Cannibalism - Thought For Food!

I begin this post with this disclaimer; I am not a lunatic. I just have an interest in extreme human behavior.

Human behavior is an interesting thing. We are the dominant species on the planet. Evolved, and civilized. But one of the things about humans that really interest me, is how quick our civility can disappear. In an instant our sophistication dissipates and we are thrown back into our animalistic tendencies. There is no greater example of this than cannibalism.

Cannibalism is a practice traced back thousands of years. However, lore and legend cloud the history of cannibalism. White men labeled most indigenous people as cannibals even though it was not a tribal practice. It was really just a way for the white men to justify the slaughter of these tribes. Big surprise.

In actuality cannibalism in ancient times was a religious practice. In fact the Aztecs were known to have ceremonies in which the person being sacrificed, had their still-beating heart ripped from their chest, and held up high for all the faithful to see. The royal family then ate the heart. Now let me tell ya, that’s what I call going to church. Forget that “Body of Christ” shit, I wanna see a beating human heart.

The Aztecs are historically regarded as one of the largest societies to practice sociological cannibalism. It is actually part of an interesting debate that is ongoing as to why the Aztecs practiced cannibalism in the first place. Some argue that it was a dietary supplement to account for a deficiency in protein, but the prevailing line of thought is that it was simply religion and war. Often during times of war, the fallen enemies would be consumed by victorious soldiers as a way for the soldiers to gain the power of the dead. This is historically a very popular idea, that by consuming someone, you can assume his or her power. Cannibalism was also commonly practiced within families as a way for the deceased to live on. So if your Uncle Morty dies, and you eat him, then Uncle Morty lives on in you. Kind of poetic isn’t it?
Now of course it is easy for people to comprehend the idea of cannibalism in ancient times, I mean hey, these people were practicing incest and walking around with open sores, they didn’t know any better. It is much more difficult for people to deal with idea of cannibalism in modern times. And it does still happen folks, it still does, and it’s not just for psychos and stranded people. In fact the extent to which cannibalism exists in the world today is quite astounding.

When we hear about cannibalism today, we generally think of the movie Alive. The stranded victims of a plane crash, with no food, which have to resort to eating the flesh of their friends to survive. The desperation serves as a horrid, but understandable justification for the act. The Donner party was another example of the same desperation. 87 people on an expedition get lost in the mountains for months, some of the party went crazy and killed each other, and ate each other. By the time they were rescued nearly half were dead and several eaten. These kinds of stories have been the subject of more books; documentaries and feature films than you can count. But it seems justifiable to us. The desperation. Not having food, being so hungry and delirious that you actually get to a point where eating the flesh of a human being for sustenance, is a good idea. We may not want to do it, or cannot imagine ourselves doing it, but we do understand it.

The other common example of modern cannibalism is people who are just plain fuckin’ nuts. Number 1 on the list of psychotic cannibal mother fuckers, you know the name, Jeffrey Dahmer. The man who seduced young boys and drugged, sodomized, and ate them. When police caught Dahmer they found the severed head of a Cambodian teenager in his fridge, which has always made me wonder, “on what shelf in the fridge does one place a severed head. Does it go on the top shelf, or the vegetable drawer?” Would you like to know what else police found in Dahmer’s home? Ok I’ll tell you. Skulls were found stripped of hair and skin on shelves in the kitchen. A bucket was found full of severed hands. A torso was found in his kitchen sink that was ripped open from the neck to the groin, and next to that, a severed penis. A penis was also found in a lobster pot in the fridge. Finally, in a jar on the counter, and yes I’m serious, a pickled penis was found. Now what is strange to me about the pickled penis, is that I wonder if pickling was a culinary skill of Dahmer’s or did he learn it specifically for this one item? Hmm, I guess we’ll never know.

Then of course there was Ed Gein, not the cover boy that Dahmer was, but Gein was the Hollywood maniac. His story inspired films like Psycho, Silence of the Lambs, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and a really lousy low budget biopic titled Ed Gein. Now Gein is really not considered a cannibal, in fact he himself denied it, but this sick bastard is in the same company. Gein was a grave robber, who dug up women's bodies, chopped them up, and skinned them and made clothes out of their skin. He put skulls on the posts of his bed, and reupholstered his couch with female skin. When police raided his bachelor pad, they found a bucket of vulvas preserved in salt, and next to that, a bucket of noses. And though not technically a cannibal, it does at least appear that he is in the same ballpark.

Then there was Idi Amin; the man so affectionately referred to as “The Butcher of Uganda.” Amin was the president of Uganda in the 1970’s. He was a notorious ruler and was accused of cannibalizing some of his political opposition.

The list of modern individual cannibals goes on and on. But the extent to which cannibalism is a societal practice in the modern world is alarming. In 1997 starving people in North Korea had resorted to cannibalism because of the lack of food. In some instances parents were killing and eating their own infants. Imagine that, killing and eating your own child. There was one married couple in North Korea during this time, that were executed for killing 50 children, curing their flesh with salt, and storing them in a hut. Can you believe that, an example of societal cannibalism, only 9 years ago? And that is just North Korea. Cannibalism has been reported to have also been practiced in Indonesia as well as the Congo in recent years.

Human behavior amazes me. These incidents, whether its the psycho guy that lives in the middle of nowhere, or people in a third world country, are examples of extreme human behavior that seem to exist totally outside of our mindset. We see them like movies, or works of fiction. The idea that these things are really happening in the world is, excuse the pun, hard to swallow. But to me, its a part of the tapestry of life. We disregard it, when we need to examine it. We disregard these things because they exist outside of our ethical framework, but how do these actions by individuals and societies fit in with peoples morality, ethics, and religion. The values and morals that we cling to seem to are compromised by such things. Now I’m not asking if there is a place in heaven for a guy like Jeffrey Dahmer, what I’m asking is how can one believe in giving thanks to God when people are pushed to eat their own children. See the very existence of these forms of human behavior force us to ask larger questions, and it is for that reason that we cannot disregard them.


Well I hope you made it through without vomiting, just thought I’d give you some food for thought. And as you know I have an affinity for quotes and believe it or not I even found one on cannibalism. Did you ever want to know what human flesh tastes like? Well I leave you with the words of the survivors of the 1972 Uruguayan plane crash that inspired Alive.

“the slight browning of the flesh gave it an immeasurably better flavor, softer than beef but with much the same taste."