What's Eating You?

[RPG Post]

What's Eating You?

Tobias Schneebaum had a little long pig while living with the Harakambut people of Peru. He documented that incident and his taking of a male lover as well as his experience with the Asmat people in New Guinea. His book, and movie Keep the River on Your Right are fascinating accounts of his experiences. And, at the time of their revelations, these two media caused a great deal of outrage. The first because he was an unassuming Jewish intellectual that admitted to cannibalism and homosexuality, and the second because western anthropologists had already dismissed almost all cases of cannibalism as Western prejudice against tribal peoples. This came to a head in a book by William Arens, The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophagy, where he called into question all data supporting cannibalism and suggested much of it was motivated by ignorance and prejudice.

Imagine, in some sort of strange anti-racism fervor, Haitian anthropologists dismissed all cases of white USAnians attacking, assaulting or killing minorities. Despite all evidence to the contrary, it was simply dismissed as it reflected poorly upon the country's Caucasian population. Evidence for cannibalism is and was strong. This article highlights a possible evolutionary development of munching on the man corn, including human adaptations to ward off infections from cannibalism borne diseases.

One Off Eaters Versus Societal Feeders

It is of no surprise to anyone that serial killers have been known to nosh on the occasional limb. Nor is it a surprise that starving people such as the Donner party and the Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 had a bite of man to keep them going. Records of both types of cannibalism go back through North American and pre-Biblical records. The former perhaps best known in association with Alferd Packer, whose life, loosely contributed to the movie Ravenous. The latter shows up in records of Egypt, when the Nile had not flooded for many years, around 1000 BCE.

Nor is it or was it ever in doubt that the Aztecs and other south, central and north American practiced ritual cannibalism. Anthropologists downplayed all evidence, all art and writings that mentioned it and suggested it was purely a religious ritual. Bones that clearly showed bite marks from human dentition as well as signs of butchering have been found in Neolithic cultures. There seems to be some misunderstanding that saying some person or group did certain things means they still do it. There likewise seems to be a conflation that noting they did something in one time period somehow opens then up to judgment from our culture, that people knowingly acted in a way which we "know" to be wrong.

There are many records of tribes eating the meat as a way to honor, preserve or absorb the spirit of a slain warrior, an ancestor or a tribal elder. There are still groups today that practice cannibalism, as recently as ... now, in many conflicts in Africa. It is the complete opposite of tribes that practiced it to honor the fallen. In Liberia and other conflicts, where the enemy has been completely dehumanized, eating them is confirmation that the "other" is nothing more than an animal.

To Arens's point that claims of cannibalism are used to demonize others, besides the German stories of Jews eating babies and washing in their blood, there have been several examples of African dictators labeled with title cannibal. I believe that The Last King of Scotland glosses over Idi Amin's cannibalism, which may or may not have been true. He was already a brutal dictator with many, many violent and repugnant acts to his credit when rumors of his cannibalism and keeping a human head in his refrigerator started to spread. One might ask if he needed further monsterization but cannibalism claims seem to move someone into an entirely new, mythic realm.