense.
240
The Catholic Church soon intervened, however, publicly, saying that the boys had made the right decision in the eyes of God.
241
Typically we consider survival cannibalism as a simple question.
242
You eat someone or you die.
243
It feels quite binary.
244
But anthropologists have suggested that there's actually a network of decisions which goes into consuming human flesh.
245
Every decision to eat an individual is set against a backdrop of cultural norms, relationships to the individual, and personal convictions.
246
There's also a series of mechanical choices you must make when eating a person.
247
Who do you eat?
248
Which parts do you eat?
249
Anthropologists have actually identified a series of patterns which tend to emerge in survival cannibalism situations.
250
First and probably, unsurprisingly, cannibalism is an absolute last resort.
251
People will consume virtually anything before consuming human flesh.
252
The second pattern is that people generally will not consume close relatives
253
and are more inclined to eat members of other races or identifiable outside groups.
254
The third is that people generally do not consume the face, fingers, hands, and genitals.
255
These parts are often associated with some degree of humanity and even personhood.
256
But the last pattern is that when other portions of meat have been exhausted, individuals will will readily consume these previously unwanted parts.
257
So that's three of four functions of cannibalism.
258
But there is one final context.
259
The most heinous examples of cannibalism are likely those that come from a place of crime.
260
Mentally deranged individuals killing and eating victims.
261
This is where my own personal sensibilities conflict with this video essay.
262
I don't find true crime as a genre particularly compelling.
263
I think it's generally exploitative and often void of substance.
264
So I will not be recounting specific criminal cannibals in this video or their deeds.
265
These subjects have been explored endlessly and then some.
266
I do think it is more interesting
267
and even relevant to this particular topic to explore what exactly makes an individual go from serial killer to cannibal.
268
The science on that is still murky.
269
But in 2023, Abby Marinoa and David A.
270
Keatley published a paper called An Investigation into the Association Between Cannibalism and Serial Killers.
271
In this study, the researchers examined 42 cannibalistic serial killers alongside 42 non-cannibalistic serial killers.
272
The researchers investigated a number of variables in these two groups and found some distinct patterns.
273
Certainly, it should be said that this is a small sample size, but thankfully, a small sample size is all we will ever have when discussing cannibalistic serial killers.
274
There just aren't that many of them.
275
The researchers themselves note that these correlations do not necessarily indicate cause, but they are worth discussing.
276
Cannibals had four times the rate of physical brain abnormalities.
277
They had a much higher incidence of birth defects than their non-cannibal counterparts.
278
They also had much lower social standings in their youth.
279
The data further suggests a more profound pattern of criminal history and criminal family history within cannibals.
280
However, the study provides very little in the way of a conclusion.
281
So many of these variables are intersectional.
282
For example, does a lower socioeconomic standing and a family criminal history really indicate future cannibalism?
283
These two traits likely feed off one another, and I suspect there are a lot of non-cannibal criminals who share them as well.
284
There are a number of psychological theories to explain why criminals engage in cannibalism.
285
Some point to an over-reliance on the mother during childhood.
286
Others say that cannibals experience some sudden onset of trauma.
287
But this is all just theory and speculation.
288
There's very little hard research on the subject, likely because there just isn't much to research.
289
It is a comparatively rare phenomenon.
290
I also think that it's comparatively uninteresting.
291
The act of cannibalizing a human being in the criminal context seems like such a violent aberration
292
that I wonder if there's anything we can learn, culturally or otherwise, from such an act.
293
However, when we examine mankind's relationship to the idea of cannibalism, we do open the door to more significant cultural conversations.
294
We could say that cannibalism as a term, a taboo, a horrific deed was invented when Columbus reported the Caribs to Spain.
295
But the act of our species consuming one another has been occurring for much, much longer.
296
At a dig site in Ardèche, France, scientists found both human and deer bone pieces.
297
On the deer skulls, markings indicated that the Neanderthals smashed open the skull to eat the animals' brains.
298
The human skulls showed the exact same markings.
299
Scientists determined that early humans filleted the chewing muscles from the heads of two young neanderthals,
300
sliced out the tongue of at least one and smashed the leg bone of a large adult to get to the marrow.
301
The scientists did note that all neanderthals were not cannibals, but instead that in times of need neanderthals did resort to survival cannibalism.
302
The Krappina neanderthal site in Croatia is one of the largest most significant finds in the current landscape of paleoanthropology.
303
First excavated the cave in 1899, finding the remains of over 80 individuals and the complete skeletons of over 24 Neanderthals.
304
Many of these bodies showed marks that clearly indicated butchery.
305
Scientists believe the Neanderthals broke open bones to remove marrow and bashed open skulls to access brains.
306
These are just two dig sites, but evidence for Neanderthal cannibalism has been found in numerous others around the globe,
307
so cannibalism has always been with us one way or the other.
308
In fact, it predates us.
309
But if we look to more recent history.
310
We can see cannibalism taking shape as a cultural idea, a cultural tool even.
311
Juvenal was a Roman satirist in the second century AD.
312
He lived in the Roman Empire's capital city, which was a diverse place full of people from conquered Roman lands.
313
Juvenal did not like that fact.
314
He wanted Rome to be full of Romans.
315
Much of his satire centered around this xenophobia.
316
Juvenal's 15th work is set in Egypt.
317
In the satire, he tells a story about mob violence amongst Egyptians which culminates in what is basically a cannibalistic orgy.
318
This is one of the first examples of the cannibal label being used to debase foreign populations
319
or to paint some group as savages.
320
However, it is certainly not the last example.
321
When Christopher Columbus first deemed the Caribs as cannibals, this was not just out of some arbitrary, aimless notion.
322
Instead, it was a point he used to repeatedly lobby Queen Isabella of Spain to colonize and enslave the indigenous people.
323
Cannibals were subhuman, so enslavement was more acceptable when it came to the Caribs.
324
Quote, These are cannibals, a people very savage and suitable for the purpose, and well-made, and of very good intelligence.
325
We believe that they, having abandoned that inhumanity, will be better than any other slaves.
326
And Columbus's strategy worked.
327
In 1503, Isabella issued the following declaration.
328
Being as they are hardened in their bad habits of idolatry and cannibalism, it was agreed that I should issue this decree.
329
I hereby give license and permission to capture them, paying us the share that belongs to us, and to sell them and utilize their services without incurring any penalty thereby.
330
Indeed, early colonial accounts of cannibalism are both commonplace and often unreliable for this very reason.
331
The label of cannibal was used time and time again to categorize groups as uncivilized, to justify colonial pursuits or geopolitical power plays.
332
Eventually, and maybe predictably, the pendulum of cannibalism as a concept swung wildly in the other direction.
333
In the 1970s, William Ahrens published a book called The Man-Eating Myth.
334
In his book, Ahrens argued that there had never been an instance of culturally sanctioned cannibalism in the history of mankind.
335
He said that the entire notion of cannibalism was, in fact, only a tool for subjugation.
336
In the book, he chastised early explorers for throwing the label around dishonestly, and he went on to criticize modern anthropologists for their continuation of this tradition.
337
The Man-Eating Myth was a provocative publication that caused the mass re-evaluation of cannibalism within human history.
338
It attracted widespread attention and conversation.
339
It is seen as a landmark publication.
340
Unfortunately, the Man-Eating Myth is also recognized as completely false.
341
Ahren's thesis was
342
that it is impossible to find a single piece of firm
343
evidence for socially acceptable cannibalism having ever occurred anywhere in the world.
344
There are a lot of problems with this thesis, most broadly that Ahren's work does not really lead one to that conclusion.
345
Ahrens put a huge emphasis on the idea of cannibalism as an observable phenomenon.
346
Because he did not find, quote, reliable eyewitness accounts, Ahrens didn't think cannibalism was real.
347
But this doesn't really make sense.
348
Things can happen that no one witnesses.
349
Priests masturbate in monasteries.
350
During the era of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, people engaged in homosexuality while serving in the military.
351
Throughout the work, Ahrens seeks acceptable evidence without ever specifying what exactly qualifies as acceptable.
352
He takes a rather nebulous, fluid approach to rejecting accounts of cannibalism.
353
As a result, his arguments are often incoherent, inconsistent, and arbitrary.
354
Another issue was Aaron's obsession with cannibalism in the global south.
355
He believed that allegations of cannibalism were largely rooted in racism, so perhaps it is understandable that he would focus on non-white areas of the world.
356
But in doing so, he ignored almost the entire well-documented history of European cannibalism.
357
Really though, there's a large list of problems with Aaron's work.
358
The most significant is that in trying to prove cannibalism was a racist construct, He was himself being racist.
359
Ahrens broadly operates from the perspective that cannibalism is an abhorrent practice, that it was essentially an unthinkable act.
360
But this is a European opinion, and so Ahrens was really expecting and projecting European values onto the rest of the world.
361
If Europe believed X, surely it was a universally accepted idea.
362
This perspective is perhaps more ethnocentrist than outright racist, but it is an existential flaw in Ahrens' work.
363
Ahrens was wrong.
364
Cannibalism is a real thing.
365
There are plenty of well-documented cases of cannibalistic behavior in humans from all around the world.
366
However, the man-eating myth does carry some truth.
367
Cannibalism has been used often as a racist and dehumanizing strategy.
368
Specifically, the label of cannibalism has a remarkable tendency to be used to describe other people rather than one's own society.
369
Even the word Carib itself describes not a behavior but a foreign place.
370
While Europeans were drinking tonics made of human skull, they were labeling distant civilizations as subhuman cannibals.
371
For example, placentophagy is the act of eating the placenta and afterbirth components during and after a woman has a child.
372
This behavior is actually pretty common among mammals and can be seen in primates as well.
373
In the 1970s, North American women began eating their placentas as sort of a fringe New Age practice.
374
Today, it is not common, but it is also not entirely rare.
375
However, despite consuming human flesh, I doubt any placenta-eating mothers would describe what they are doing as cannibalism.
376
I would hesitate to make any broad-reaching prescriptions on the basis of this, but it is worth noting, cannibals are almost always other people.
377
The entire cannibalism conversation brings to mind the idea of cultural relativism.
378
This concept says morals, ethics, and social standards should be seen within the context of their creation.
379
We should not measure other cultures by the values of our own.
380
Our culture not doing X does not make X the wrong thing to do.
381
Cannibalism pushes the boundaries of cultural relativism to such a degree that the practice essentially breaks its framework.
382
I think the overwhelming majority of humans, if asked, would say that cannibalism is wrong.
383
Many might even say that being a human fundamentally precludes cannibalism.
384
We do not eat other people.
385
That is just not part of being human.
386
But as we come to understand cannibalism a little more holistically, we find that this may be false.
387
Humans do eat other humans in a huge variety of ways, only some of which have any kind of malevolent driving intent.
388
I don't know if cannibalism is right or wrong or neither or both, but it certainly is more meaningful than pure barbarism.
389
Cannibalism is never really about eating people.
390
It is about spirituality, culture, survival, criminal activity, or even political machinations.
391
Understanding the particulars of cannibalism probably will not save the world, or even change your life.
392
But I think broadly, learning about the human species in a way
393
that is thoughtful and that is specific can enrich our experience with the world.
394
It helps us know what it means to be human, cannibal or otherwise.
395
MUBI is a curated streaming service dedicated to elevating great cinema from all around the globe.
396
From iconic directors to emerging auteurs, there's always something new to discover.
397
With MUBI, each and every film is hand-selected by its team of curators.
398
Discover the best of cinema at your fingertips, streaming anytime, anywhere.
399
This weekend I watched Kelly Reichardt's River of Grass, a 1994 movie about a couple on the lam in South Florida.
400
It's gritty, compelling, funny, and perfectly 90s.
401
A great snapshot of place, time, and people.
402
You can try MUBI free for 30 days at mubi.com slash horses.
403
That's m-u-b-i dot com slash horses for a whole month of great cinema for free.
📺 Même chaîne
✨ Vidéo recommandée
B23
155 phrases
Why Ancient Humans Were The Most TERRIFYING Animal Alive
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C115
43 phrases
Candy Corn In Space
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C141
96 phrases
Milk. White Poison or Healthy Drink?
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C13
31 phrases
4 Subject Link 6 C1
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C173
15 phrases
Could Humans Evolve Flight?
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C110
168 phrases
The Agricultural Revolution: Crash Course World History #1
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepCambridge Exam Prep
C111
14 phrases
Rơi vào hồ cá Piranha | TED-Ed | Học Tiếng Anh song ngữ #shorts #hoctienganh #tienganh #ted #piranha
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B22
91 phrases
Less Than Human
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C12
63 phrases
Unit 6: ANTHROPOLOGY/BIOLOGY: The Science of Love (Note-taking)
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B234
31 phrases
Untangled: What's eating our planet?
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B2291 phrases
Why did white men conquer the world?
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C11
364 phrases
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari | Read by Derek Perkins | Penguin Audiobooks
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
Vocabulaire et conseils d’expression pour cette leçon
Cette leçon d’expression orale de niveau B2 s’appuie sur la vidéo « How to Eat a Human Being ». Cette vidéo contient 403 phrases et 5648 mots à répéter en shadowing. La partie parlée dure 35:33. Le locuteur parle à un rythme naturel d’environ 159 mots par minute, proche d’une conversation courante. Seuls 76 % des mots font partie des 3 000 mots les plus courants en anglais, le vocabulaire est donc exigeant.
Vocabulaire clé de cette vidéo
Les 15 mots les plus avancés de la vidéo, avec leur prononciation et leur sens :
| Mot | Prononciation | Sens |
|---|---|---|
| cannibalism nom | /ˈkanɪbəlɪz(ə)m/ | cannibalisme |
| consume verbe | /kənˈsum/ | consommer |
| cannibal nom | /ˈkænɪbəl/ | cannibale |
| flesh nom | /flɛʃ/ | chair |
| survivor nom | /sɚˈvaɪvɚ/ | survivant, survivante |
| cannibalistic adjectif | /kæn.ə.bəˈlɪs.tɪk/ | cannibale |
| researcher nom | /ˈɹiˌsɝ.t͡ʃɚ/ | chercheur, chercheuse |
| nutrition nom | /njuːˈtɹɪʃ.ən/ | nutrition |
| anthropologist nom | /ˌæn.θɹoʊˈpɑl.ə.d͡ʒɪst/ | anthropologue |
| calorie nom | /ˈkæləɹi/ | calorie |
| myth nom | /mɪθ/ | mythe |
| phenomenon nom | /fəˈnɒm.ɪ.nən/ | phénomène |
| cabin nom | /ˈkæbɪn/ | cabane |
| cinema nom | /ˈsɪn.ə.mə/ | cinéma |
| prion nom | /ˈpɹiːɒn/ | prion |
Les verbes à particule que vous entendrez
| Mot | Prononciation | Sens |
|---|---|---|
| run out verbe | épuiser, être à court | |
| set out verbe | /ˈsɛt‿aʊt/ | expliquer |
Des phrases à répéter
Des phrases courtes et complètes de la vidéo, à réutiliser dans la conversation de tous les jours :
- Who do you eat?
- Which parts do you eat?
- I also think that it's comparatively uninteresting.
La grammaire de cette vidéo
Les structures que le locuteur utilise le plus, avec les mots exacts de la vidéo :
| Structure | Dans la vidéo |
|---|---|
| Phrases conditionnelles if + proposition, will/would + verbe — une condition et son résultat | if they buried a body it would be |
| Present perfect have/has + participe passé — une action passée qui compte encore maintenant | has seen · has featured · has existed |
| Voix passive be + participe passé — l’accent est mis sur ce qui arrive, pas sur qui le fait | is brought · can be broken · been debated |
| Propositions relatives who / which + proposition — une précision sur une personne ou une chose | survival, which is · one which is · tonics which were |
Prononciation à surveiller
Le locuteur utilise 11 contractions et formes réduites, comme don't, aren't, didn't. Prononcez-les sous leur forme courte, telles que vous les entendez.
- Les sons « th »: anthropologist /ˌæn.θɹoʊˈpɑl.ə.d͡ʒɪst/, myth /mɪθ/, thesis /ˈθisɪs/
- Les sons « sh » et « zh »: flesh /flɛʃ/, nutrition /njuːˈtɹɪʃ.ən/, nutritious /nuːˈtɹɪʃəs/, ration /ˈɹæʃən/, sanction /ˈsæŋkʃən/
- Mots longs — placez bien l’accent: cannibalism /ˈkanɪbəlɪz(ə)m/, cannibalistic /kæn.ə.bəˈlɪs.tɪk/, anthropologist /ˌæn.θɹoʊˈpɑl.ə.d͡ʒɪst/, phenomenon /fəˈnɒm.ɪ.nən/, automobile /ˈɔː.tə.məˌbil/
Les sons difficiles pour les francophones :
- /h/ — il se souffle, il n’est pas muet: humankind /ˌhjuːmənˈkaɪnd/, horrific /həˈɹɪfɪk/
- /tʃ/ et /dʒ/ — à ne pas adoucir en « ch » et « j »: researcher /ˈɹiˌsɝ.t͡ʃɚ/, anthropologist /ˌæn.θɹoʊˈpɑl.ə.d͡ʒɪst/, butchery /ˈbʊt͡ʃəɹi/, justification /ˌd͡ʒʌstɪfɪˈkeɪʃən/, ritual /ˈɹɪt͡ʃ.u.əl/
- /r/ anglais — langue recourbée, sans frotter la gorge: broadly /ˈbɹɔːdli/, researcher /ˈɹiˌsɝ.t͡ʃɚ/, nutrition /njuːˈtɹɪʃ.ən/, anthropologist /ˌæn.θɹoʊˈpɑl.ə.d͡ʒɪst/, calorie /ˈkæləɹi/
Comment s’entraîner avec cette vidéo
- Écoutez la vidéo en entier une fois sans parler et notez les mots que vous ne connaissez pas.
- Commencez à la vitesse 0,75×, répétez phrase par phrase, puis revenez à la vitesse normale quand cela devient facile.
- Enregistrez-vous et comparez avec l’original, en faisant attention à des mots comme cannibalism, consume, cannibal.
Qu'est-ce que la technique du Shadowing ?
Le Shadowing est une technique d'apprentissage des langues fondée sur la science, développée à l'origine pour la formation des interprètes professionnels. Le principe est simple mais puissant : vous écoutez de l'anglais natif et le répétez immédiatement à voix haute — comme une ombre suivant le locuteur avec un décalage de 1 à 2 secondes. Les recherches montrent une amélioration significative de la précision de la prononciation, de l'intonation, du rythme, des liaisons, de la compréhension orale et de la fluidité.