What's the deal with cannibalism?

[AllWalker]

Cannibalism is such an odd thing. It is so widely practised amongst precivilised or barely civilised cultures, but is equally widely condemned amongst civilised cultures.

But why?

Without the social stigma of necrocannibalism (the consumption of human death after they die - contrast homicide cannibalism wherein someone is killed in order to be eaten) there is no reason why ritualistic consumption of the deceased couldn't be part of the funeral process. I know I know, the idea is "gross" - but that is the social stigma talking.

It could be a health reason. The consumption of brains is bad - over generations, prions make it unwise. But do other parts of the body carry more health risks than, say, beef?

Bonus question - can you imagine yourself eating human flesh? Would you, if it were properly prepared and free of parasites?

I reckon I would. I believe that sentient or near sentient creatures should not be farmed or killed for meat, but I see no qualms with necrocannibalism, in principle. At the end of the day, meat is meat.

[Baldwin]

In terms of getting high-quality meat, it's better to kill somebody while they're young and healthy. If you wait for them to die of natural causes, you're likely to get an elderly, disease-ridden body. (Keep your fingers crossed for motorcycle accidents!)

[AllWalker]

In terms of getting high-quality meat, it's better to kill somebody while they're young and healthy. If you wait for them to die of natural causes, you're likely to get an elderly, disease-ridden body. (Keep your fingers crossed for motorcycle accidents!)

But back 500 years ago there was no shortage of dead 25 year olds, who I'm sure would have been delicious.

[ivan astikov]

If we are gonna be sold recycling, let's go the whole hog...or long pig!

[Winston Smith]

There was an article in the Weekly World News years ago in which a Ugandan tribal king and cannibal was interviewed. The cannibal listed the types of people he had eaten, and described their respective 'flavors' in relation to race/nationality - i.e. Japanese flesh was 'grainy and fishy-tasting', Americans were 'greasy and fatty', he described a Frenchman as 'gamey', and so on. I think the article ended with the correspondent being eaten, and an 'assistant' delivering the story to the WWN for publishing. That was the best WWN piece I've ever read. Comedy gold.

[Winston Smith]

In terms of getting high-quality meat, it's better to kill somebody while they're young and healthy. If you wait for them to die of natural causes, you're likely to get an elderly, disease-ridden body. (Keep your fingers crossed for motorcycle accidents!)

But back 500 years ago there was no shortage of dead 25 year olds, who I'm sure would have been delicious.

But, 500 years ago, a 25 year old was likely relatively elderly and disease-ridden. I'll stick with death-by-misadventure.

[Harlequin]

It is so widely practised amongst precivilised or barely civilised cultures, but is equally widely condemned amongst civilised cultures.

I'm going to ask for a cite. As far as I know, few cultures, civilised or not, practise cannibalism and even in the ones that do it's an occasional thing.

[Exy]

I'm going to ask for a cite. As far as I know, few cultures, civilised or not, practise cannibalism and even in the ones that do it's an occasional thing.

Yeah, this is a good point. There's disagreement about this point, but a number of anthropologists have pointed out that there is often not much clear evidence that cannibalism was actually a frequent practice in many of the cultures that supposedly practiced it. I don't know enough to really weigh the evidence, and there are definitely plenty of scholars who support the view that cannibalism was a common practice in pre-modern times.

At least some claims by Europeans that various tribes practiced cannibalism were motivated by a Spanish law holding that only cannibals could be enslaved (because their conditions were so depraved that they'd be better off as slaves.) My impression is that there is a general consensus that the Carib, or Caniba, whose name is the origin of the word "cannibal", did not practice cannibalism at all.

[AllWalker]

Perhaps I should rephrase that point - Ii was so widely practised amongst precivilised or barely civilised cultures, but is widely condemned amongst civilised cultures (with the possible exception of the Aztecs). While there is reason to question the prevalence of the practise, there is much evidence to such it was widespread thousands of years ago across the world.

I'll get round to digging up cites for this later if they are still needed.

[Guizmeaux]

It is so widely practised amongst precivilised or barely civilised cultures, but is equally widely condemned amongst civilised cultures.

I'm going to ask for a cite. As far as I know, few cultures, civilised or not, practise cannibalism and even in the ones that do it's an occasional thing.

Change the first "is" for a "was" and I'll buy the original post. All references that I have ever seen suggest that frequent cannibalism stopped at some point in the 1950s. The last to practice it commonly were the Fore, who gave it up because of a major outbreak of kuru.

BTW, In the 1980s there was a movement founded by some fuckwad ("Prof." William Arens) who claimed cannibalism was a racist lie, designed to brand its practicioners as savages who were inferior to the civilised white man and could therefore be justifiably slaughtered. This revisionist nonsense has since been refuted. Even if you explain away knife marks in bone, incomplete corpses, and the fact that the practioners themselves happily admitted they did it, the very existence of kuru should be proof enough.

As for the Canib, Christopher Columbus himself wrote that he had witnessed one of their feasts, where corpses were jointed and roasted over open fires.

[Sleeps w/Butterflies]

May I suggest finding out how many cannibals you can feed? http://www.oneplusyou.com/q/v/cannibal_lunch

Perhaps you'd like to know how you would taste to them? http://www.recipestar.com/quizzes/view/cannibal-taste

[Clayton_e]

I can feed 11 cannibals... and join mingle 2. I wonder if there's a "a/s/l/practices cannibalism" section..

Winston, that sounds awesomeness. I'd love to see it if there's a link somewhere.. google isn't doing it for me.

[Winston Smith]

Winston, that sounds awesomeness. I'd love to see it if there's a link somewhere.. google isn't doing it for me.

Dude, we're talking, like, 20+ years ago. Sorry, I think finding that article would mean first finding a hip library that has the Weekly World News on micrfiche, then searching 1987-1991.

[vison]

Creeps me out. I'd have to be awfully hungry. Starving hungry.

[What Exit?]

Creeps me out. I'd have to be awfully hungry. Starving hungry.

I think I would just end up dinner. I don't think I could do it.

[Winston Smith]

I could do it. No problem. Take consequences off the table and there ain't much I wouldn't do.

[ivan astikov]

I suppose I'd have less qualms about eating somebody I didn't know, but I'm still not sure that I could chow down on a human rump steak!

[Nrblex]

I'm going to admit right here that other than reading a few books on biochemistry and hormones, I'm pretty much a total moron when it comes to biology/medicine/whatever. Be that as it may, could somebody who is not an idiot answer this part of the OP:

It could be a health reason. The consumption of brains is bad - over generations, prions make it unwise. But do other parts of the body carry more health risks than, say, beef?

I could eat a person--if I had to. I don't really have much desire to eat meat that often, though, so it's not like I'd be chowing on manflesh just out of curiousity or desire, even if there were no consequences. Just sounds oogy.

[Baldwin]

But, 500 years ago, a 25 year old was likely relatively elderly and disease-ridden. I'll stick with death-by-misadventure.

Not really.

[ivan astikov]

But, 500 years ago, a 25 year old was likely relatively elderly and disease-ridden. I'll stick with death-by-misadventure.

Not really.

Well, you've convinced me.

[3EyedZack]

Still pisses me off the early humans ate the Neanderthals to extinction. If they would have farmed them they would still be providing us with meat today.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/ ... es-journal

[ivan astikov]

Still pisses me off the early humans ate the Neanderthals to extinction. If they would have farmed them they would still be providing us with meat today.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/ ... es-journal

So much for my idea that our ancestors might have descended from peaceful, fruit and veg eating primitives!

[Winston Smith]

But, 500 years ago, a 25 year old was likely relatively elderly and disease-ridden. I'll stick with death-by-misadventure.

Not really.

Cite?

[3EyedZack]

[quote=Winston Smith]

But, 500 years ago, a 25 year old was likely relatively elderly and disease-ridden. I'll stick with death-by-misadventure.

Not really.

Cite?[/quote:cf7fj5qh]


Deja Dope Vu?

[ivan astikov]

Has "cite" been patented or copyright controlled. Oh noes, we'll have to find our own word. We're fucked!

[3EyedZack]

Has "cite" been patented or copyright controlled. Oh noes, we'll have to find our own word. We're fucked!

No it is just juvenile. If I was to disagree with the statement I would fire up my google machine and show the other person they may have been mistaken.

[ivan astikov]

Has "cite" been patented or copyright controlled. Oh noes, we'll have to find our own word. We're fucked!

No it is just juvenile. If I was to disagree with the statement I would fire up my google machine and show the other person they may have been mistaken.

So if I come in and say eating bananas makes your nob bend, the onus is on you to find the documentation to prove me wrong?

[3EyedZack]

[quote=ivan astikov]

Has "cite" been patented or copyright controlled. Oh noes, we'll have to find our own word. We're fucked!

No it is just juvenile. If I was to disagree with the statement I would fire up my google machine and show the other person they may have been mistaken.

So if I come in and say eating bananas makes your nob bend, the onus is on you to find the documentation to prove me wrong?[/quote:3mtf3cw1]


You always this silly or you just have instant coffee shoved up your rectum? Of course not, and you would be quite stupid to think that is what I meant. Correct response to your claim about bananas would be

You're full of shit, I looked everywhere and unless you can provide a cite your intelligence suggests to me you're an email away from sending a Nigerian your life savings


Compared to your

Smarmy stupid, most annoying thing since "Regards" ... cite.

[Exy]

Far be it from me to sit around agreeing with Baldwin, but a 25 year old back in caveman days probably would not typically have been disease-riddled or elderly. I'm 25, and while I benefit from a good diet and sanitation, for the most part when you're 25 your body basically takes care of itself. When you hear figures about life expectancies back in the bad old days, you have to remember that even if the average lifespan was, say, 30 years, that doesn't mean the average person keeled over due to arthritis and senile dementia at 30. The numbers one hears are influenced by high rates of childhood and infant mortality and also high rates of deaths due to disease and violence. So if there's a very high chance that the average person kicks it due to diarrhea as a toddler, or gets clubbed over the head by a warrior from the next village over in his teens, then there will be fewer elderly people, and the "average" person will die young, but that doesn't mean the others were barely clinging to life. There were and are elderly people in traditional societies. "Average" doesn't necessarily mean "typical" -- after all, the average person has one tit and one testicle.

[AllWalker]

You always this silly or you just have instant coffee shoved up your rectum?

Please don't spoil my thread about the merits of cannibalism with personal insults, no matter how ridiculous they are. This is, after all, a serious debate.

[3EyedZack]

You always this silly or you just have instant coffee shoved up your rectum?

Please don't spoil my thread about the merits of cannibalism with personal insults, no matter how ridiculous they are. This is, after all, a serious debate.

No problem. :smile:

[Dangerously Unqualified]

No it is just juvenile. If I was to disagree with the statement I would fire up my google machine and show the other person they may have been mistaken.

I don't think it works that way. I believe it is customary for the person making the claim to be prepaired to provide sources on the claim.

And I also believe that Ivan may well have instant coffee crammed in his bung hole. Like my father used to say, there's more than one way to marinate an Englishman.

Bananas are a whole different issue. Seeing as how we are genetically closer relatives to the banana than to the other primates I am reluctant to eat them less I be accused of cannibalism myself.

What ever happened to HuFu anyway? The human flavored tofu meat alternative? I'd eat that if it was offered to me, especially marinated in instant coffee and banana puree.

Regards,
DU