Cannibalism in Human Societies

I’ve been digging into the ethnographic evidence for cannibalism over the last few years. Before I started searching, I had a few basic expectations about where and why cannibalism should appear:

1) Opportunistic cannibalism in response to starvation. See the Andes flight disaster, for example. This sort of behavior can happen without any historical tradition or conventional social sanction behind it, instead being undertaken as a last resort through a miserable hunger to survive. Starvation-cannibalism is something you might expect some people in any society to be willing to resort to in very desperate—and probably extremely rare—circumstances.

2) Social traditions of cannibalism. Such as funerary cannibalism where (often small) portions of the deceased are ritually consumed by living members of their community. Or war cannibalism, where some piece of an enemy—often just part of an organ or a body part—is consumed to gain their power.

3) Habitual cannibalism in response to chronic shortages of meat/nutrition. This is the Marvin Harris perspective on the Aztecs. I wont be focusing on the issue of Aztec cannibalism here, but will touch on that in a future post. Note this is not mutually exclusive with the social traditions of cannibalism category, but key here is an emphasis on nutritional value from cannibalism, whereas in the social traditions nutrition may play little-to-no role.

Regarding 1), starvation cannibalism clearly does sometimes occur cross-culturally. This tends to be treated with considerable disgust and regret by participants and even the wider society, while nonetheless often being recognized as necessary for survival. Of the Slavey of British Columbia, anthropologist John Honigmann writes that,

Episodes of cannibalism were always restricted to periods of famine and starvation but such periods were not rare in the Fort Nelson area. The reaction of the community to one of its members who had eaten human flesh was compounded of horror and avoidance. Such a person was isolated from his people for a considerable period but was eventually permitted to return to his group. In some cases his banishment was final and he could never return. “Lots of times,” according to one informant, people found a piece of human bone in a person's pack; then they knew that he had eaten a human being.

In some cases starvation cannibalism may ultimately be the result of post-colonial disruptions. Among the Yukaghir of Siberia, anthropologist Nelson Graburn writes that,

With the introduction of firearms and the fur trade, the number of many important game animals was greatly reduced in the Yukagir country. During the nineteenth century the migrations of wild reindeer ceased in widespread areas. At times when the fish-spawning runs were low, this reduction in game often resulted in starvation, and, as in many other areas in the Arctic, starvation sometimes forced people to cannibalism.

Notably even when starvation-cannibalism may be in one’s interest to survive, a revulsion towards the behavior may inhibit someone from doing so. Anthropologist Kaj Birket-Smith writes of the Eyak of Alaska that, “When starving, the Eyak would cook and eat their skin clothing,” rather than having recourse to cannibalism.

For 2), this seems to be the most common form of cannibalism, in war or funerary rites. Among the Kaska of British Columbia, “Ceremonial cannibalism also followed fighting, but instead of flesh only the raw “belly fat” was eaten. This ritual meal strengthened the victors and enabled them, should necessity demand, to eat raw meat in the future.” Anthropologist Herbert Basedow says of the Arunta of Central Australia,

It is, moreover, the custom to cut portions of the soft parts from a dead warrior's body, whether he be friend or foe, and to eat them. The belief is that by so doing the brave qualities of the departed soldier will be kept among the tribe and will not all be taken away by the spirit when it migrates to the ancestral hunting grounds. The pieces which are most commonly consumed by the mourners (or victors) are the kidney fat and the marrow of the long bones.

These traditions do not necessarily motivate violence to procure victims. Basedow adds that, “The native of Australia does not go head-hunting and does not organize expeditions, whose object is to slay people upon whom they can feast. We are not justified in calling him a cannibal; the most we can say of him is that opportunity might make him an occasional man-eater.”

And they commonly do not seem to play an important role in subsistence. Of the Maori of New Zealand, anthropologist Raymond Firth says, “it is obvious from any serious consideration of the subject that the supplementing of the food supply by levying toll on the persons of one's slaves or enemies was too spasmodic and irregular a business to be looked to as a means of supplying in any great measure the need for flesh food.”

Among the Yanoama of northwest Brazil, “At the big annual ceremony in memory of the dead…all the men drink the bone ashes of their deceased relatives, mixed with banana soup, because they believe that in this way the vigor and spirit of the dead remain within the tribes.”

Anthropologist Roy Barton discusses ritual cannibalism in southeast Asia, noting that,

Ceremonial anthropophagy in some form seems to have been practiced by all the headhunters of Luzon, the motive, apparently, being to secure invigoration through the soulstuff of the beheaded. The Kalingas mixed brains and rum in the calvarium and drank them. Nearly all Borneo headhunters eat some part of the victim.

Among the Tsonga of South Africa, “A part of the body was also preserved and mixed with the war-medicine; the idea which underlies this custom being evidently this: when you have eaten the flesh of your enemies, you have absorbed all their strength and they are unable to do you any further harm.”

Cannibalism practices may be perceived as showing special respect or veneration for one’s friends or relatives, or exhibiting strong contempt for one’s enemies.

“When Wari' talk about their former practice of funerary cannibalism, one of the recurring themes is that consuming the corpse pleased the dead person's spirit. Wari' wanted their own corpses to be eaten, or at least cremated. For dying individuals, the idea of disappearing into fellow tribesmembers' bodies apparently was considerably more appealing than the alternative of being left to rot in the ground. In the I950s and ‘60s, when outsiders forced them to start burying their dead instead of eating them, Wari' were appalled.”

Such views may be bolstered by the notion that, by consuming some portion of the deceased, one is able to retain some desirable quality of theirs that they had in life.

People across different societies seem to commonly converge on some variant of these beliefs, and it appears that for the cannibalism traditions motivated by them, nutritional concerns are often secondary or not particularly relevant.

For 3), this one is the most difficult to evaluate, but it does seem that in some contexts war-cannibalism may be tied to subsistence motives. Anthropologist Bruce Knauft notes of the Marind of south coast New Guinea,

though cannibalism was sometimes practiced—of both the head and the body generally—there appears to have been little spiritual significance given to this act. Available evidence suggests that cannibalism of victims was not invariable or general and may have been undertaken in significant part as a supplementary food source during long expeditions when supplies were low, for instance, “in case the assailants had not had any meat for a long time, all the members of the party might feast on parts of the bodies of their victims.” [emphasis added].

Overall there seems to be evidence for all three types of cannibalism, but most of the cases I’ve encountered seem to fit more of the ‘social cannibalism’ category, where certain portions of the body of a community member or an enemy—sometimes both—would be consumed in a ceremonial fashion. What sort of nutritional contribution these practices tend to make is an open question, but my impression is it is often not particularly significant and not a primary motive, although in some cases it might be.

Further reading for those interested: Forsyth, D.W. (1985). Three Cheers for Hans Staden: The Case for Brazilian Cannibalism. Ethnohistory. A very good critical review of ‘The Man-Eating Myth’ (1979) by William Arens.