Cannibalism means the eating of human flesh by human beings. The term cannibalism comes from the Spanish canibales, the name given by the Conquistadors to the Carib Indians who lived in the West Indies when Columbus arrived. The various Indian societies constantly warred with each other and, according to the Conquistadors, they ritually killed their prisoners of war and ate them at great feasts.
Most accounts of cannibalism amongst native inhabitants given by conquering armies and by powerful settlers have been, at best, grossly exaggerated. Nevertheless, cannibalism has been practised in certain areas. The custom often functions as a respectful way to treat the dead.
In 1979, the influential social anthropologist William E. Arens published a book called The Man-Eating Myth in which he asserted that all accounts of cannibalism, practiced as custom and habit, are invented. He admitted that people did occasionally resort to cannibalism, but only in cases of insanity or starvation.
Arens's extreme hypothesis was popular for a while but has become very much weakened in the face of archaeological excavations (e.g. in Spain, Fiji and in America) that have uncovered convincing evidence of cannibalistic meals.
Cannibalism may have been practised as early as neolithic times. Ancient writers, including the Greek Herodotus, described various peoples as cannibals. Marco Polo wrote that tribes from Sumatra to Tibet indulged in cannibalism. The tribes of the western coast of the Gulf of Mexico were reported to be cannibals and, until recent times, cannibalism was reported in central and western Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Sumatra, New Guinea, Polynesia, and parts of South America.
When the Spanish arrived in South America after Columbus, they found a rich land peopled by powerful societies of Indians.
The main motivation of many of the Europeans was to grab as much wealth and power as they could and as quickly as possible.
The church declared that the Indians were creatures of God, which made it permissible for the settlers to evangelise but not to enslave them.
However it was allowable to wage savage war and to enslave Indians who practised the depraved habit of cannibalism. Consequently, as the conquerors' need for slaves to work their plantations and mines increased so did the reported incidence of cannibalism.
The French anthropologist Pierre Clastres travelled to the rain forests of Paraguay in 1963 to study a Stone Age tribe known as the Guayaki. He published an account of his work with the Guayaki in French in a book called Chronique des Indiens Guayaki. This work has been translated into English by Paul Auster and Chronical of the Guayaki Indians was published in 1998 by Zone Books.
The Indians told Clastres of their cannibalistic habits. They did not kill people to eat them, but their practice was to eat their own dead.
All the dead are eaten regardless of age, sex or circumstances of death. Clastres witnessed no acts of cannibalism. His account is based entirely on what he was told.
When a person dies amongst the Guayaki the corpse is cut up, usually by the dead person's godfather. The head and limbs are cut from the trunk and the organs and the insides are removed.
The head is carefully shaved, usually by the wife/mother if the corpse is that of a man or a child. The meat and the organs of the corpse are roasted but the head is boiled in a pot. The fat that drips from the roasting meat is carefully mopped up and consumed.
The dead person is eaten by all present except the closest relatives. As a general rule parents do not eat their children, children do not eat their parents, and siblings do not eat one another. The head is reserved for old men and women. The penis is always given to the women. It is given to pregnant women first in order to ensure they will give birth to boys. The only things not eaten are the female sexual organs, which are removed and buried.
The Indians love the taste of human flesh. They describe the taste as being close to that of the meat of the domestic pig. They particularly like the taste of human fat.
The Indians have a sacred purpose in eating their dead. They believe that a living body holds its soul as a prisoner and that death frees the soul from the body. They believe the soul doesn't want to be free and immediately invades the body of a living person. The Indians believe that eating the body of the dead person prevents the liberated soul from that person entering the body of a living person. If the soul does enter the body of a living person who has eaten the body the soul previously occupied, it will find its old bodily abode eaten and scattered. This forces the soul to recognise that its own nature is ghostly and without material substance.
The Indians believe that such souls, recognising their true nature, are now content to rise into the sky to become lost in the land of the dead.
(William Reville is a Senior Lecturer in Biochemistry and Director of Microscopy at UCC.)