0_Wizard
Human cannibalism is the act of eating other humans.
Human cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh or internal organs of other human beings.
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Human cannibalism
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Human cannibalism
Human cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh or internal organs of other human beings. A person who practices cannibalism is called a cannibal. The expression "cannibalism" has been extended into zoology to mean one individual of a species consuming all or part of another individual of the same species as food, including sexual cannibalism. Some scholars have argued, however, that no firm evidence exists that cannibalism has ever been a socially acceptable practice anywhere in the world, at any time in history. The Island Carib people of the Lesser Antilles, from whom the word cannibalism is derived, acquired a long-standing reputation as cannibals following the recording of their legends in the 17th century.
The Man-Eating Myth
The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophagy is an influential anthropological study of socially sanctioned cultural cannibalism across the world, which casts a critical perspective on the existence of such practices. It was authored by the American anthropologist William Arens of Stony Brook University, New York and first published by Oxford University Press in 1979. Arens' primary hypothesis is that despite claims made by western explorers and anthropologists since the 15th century, there is no firm, substantiable evidence for the socially accepted practice of cannibalism anywhere in the world, at any time in history.
Endocannibalism
Endocannibalism is a practice of eating the flesh of a human being from the same community (tribe, social group or society), usually after they have died. Endocannibalism has also been used to describe the consumption of relics in a mortuary context. Herodotus (3.38) mentions funerary cannibalism among the "Callatiae", a tribe of India. Also, the Aghoris of northern India consume the flesh of the dead floated in the Ganges in pursuit of immortality and supernatural powers. It is believed that some South American indigenous cultures, such as the Mayoruna people, practiced endocannibalism in the past.
Exocannibalism
Exocannibalism (from Greek "Exo-", "from outside" and Cannibalism, 'to eat humans'), as opposed to endocannibalism, is the consumption of flesh outside one's close social group—for example, eating one's enemy. When done ritually, it has been associated with being a means of imbibing valued qualities of the victim or as an act of final violence against the deceased in the case of sociopathy, as well as a symbolic expression of the domination of an enemy in warfare. Such practices have been documented in such cultures as the Aztecs from Mexico, the Carib and the Tupinambá from South America. Historically, it has also been used as a practical expediency in especially desperate attritional or guerrilla warfare when the extreme hunger and the abundance of humans being killed coincide to create conditions ripe for cannibalism.
Cannibalism in popular culture
Cannibalism in popular culture is a recurring theme, especially within the horror genre, and has featured in a range of media that includes film, television, literature, music and video games. Examples of prominent artists who have worked with the topic of cannibalism include William Shakespeare, Voltaire, Bret Easton Ellis, and Herschell Gordon Lewis. Many works in popular culture depict groups of people for whom cannibalism is a cultural norm. Many horror films, known as cannibal films, have exploited the theme of cannibal tribes. This subgenre experienced a period of popularity through the work of Italian filmmakers in the 1970s and 1980s.
Pleistocene human diet
The diet of known human ancestors varies dramatically over time. Strictly speaking, according to evolutionary anthropologists and archaeologists there is not a single Hominin Paleolithic diet. The Paleolithic covers roughly 2.8 million years, concurrent with the Pleistocene, and includes multiple human ancestors with their own evolutionary and technological adaptations living in a wide variety of environments. This fact with the difficulty of finding conclusive of evidence often makes broad generalizations of the earlier human diets very difficult. Our pre-hominin primate ancestors were broadly herbivorous, relying on either foliage or fruits and nuts and the shift in dietary breadth during the Paleolithic is often considered a critical point in hominin evolution.
Food and drink prohibitions
Some people abstain from consuming various foods and beverages in conformity with various religious, cultural, legal or other societal prohibitions. Many of these prohibitions constitute taboos. Many food taboos and other prohibitions forbid the meat of a particular animal, including mammals, rodents, reptiles, amphibians, fish, molluscs, crustaceans and insects, which may relate to a disgust response being more often associated with meats than plant-based foods. Some prohibitions are specific to a particular part or excretion of an animal, while others forgo the consumption of plants or fungi.