Eat Thy Neighbour Read online

  Man:

  Well, I do feel a bit peckish.

  Voices from audience:

  Disgraceful! Boo! (etc)

  Undertaker:

  Great!

  Man:

  I really don’t think I should.

  Undertaker:

  Look, tell you what, we’ll eat her, if you feel a bit guilty about it after, we can dig a grave and you can throw up in it.

  A section of the audience rises up in revolt and invades the set, remonstrating with the performers and banging the counter, etc, breaking up the sketch.

  What is interesting about this morbid bit of comedy is not that the Pythons would perform it; there was almost no subject they would not gleefully tackle. What is interesting is that even these brilliantly irreverent comics felt it necessary to ameliorate the effect of their own comedy by having the audience rise up in righteous anger and storm the set. Even here, the sense that there are bounds beyond which one must not tread is strictly adhered to.

  Two

  Ancient Origins: Archaeological Evidence of Cannibalism

  Although the earliest humanoid remains – found in Africa and dating from 3.5 million years ago – show how the human species originated and what our progenitors looked like, they are too few, and too scattered, to tell us much about the social structure in which proto-man lived. For such details we have to fast-forward three million years and travel to China. At a dig site known as Dragon Bone Hill, just south of Beijing, the plentiful remains of 500,000-year-old Peking Man show clear evidence that among the various food sources accessed by these early people were other humans; probably other members of their own genetic stock. This does not imply that human meat was a regular menu item, but when other animals were scarce, or the only available creatures were too fierce to tackle, members of less warlike clans may have been seen as easy prey. Cannibalism may not have been a practice of choice, but in times of need, any meat is better than none.

  Evidence of cannibalism at Peking Man sites is similar in nature to that found at Gran Dolina in north-central Spain. Spain has proved the world’s most fruitful site for the recovery of human remains between 1.5 million and 100,000 years old and a significant number of these sites have shown evidence of cannibalism. Other bones dating from 100,000 years ago, and providing nearly identical evidence, have been found in Krapina, Yugoslavia. Similarly, 12,000-year-old human remains found at campsites in Cheddar Gorge in Somerset show signs of cannibalism almost indistinguishable from those found in Yugoslavia, Spain and China. Nearly identical physical evidence has been found at innumerable campsites of Neanderthal man, but since there is wide controversy as to whether or not Neanderthal was actually a close relative of modern man or a dead-end offshoot of our family tree, his eating habits may not qualify in our argument. For our purposes, however, Neanderthal hardly matters because there is ample evidence that those who were unquestionably our direct ancestors did, indeed, eat each other. If this evidence is correct, it indicates that cannibalism was, to a greater or lesser extent, practised by human tribal groups in nearly every corner of the globe, over the course of hundreds of thousands of years. Of course, as many anthropologists argue, finding a heap of human bones – even when they are randomly mixed with the bones of game animals – is not viable evidence of cannibalism. The question now becomes: what proof do we have that ancient people were actually eating each other and not just rotting quietly away in a corner of their cave?

  Among the first signs anthropologists look for when examining suspected sites of cannibalism are tool marks made when flint knives have been used to remove flesh from bone very shortly after death. While such marks may look like random scratches to the layman, to the trained eye they are as identifiable as a signature or fingerprints. Again, there are those who argue that defleshing is not proof of cannibalism. It may be that the flesh was removed from the bones of the dead and the skeletal remains reverently cleaned and buried or placed in an ossuary, or bone box. True again. There are many recorded societies that did exactly this and they were not cannibals, so we must look further for definitive proof of the practice.

  The next piece in assembling our cannibalistic puzzle is determining exactly which types of bones are present in the spoil heap. In many cases, where the discarded bones are found at sites suspected of being field stops during a hunting expedition, it is only particular bones such as ribs, spine, hands and feet that have been discovered. The assumption here is that the meatier parts of the carcass were cut away and hauled home while the less savoury parts were left in the field. When it is the heavily fleshed long bones of the arms and legs that are discovered, they tend to be found at permanent campsites and randomly mixed with animal carcasses, all of which bear the marks of de-fleshing tools. In such cases these long bones often provide one more bit of telling evidence. The large knuckle ends of the bones have been crushed – as have corresponding bones of animal carcasses – in order to remove the protein-filled marrow. When these factors are combined they provide a preponderance of evidence that would surely stand up in any court of law. As a race, we are most certainly guilty of eating our neighbours. But if early man went around eating people indiscriminately, he would probably have eaten those closest to hand – the members of his own tribe – possibly beginning with those least able to defend themselves, the children and women. Had he done this, humanity would have died out in no time at all. In point of fact, there seems to be some evidence that Neanderthal was more than a little indiscriminate as to who he ate and we could conjecture that this might have been a contributing factor in his extinction. Obviously, if the human species was going to flourish, there had to be rules about who got spit-roasted and who did not.

  One archaeologically substantiated instance of cannibalism, which has provided no clear-cut clues to the underlying cause, has left scholars scratching their heads in confusion and social activists shaking their fists in anger. It has only been a century and a half since the American Indian was the whipping boy for expansionist-minded white America, but in recent decades the Native American’s past has been transformed into something sacrosanct. Now, the image of one of these supposedly peace-loving, spiritualistic tribes has been called into question by discoveries in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, once the home of a people known as the Anasazi. The Anasazi flourished throughout the American south-west between AD 700 and 1300. During those six hundred years they developed a complex and advanced society that spread across Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. Remnants of their culture can still be seen in the towering cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde and numerous other sites scattered across the Mojave Desert. The question of their disappearance has long troubled scholars and historians and, until recently, the accepted wisdom has been that a massive drought caused the Anasazi social structure to collapse. Certainly, there is ample evidence that as their population expanded they despoiled their land and hunted the game to near extinction. If this alone was not enough to raise the ire of those who believe the Anasazi were back-to-the-land-minded conservationists, recent evidence has caused one of the greatest social controversies since Charles Darwin proposed the theory of human evolution. Thanks to a mounting pile of physical evidence, many archaeologists and anthropologists have become convinced that the Anasazi practised cannibalism.

  In 1994, the remains of seven dismembered bodies were found at an Anasazi site at Cowboy Wash, 40 miles east of Mesa Verde. All of these skeletal remains bore the distinct marks of defleshing and shattered bone ends described earlier as convincing evidence of cannibalism. Additionally, human blood residue was found inside fragments of cooking pots. Even more ominous were the human skulls that showed evidence of having been set on a fire to cook their original contents before being cracked open. While accusations of racism and political incorrectness were being thrown around, scientists continued to gather evidence; by the time they completed their research, similar remains had been gathered from no fewer than fifty Anasazi sites.

  Most alarmed by these findings
were members of the Hopi, Zuni and other Native American tribes who date their ancestry to the Anasazi. When a scientific symposium was held to discuss the Anasazi findings, the word cannibalism was excised from the conference’s formal name. In a politically correct compromise, it was entitled ‘Multidisciplinary Approaches to Social Violence in the Prehistoric American Southwest’. Dr David Wilcox, curator of the Museum of Northern Arizona, explained the problem succinctly when he said, ‘Our understanding of the Anasazi is exactly parallel to what was thought about the Maya years ago – this advanced society, responsible for beautiful things, that now we realize was not a peaceful place.’ Even Dr Wilcox, it seems, hesitated to use the ‘C’ word. There were those, however, who did not; among them were Christy Turner, professor of anthropology at Arizona State University and Richard Marler, a molecular biologist at the University of Colorado Health Services Center in Denver.

  Turner not only followed all the established guidelines for proving cannibalism but added one of his own. ‘Pot polish’ is a term Turner uses to describe the shine given to bone fragments which have been continually stirred while being cooked in an earthenware vessel. Lo and behold, the human bones from the Anasazi sites bore the distinctive sheen of pot polish. For his part, Marler was asked to analyse a coprolite found among the remains of a cooking fire at one of the sites where human bones were discovered. ‘Coprolite’ is the technical term for preserved human faecal matter. According to Marler’s tests, the Anasazi coprolites contained human myoglobin, a protein found only in muscle tissue. Although myoglobin is found in all animals, the myoglobin in each species of creature is unique and distinctive. In the coprolite Marler examined, not only was there human myoglobin, but there was a complete lack of myoglobin from any other species. In Marler’s words, ‘All we have found from the Cowboy Wash samples is human myoglobin – no other species. If you didn’t eat human beings, this protein would not show up. This proves they put the meat in their mouths. They had a human meat meal.’

  The burning question, of course, is WHY the Anasazi ate human flesh. Christy Turner believes the Anasazi were invaded by a group of Toltec Indians who were, indeed, cannibals. These invading Toltecs used torture, corpse mutilation and cannibalism to terrorise the Anasazi over a protracted enough period of time to destroy their civilisation. Others hold that simple starvation, brought on by a series of droughts and crop failures, along with the general depletion of game animals, may have led the Anasazi into cannibalism.

  Whatever the reason, the controversy over Anasazi dining habits is sure to rage for years to come. Terry Knight, a Ute Mountain tribal leader who supervised the Cowboy Wash excavation, has a reasonable view on the matter: ‘Like any other civilization, there were good, productive people, and there were bad people.’ Southern Methodist University archaeologist Michael Adler puts it even more curtly when he says, ‘This is not a happy past.’

  What the Anasazi controversy makes clear is that most early societies, their geographic location and precise place along the time-line notwithstanding, were often unstable. When, for whatever reason, a society began to collapse, and the generally accepted rules of behaviour broke down, the prospect of cannibalism might become an appealing alternative to starvation or wandering aimlessly in the wilderness. Certainly, if drought or some other natural disaster killed off a succession of harvests, or the game died out or moved on, the neighbouring village, or the people next door, might start to look pretty inviting.

  Three

  Institutionalised Cannibalism: Rituals, Religion and Magical Rites

  It was, in fact, the ancient Greeks – one specific ancient Greek – who first tackled the tricky job of identifying and classifying the phenomenon of cannibalism. In the fifth century BC, the Greek historian and chronicler Herodotus coined the word that is still generally accepted as the proper term for eating human flesh. The word is ‘anthropophagy’ and is a combination of the Greek words ‘anthropos’, meaning ‘man’, and ‘phagein’, meaning ‘to eat’. Anthropophagy may not be as evocative as cannibalism but it is more technically correct and therefore the descriptive term of choice among historians, scientists and anthropologists. So, if anthropophagy is the proper, technical term for humanity eating its own kind, what then is the origin of the word cannibal?

  That term was coined by the great explorer Christopher Columbus, no less, following his landfall in the West Indies island group known as the Lesser Antilles: what we now call the Caribbean Islands.

  Among the tribes of the Lesser Antilles were a people who referred to themselves as ‘cariba’. The Spanish explorers erroneously assumed this was their name for themselves when it was actually a descriptive noun meaning ‘bold’ or ‘brave’. The Spanish had some trouble pronouncing cariba, and pronounced it ‘caniba’. From caniba evolved ‘cannibal’ and once it was discovered that the ‘cannibals’ committed the ultimate sin of eating human flesh, the name of the islanders took on an entirely new, and more general, meaning. In the five centuries since Columbus’ travels to the New World the term cannibal has been used to vilify nearly any culture seen as inferior, to describe those groups and individuals who consume, or have in the past consumed, human flesh, and to add titillating excitement to an endless litany of stories, both factual and fictitious.

  But historians, scientists and anthropologists being, as they are, a precise lot, find that one term is not enough to cover the varying reasons for eating our own species. Under the general heading of anthropophagy there are the sub-classifications of ‘endocannibalism’ – eating dead friends or relatives as an act of respect – and ‘exocannibalism’ – the act of eating enemies slain in battle or killed as a sacrifice to some small and angry deity. It is worthy of note that in classifying the different types of anthropophagy, even science has fallen back on the common term ‘cannibal’.

  There are a variety of primary reasons why a society might practise cannibalism. It may be part of a ceremony meant to honour the dead; as a post-battle celebration in which the prowess of an enemy is absorbed by the victor; as a means of inflicting one final insult on a fallen enemy; as a desperate means of fending off starvation or to overcome a severe protein deficiency in the staple diet. Of course, there are also societies who eat people just because they like the taste. If a society eats flesh as a right of conquest (exocannibalism) or to revere the memory of the dead (endocannibalism) there is usually a religious aspect to the proceedings. Certainly there is an element of this concept in the Christian ceremony of Holy Communion particularly if, as those who follow the tenets of the Roman Catholic Church believe, the bread and wine used in the service quite literally turn into the blood and body of Christ through the miracle of transubstantiation.

  In this chapter we will examine a number of first-hand accounts, provided by chroniclers, explorers and anthropologists, of exocannibalism, endocannibalism and just plain eating your neighbours; but all within social structures where cannibalism, in one form or another, is an accepted norm. Most of the societal groups we will encounter are, by most modern standards, primitive and warlike. In such societies, human flesh has often been considered little more than another form of booty to be shared out among the victorious. Because of the vast historical scope of these records and the number of instances and locales in which the phenomenon has been recorded, we cannot attempt an in-depth coverage of the subject. Rather we will present a few selective accounts, divided by geographic region.

  One of the first verified accounts of martial cannibalism comes from the Roman historian and chronicler Tacitus. According to his Annals warriors of the Celtic tribes – particularly those in Britain – took the heads of their slain enemies and gave them to their priests, or Druids, who ate the brain believing that by so doing they would be imbued with the wisdom, knowledge and cleverness of the enemy. It is a pattern that we will find repeated with predictable regularity throughout the rest of this chapter.

  The first contact of Europeans with cannibals in the New World came hand-in-hand wit
h the discovery of the Western Hemisphere. Among the first people with whom Christopher Columbus’ 1492 expedition came in contact were the Caribs mentioned earlier, and they routinely devoured their slain enemies. Another tribe of the same island group, the Arawak, who had not originally been cannibals, had taken up the practice as a means of revenging themselves on the Caribs. As the practice spread among the islanders, its battle-related significance dwindled. Where once it had been purely a victory right, it devolved into a simple shopping expedient. People were boiled, roasted, smoked, salted and eaten raw as an integral part of the Caribbean diet. The most popular way of preparing flesh was to roast it over a grill of green wood called a ‘barbacoa’, which has survived in the modern word barbecue. In essence, derivations of this term came to be used for both the grill and the meat that was cooked on it.

  If the Spanish at first assumed the dining habits of the Caribbean people were a localised phenomenon, they revised their opinion after invading Mexico. In 1520–1 the Conquistador Hernan Cortez led a gold-hunting expedition of 550 heavily armed men into the land of the Aztec and encountered cannibalism on a mind-boggling scale. Because the Aztecs were wiped out by a combination of Spanish aggression and European diseases, most of what we know of them comes from contemporary accounts by priests travelling with the Spanish forces. Among the best of these accounts is that written by Fr Bernal Diaz, who was one of several dedicated priests who went to the new world in an attempt to convert the natives of Central and South America to Christianity.

  Even as they entered Aztec territory, the Cortez expedition found half-devoured corpses scattered along the roadside and caged humans awaiting consumption. It is true that the majority of Aztec cannibalism was carried out in connection with ritual sacrifice, but the Aztecs were undoubtedly one of the most sacrifice-happy groups ever to inhabit the planet. In these ceremonies, the victim or, more often, multiple victims – frequently numbering in the hundreds or thousands – were paraded to the top of pyramid temples where their chests were cut open and their still-beating hearts ripped out. The bodies were then kicked over the edge of the pyramid to be divided among the people below according to social rank; the priest and noble class getting the revered internal organs, thighs going to the high council, and the commoners being left with the lesser chops and roasts. On particularly solemn occasions the king would eat a dish called ‘man-corn’ in which finely chopped flesh was mixed with maize meal and eaten during a religious ceremony. Sometimes the flayed skins of the victims were offered to the fertility goddess. Infants – who were obviously not prizes of battle – were offered to the rain god. There seemed no end to the number of reasons, and the number of gods to whom people were sacrificed, but the Aztecs always managed to gobble up the carcasses. The Spanish were told that in 1486 as many as 20,000 had been sacrificed and eaten over the course of a four-day religious orgiastic food-fest. When the Catholics challenged the fact that the natives sacrificed human beings to their gods, the Aztecs replied that yes, they did sacrifice their enemies to please and appease their god but – in a none too delicate reference to the Catholic communion rite – noted that the Spanish ate their god . . . and the Aztecs thought that practice barbaric. With mutual hatred now firmly established, the Spanish proceeded to declare all-out war on the Aztecs.