Shadowing Practice: How to Eat a Human Being - Learn English Speaking with Video
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It is common to imagine cannibalism as the purview of jungle-dwelling tribes in South America
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or other remote places in the global south.
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Yet, virtually every continent around the world has seen some form of cannibalism and this is not only cannibalism for survival,
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but almost every developed culture has featured socially acceptable cannibalism in one form or another.
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Although far from commonplace today, cannibalism has existed since literally the dawn of humankind.
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The motivations for cannibalism can be broken down into four basic types, and we will examine each of these individually.
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We will look at examples of cannibalism all throughout history.
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I will explain cannibalism's place within the canon of humanity, but first we have to understand the mere idea.
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Because, surprisingly, cannibalism is a lot more complex than just humans eating humans.
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The word cannibal comes from the Spanish word caribol.
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When he arrived in the Caribbean, Christopher Columbus reported a tribe of man-eaters who plagued the surrounding islands.
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He called these people the Caribs.
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The veracity of Columbus' tale has long been debated, and the most recent science indicates that it is not true.
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We'll talk about that more a bit later in this video.
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The Caribs were real people, but there really is no archaeological evidence that they engaged in cannibalism.
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In any case, the derivative word cannibal has stuck in the modern lexicon.
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To engage in cannibalism does not necessarily only include humans.
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In fact, cannibalism is astoundingly common in nature.
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Jaguars, polar bears, sharks, alligators, and other animals all have been reported eating members of their own species.
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Certain species of frogs, toads, and spiders all consume their young.
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But I suspect the viewer of this video is more motivated by an interest in human cannibalism.
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In the human species, cannibalism should really be taken as cannibalisms.
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The practice can be divided into a few different types.
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The first is endocannibalism.
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This refers to the practice of eating individuals in one's own society or community.
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Most often, endocannibalism exists in funerary rituals, eating the dead in the context of a funeral.
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Then there is exocannibalism.
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This is the opposite of endocannibalism.
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It is the consumption of human flesh from outside one's own community.
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This often comes in the form of consuming enemies, prisoners of war, or any invading peoples.
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Most anthropologists categorize cannibalism in one of these two ways, endo or exo.
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However there is also the related auto-cannibalism.
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This is the act of eating one's own body.
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Auto-cannibalism is a loose term.
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Some scientists would file things like biting your fingernails or licking a paper cut under auto-cannibalism.
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Others point to more extreme acts, ritual practice, torture, body modification, or some types of self-harm.
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So why do people eat people?
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In 2016, archaeologist James Cole published the most comprehensive assessment of the nutritional content of the human body to date.
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Broadly, he found that humans offer similar sustenance as animals of our size.
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We are not particularly nutritious or non-nutritious.
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According to Cole, the human body provides about 125,000 calories altogether.
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This is certainly a lot at first glance.
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But as you consider the practical realities of cannibalizing someone, 125,000 calories becomes less impressive.
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First, people generally exist in communities, so in pre-modern times when cannibalism was decidedly more common,
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any single source of meat would be distributed among a dozen or likely more individuals.
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Secondly, 2,000 calories per day may provide an at-rest person suitable nutrition.
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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.
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Additionally, it is just difficult to kill and or butcher a human.
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Murder would be usually met with dangerous resistance from the victim.
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Butchery is a laborious task with not insignificant skill requirements.
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Finally, Cole's estimate includes things like bones and teeth.
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It would just be difficult to actually consume these parts of a human body.
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So with all this in mind, hunting game has generally been the preferred method of nutrition for people across the world.
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It is easier, more efficient, and less destructive to the community.
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There are societies and cultures which we do not know and will never know. But broadly,
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it is safe to say cannibalism has generally not been used for physical nourishment as a significant part of any diets.
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Rather, the practice has existed to serve functions beyond regular sustenance.
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As I mentioned earlier, there are basically four such functions.
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The first is cannibalism as a solution.
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That is to say, there is some problem occurring within a person
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or a society and the consumption of human flesh is the remedy.
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There is cannibalism as a culture.
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This more nebulous function sees cannibalism as part of a ritual that has some significance, often religious, within a group.
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This tends to overlap with the previous function, but not always.
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Next is cannibalism for survival, which is probably the most acceptable context of the practice.
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Think shipwrecks, famines, etc. Lastly, cannibalism as a crime.
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Why is it that some serial killers go beyond murder and decide to physically consume their victims?
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There's one more piece of the puzzle as well, one which is more cultural and abstract and maybe even more insightful.
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But first, let's look at these functions of cannibalism.
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One of the most significant justifications for cannibalism has been to
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fix some type of issue to address some specific concern that it was believed consuming human flesh would resolve.
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The Aztecs are one of the more famous examples of human cannibalism.
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The Aztec belief system is complex and deep.
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It could certainly be discussed for hours.
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But in the interest of brevity, we can safely say that the Aztecs were desperate to keep the gods on their side.
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They believed that the universe had been destroyed four times already and that their present era,
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called the fifth sun, began with the gods voluntarily sacrificing their own blood to keep the sun in motion
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and to maintain the universe.
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By regularly engaging in human sacrifice, the Aztecs would continue to provide the sun god with blood and prolong the fifth sun.
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There were a number of annual festivals for this purpose.
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The most famous involved sacrificing war captives at the top of pyramids and offering their hearts to the sun god.
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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.
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Indeed, you will notice that very little of this really involves eating humans.
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Cannibalism was a very small part of the Aztec sacrifice.
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There's no evidence that the Aztecs enjoyed consuming human flesh, nor that they killed people for the sole purpose of cannibalism.
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We cannot categorically say Aztec people were particularly active or enthusiastic cannibals.
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European medical cannibalism is also a well-documented phenomenon.
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In historian Louis Noble's book, Medicinal Cannibalism in Early Modern English Literature and Culture,
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the author discusses 16th and 17th century medical remedies which centered around consuming human flesh.
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Egyptian mummies were crumbled into tonics which were said to stop internal bleeding.
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Human skull was ground and consumed to cure headaches.
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One famed 17th century medical pioneer brewed a drink to stop excessive bleeding that was a mixture of human skull and chocolate.
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King Charles II of England famously drank a personal tincture which was a mixture of alcohol and human skull.
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Drinking blood was also a remarkably popular remedy in the 16th century.
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German Swiss physician Paracelsus believed that blood had health benefits.
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Processed blood-based compounds could be found for sale in high-priced apothecaries.
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The poor could not afford these luxuries, and so it was common practice to purchase cheap, warm blood immediately following public executions.
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Basically, right from the gallows.
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One 1679 recipe from a Franciscan apothecary describes how to turn blood into marmalade.
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European cannibalism is striking in part because it is so well documented.
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Historical records show that there was a long-standing belief that human flesh or blood could in some way improve one's health.
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As we move on, though, we can find less concrete, physical justifications for the practice.
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The Wari are an indigenous people in Brazil who live within the Amazonian rainforest.
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In their history, the Wari people have practiced two sorts of culturally sanctioned cannibalism.
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The first was a warfare cannibalism.
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The body parts of dead enemies were taken back to Wari villages
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and consumed by those who had not engaged in the fight.
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As warriors recovered from the battle, they consumed the blood of the dead.
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This was said to make them strong and virile.
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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.
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The Wari also ate their own den.
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After a member of the tribe died, the body was laid outside to rot and decompose for several days.
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The Wari would then cut up the pieces and cook small parts of flesh over open flame.
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This was a ceremonial custom.
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They did not see cannibalism as providing sustenance.
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In fact, Wari custom did not allow for the practice of consuming the dead as a regular part of the diet.
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The natural decomposition of the flesh prevented them from consuming much human meat anyways.
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It made the body so disgusting and odorous that it was difficult, and sometimes impossible, to eat.
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The Wari people still live in Brazil, but they have long since abandoned their traditional cannibalistic practices.
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The four people of Papua New Guinea also practiced funerary cannibalism, but with devastating effects.
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The four people observed that if they buried a body it would be eaten by worms.
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If they left it on the ground it would be eaten by maggots.
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So the four people believed
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that being consumed by other members of the tribe was more honorable than either of the other options.
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The tribe ate every part of the body except for the gallbladder.
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It was believed that dead bodies could house dangerous spirits so the four women would be the first to consume the meat.
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By holding the meat in their bodies, the women would essentially tame the spirit.
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While it wasn't officially part of their custom, the four women would regularly share small scraps of human flesh with their children.
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In the 1950s, researchers noted that among the 11,004 people, 200 were dying annually from a strange and horrific disease.
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Tribes people People affected by this disease would have convulsions and break out into fits of uncontrollable laughter.
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The sufferer would fall into a deep depression, lose their ability to communicate with or interpret the world around them, and eventually die.
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The four people called the disease Kuru.
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Researchers discovered that Kuru was a progressive brain disease caused by an infectious type of protein called a prion.
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This prion was able to compel normal proteins in the nervous system to fold and warp, which essentially punched holes in the brain.
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Kuru likely started when an individual from the tribe was born with a rare brain disorder called Kreutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
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This should have only affected that individual, but when other tribespeople consumed his brain, they also consumed the prion that caused the disease.
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It can take 10 to 15 years for a person to even show symptoms of Kuru after they have contracted it.
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Because of this, the four people would have been unable to identify whose brain was originally contaminated and who ate it,
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and so Kuru spread throughout generations of the tribe.
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Clearly, cannibalism can kill, but it can also sustain,
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it can and has saved the lives of people in dire situations.
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Maybe the most acceptable form of cannibalism is that of survival cannibalism.
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Certainly history has provided us with plenty examples of this phenomenon.
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The Donner Party is probably the most well-known and well-mythologized story of survival cannibalism.
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The Donner Party saw an expedition get stuck in California in 1846 before eventually resorting to eating dead bodies.
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The circumstances surrounding the Donner Party are mysterious.
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Volumes, hours, books have been produced about this particular journey.
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In fact, so much so that covering it in detail here would feel redundant.
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Thankfully, within nautical history, it is tremendously easy to find well-documented examples of survival cannibalism.
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The practice has been so widespread, in fact, that it's earned its own nickname, the Custom of the Sea.
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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.
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There were five lifeboats and the coast was only 40 miles away.
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The crew constructed a large life raft which accommodated about 150 people.
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Unfortunately, these cooler heads did not prevail.
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Violence swept through the survivors and a number of crew members were killed while others were pushed overboard off the raft.
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Rations dwindled and survivors began to dry pieces of human flesh in the sunlight for consumption.
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A rescue ship eventually found the raft, but only 15 men were alive of the original 150.
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In 1820, the ship the Essex was sunk by a sperm whale, leaving its crew stranded on a nearby island.
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There, the crew held a lottery and consumed the unlucky winner.
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In 1844, the Francis Spate sunk and the 15 survivors also held a lottery, eventually killing and consuming two cabin boys.
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There's also the Uxine, in
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which the crew elected to consume a young Italian boy after their lifeboats capsized and they lost all provisions.
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None of these survivors faced any type of legal ramifications for their acts of cannibalism.
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But the age of sale was not as anarchical as maybe we are inclined to think.
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Indeed, cannibalism at sea became such a prevalent issue that legal bodies were eventually all but forced to intervene.
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In 1884, the British yacht the Minionette was en route to Sydney, Australia.
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The yacht had four crew members, Captain Tom Dudley, first mate Edwin Stevens, Edmund Brooks, and 17-year-old cabin boy Richard Parker.
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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.
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The cabin boy, Richard Parker, started drinking seawater and fell extremely ill.
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Captain Tom Dudley believed Parker to be dying, so he stabbed the boy four times to death.
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The men survived by eating the boy's body for 24 days until they were rescued by a German ship.
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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.
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Ultimately, the courts did not see the act as murder, and the surviving men were sentenced to just six months in jail.
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A more recent episode of survival cannibalism can be found in the story of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571.
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In 1972, that flight was carrying the old Christian's rugby team en route to Chile, along with family and friends of the squad.
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Many of the people on board could be described as social elites.
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Among them were two of the president's nephews, the sons of a renowned heart surgeon and a famous painter.
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The plane's route took them over the Andes Mountains, which are notoriously dangerous skies.
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To navigate through these areas, the crew decided to take the Planchon Pass.
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An hour after takeoff, the co-pilot was flying the plane and believed he had navigated the pass successfully.
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He took a hard right and quickly learned that he had not completed the pass.
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The maneuver took him directly into the mountains.
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One wing hit a mountainside and broke off, pulling with it the tail section and seven passengers.
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The other wing fell off immediately afterward and the cabin fell into the mountains.
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It slid down the slopes before resting in deep pearl-white snow.
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For the survivors, there could hardly be a worse place to be stranded.
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They were at 11,500 feet elevation.
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Nighttime in the area could see temperatures as low as negative 22 degrees Fahrenheit.
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Around the plane there was only snow and mountains, no trace of anything even remotely habitable.
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The plane was white, which made it completely invisible against the snow to any would-be rescuers from above.
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When the plane crashed, there were 33 survivors of the original 45 passengers.
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During the first night, five more people died.
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The remaining 28 had very little food and water.
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Some chocolate, a box of crackers, a jar of jam, some wine, and some brandy.
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They also had a radio which, now broken, would receive signals but could not transmit.
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The team heard on the radio that a search was underway.
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So, for the first few days, they ate small portions of the food they had and hoped for a rescue.
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No rescue came.
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On the eighth day, another passenger died from injuries sustained in the crash.
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Two days later, the survivors heard on their radio that the search for their plane had been stopped.
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They were presumed dead.
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One of the survivors, named Robert Canessa, was a medical student.
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He had some basic understanding of human nutrition.
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Although the group had joked about cannibalism, Canessa argued that it was time to make a decision.
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He said that they needed to eat the bodies of their dead teammates or they too would die.
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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.
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But without proper nutrition, they would not be able to walk.
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Furthermore, it was now or never.
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Without any food, they wouldn't even have the energy to cut up the bodies.
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Knessa also knew that the frigid temperatures would have frozen the corpses, making them reasonably safe to consume.
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There was also a religious angle to Knessa's arguments.
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He said that it was just meat.
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Their souls had departed their bodies and were now in heaven.
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Some in favor compared it to Holy Communion.
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They said that Christ died and gave his body to humankind for spiritual health.
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Their friends had died and now could give their bodies for physical health.
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Some in opposition noted that this was disrespectful to their memories.
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But another passenger, Zerbino, said if his dead body could keep his friends alive, he would want them to eat it.
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The conversation ended with most of the survivors in favor of cannibalism.
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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.
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Knessa used a shard of glass to cut several strips of meat from a body.
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He laid them out in the sun to defrost and told the survivors that the strips were there.
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If anyone wanted to eat the meat, they could have it.
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This way, the survivors would not need to know who exactly they were eating.
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Knessa himself was the first to eat the flesh.
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After he broke the taboo, the other survivors did the same.
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Some people ate it raw, others managed to cook the flesh using what little fuel they had on board.
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Their rations were not infinite though.
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As supplies dwindled, Knessa encouraged people to consume nutrient-dense organs like the heart and the liver.
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A week went by without any deaths, but again, even with the advent of their new diet, the passengers would not survive forever.
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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.
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Eventually, though, a small group led by Knessa set out to find help.
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At least, to find something besides snow.
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After four days of walking, they reached the end of the snow.
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They found grass and birds and flowers.
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The group met a Chilean man who connected them with the local authorities.
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After 71 days, the group was saved.
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The story attracted media attention from around the globe news finally broke that the survivors resorted to cannibalism, public outrage was immense.
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The Catholic Church soon intervened, however, publicly, saying that the boys had made the right decision in the eyes of God.
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Typically we consider survival cannibalism as a simple question.
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You eat someone or you die.
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It feels quite binary.
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But anthropologists have suggested that there's actually a network of decisions which goes into consuming human flesh.
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Every decision to eat an individual is set against a backdrop of cultural norms, relationships to the individual, and personal convictions.
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There's also a series of mechanical choices you must make when eating a person.
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Who do you eat?
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Which parts do you eat?
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Anthropologists have actually identified a series of patterns which tend to emerge in survival cannibalism situations.
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First and probably, unsurprisingly, cannibalism is an absolute last resort.
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People will consume virtually anything before consuming human flesh.
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The second pattern is that people generally will not consume close relatives
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and are more inclined to eat members of other races or identifiable outside groups.
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The third is that people generally do not consume the face, fingers, hands, and genitals.
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These parts are often associated with some degree of humanity and even personhood.
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But the last pattern is that when other portions of meat have been exhausted, individuals will will readily consume these previously unwanted parts.
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So that's three of four functions of cannibalism.
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But there is one final context.
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The most heinous examples of cannibalism are likely those that come from a place of crime.
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Mentally deranged individuals killing and eating victims.
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This is where my own personal sensibilities conflict with this video essay.
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I don't find true crime as a genre particularly compelling.
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I think it's generally exploitative and often void of substance.
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So I will not be recounting specific criminal cannibals in this video or their deeds.
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These subjects have been explored endlessly and then some.
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I do think it is more interesting
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and even relevant to this particular topic to explore what exactly makes an individual go from serial killer to cannibal.
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The science on that is still murky.
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But in 2023, Abby Marinoa and David A.
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Keatley published a paper called An Investigation into the Association Between Cannibalism and Serial Killers.
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In this study, the researchers examined 42 cannibalistic serial killers alongside 42 non-cannibalistic serial killers.
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The researchers investigated a number of variables in these two groups and found some distinct patterns.
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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.
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There just aren't that many of them.
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The researchers themselves note that these correlations do not necessarily indicate cause, but they are worth discussing.
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Cannibals had four times the rate of physical brain abnormalities.
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They had a much higher incidence of birth defects than their non-cannibal counterparts.
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They also had much lower social standings in their youth.
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The data further suggests a more profound pattern of criminal history and criminal family history within cannibals.
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However, the study provides very little in the way of a conclusion.
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So many of these variables are intersectional.
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For example, does a lower socioeconomic standing and a family criminal history really indicate future cannibalism?
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These two traits likely feed off one another, and I suspect there are a lot of non-cannibal criminals who share them as well.
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There are a number of psychological theories to explain why criminals engage in cannibalism.
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Some point to an over-reliance on the mother during childhood.
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Others say that cannibals experience some sudden onset of trauma.
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But this is all just theory and speculation.
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There's very little hard research on the subject, likely because there just isn't much to research.
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It is a comparatively rare phenomenon.
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I also think that it's comparatively uninteresting.
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The act of cannibalizing a human being in the criminal context seems like such a violent aberration
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that I wonder if there's anything we can learn, culturally or otherwise, from such an act.
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However, when we examine mankind's relationship to the idea of cannibalism, we do open the door to more significant cultural conversations.
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We could say that cannibalism as a term, a taboo, a horrific deed was invented when Columbus reported the Caribs to Spain.
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But the act of our species consuming one another has been occurring for much, much longer.
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At a dig site in Ardèche, France, scientists found both human and deer bone pieces.
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On the deer skulls, markings indicated that the Neanderthals smashed open the skull to eat the animals' brains.
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The human skulls showed the exact same markings.
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Scientists determined that early humans filleted the chewing muscles from the heads of two young neanderthals,
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sliced out the tongue of at least one and smashed the leg bone of a large adult to get to the marrow.
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The scientists did note that all neanderthals were not cannibals, but instead that in times of need neanderthals did resort to survival cannibalism.
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The Krappina neanderthal site in Croatia is one of the largest most significant finds in the current landscape of paleoanthropology.
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First excavated the cave in 1899, finding the remains of over 80 individuals and the complete skeletons of over 24 Neanderthals.
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Many of these bodies showed marks that clearly indicated butchery.
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Scientists believe the Neanderthals broke open bones to remove marrow and bashed open skulls to access brains.
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These are just two dig sites, but evidence for Neanderthal cannibalism has been found in numerous others around the globe,
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so cannibalism has always been with us one way or the other.
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In fact, it predates us.
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But if we look to more recent history.
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We can see cannibalism taking shape as a cultural idea, a cultural tool even.
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Juvenal was a Roman satirist in the second century AD.
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He lived in the Roman Empire's capital city, which was a diverse place full of people from conquered Roman lands.
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Juvenal did not like that fact.
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He wanted Rome to be full of Romans.
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Much of his satire centered around this xenophobia.
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Juvenal's 15th work is set in Egypt.
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In the satire, he tells a story about mob violence amongst Egyptians which culminates in what is basically a cannibalistic orgy.
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This is one of the first examples of the cannibal label being used to debase foreign populations
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or to paint some group as savages.
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However, it is certainly not the last example.
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When Christopher Columbus first deemed the Caribs as cannibals, this was not just out of some arbitrary, aimless notion.
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Instead, it was a point he used to repeatedly lobby Queen Isabella of Spain to colonize and enslave the indigenous people.
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Cannibals were subhuman, so enslavement was more acceptable when it came to the Caribs.
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Quote, These are cannibals, a people very savage and suitable for the purpose, and well-made, and of very good intelligence.
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We believe that they, having abandoned that inhumanity, will be better than any other slaves.
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And Columbus's strategy worked.
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In 1503, Isabella issued the following declaration.
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Being as they are hardened in their bad habits of idolatry and cannibalism, it was agreed that I should issue this decree.
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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.
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Indeed, early colonial accounts of cannibalism are both commonplace and often unreliable for this very reason.
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The label of cannibal was used time and time again to categorize groups as uncivilized, to justify colonial pursuits or geopolitical power plays.
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Eventually, and maybe predictably, the pendulum of cannibalism as a concept swung wildly in the other direction.
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In the 1970s, William Ahrens published a book called The Man-Eating Myth.
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In his book, Ahrens argued that there had never been an instance of culturally sanctioned cannibalism in the history of mankind.
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He said that the entire notion of cannibalism was, in fact, only a tool for subjugation.
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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.
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The Man-Eating Myth was a provocative publication that caused the mass re-evaluation of cannibalism within human history.
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It attracted widespread attention and conversation.
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It is seen as a landmark publication.
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Unfortunately, the Man-Eating Myth is also recognized as completely false.
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Ahren's thesis was
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that it is impossible to find a single piece of firm
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evidence for socially acceptable cannibalism having ever occurred anywhere in the world.
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There are a lot of problems with this thesis, most broadly that Ahren's work does not really lead one to that conclusion.
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Ahrens put a huge emphasis on the idea of cannibalism as an observable phenomenon.
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Because he did not find, quote, reliable eyewitness accounts, Ahrens didn't think cannibalism was real.
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But this doesn't really make sense.
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Things can happen that no one witnesses.
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Priests masturbate in monasteries.
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During the era of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, people engaged in homosexuality while serving in the military.
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Throughout the work, Ahrens seeks acceptable evidence without ever specifying what exactly qualifies as acceptable.
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He takes a rather nebulous, fluid approach to rejecting accounts of cannibalism.
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As a result, his arguments are often incoherent, inconsistent, and arbitrary.
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Another issue was Aaron's obsession with cannibalism in the global south.
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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.
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But in doing so, he ignored almost the entire well-documented history of European cannibalism.
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Really though, there's a large list of problems with Aaron's work.
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The most significant is that in trying to prove cannibalism was a racist construct, He was himself being racist.
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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.
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About This Lesson
You're practicing English with "How to Eat a Human Being" using the Shadowing technique — a method originally developed for professional interpreter training.
Focus on sounding like the speaker — not just repeating words. With 15–30 minutes of daily practice, you'll build real-world speaking confidence.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.