Re [Sca-cooks] canibalism

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Last summer i read a book by an anthropologist called "The Man-Eating
Myth". As far as can be determined there has never been a culture
that engaged in cannibalism. The author examined reports going back
to at least the 16th century.

The only documentable cases of cannibalism have occurred when people
were in a life-threatening situation and there was no other food
(such as the plane of soccer players that crashed in the Andes a
decade or so ago) or when people are just really insane (Jeffrey
Dahmer).

While there are stories of people... eating other people...

...most of these are just stories. Most commonly, white European men
(whether adventurers or missionaries) would ask a group of "exotic"
people if they were cannibals. The answer was often, no, but that
*other* group over there is. Or the people might be pressured, over
and over, so that finally, to get the Europeans to shut up they would
acquiesce and say, well, we used to be, several generations ago, but
not anymore. And these sorts of answers would be reported as showing
that cannibalism existed, even though there was no evidence at all.

The idea of cannibalism has fascinated Europeans and Americans for
quite some time. I don't know how common such stories are in other
cultures - i know they exist, i just don't know if they fixate on
them the way Euro-Americans did in the 19th and early 20th c. As
Euro-Americans learned about other cultures, especially in the 19th
century, such stories became more popular - think the print
equivalent of those scurrilous day-time talk shows on TV these days.

Anahita