Looking at the Cannibals

Well, the word “Cannibalism” derived from a Spanish word “Caníbales” standing for “Caribs” which in turn stand for a West Indies tribe that may have practiced what we call Cannibalism. And the word Cannibalism stands for a phenomenon or a process where individuals of a species devouring other individuals of the same species.

So from introduction of the word it is clear that it has quite a good relation with human beings. That may be because of the fact that man have practiced it from time immemorial or may be because human recognized it as something unusual in the process of being social.

But the thing is it is nothing sort of unusual in context of the living system as a whole. Don’t get me wrong, it is totally unusual when observed in society type of things but it is quite usual in case of organisms who live in a solitary life. But still there are some cases where the exceptions happen.

I’m saying it not rare, because of the lack of society like

complex things in animal kingdom (obviously its animal kingdom as plants can’t just go and engulf someone or something, but cases are recorded where plants made caterpillars cannibal as a protective measure for their own). It is so common that one can see it in action in his/her own garden. This cannibalism thing is often practice by insects like mantis and spider and ladybugs etc., and other solitary invertebrates, and some lower vertebrates like snakes and frogs.

And today we know that some of our ancestors also practiced this thing apart from that mentioned in the introduction. Early humans and other hominids did practiced cannibalism as a measure of predator control. In his books and travelogues Jim Corbett mentioned observations where the leopard or tigers which get taste of human flesh becomes man-eater. And that might have been the observations of the early human and hominids too. And that was the only way of not letting the body going to hand of predators and scavengers, obviously it was the time when cremation and burial was thousands of year afar.

As mentioned earlier that cannibalism seem not to occur in society like complex things, but still there are some exceptions present across the history of human, in some cases these were ritual practice, cultural act, in some cases these came out of desperation and in some other cases it happened intentionally but by mistake. Let’s look up on some of the famous cases.

In around the beginning of 12^th century, there existed a medicinal preparation in Europe called

“Mummia” which was basically used as an all-cure medicine made from preparations asphalts from Dead Sea which then ran short and the term got misinterpreted and became “a black resinous exudate scraped out from embalmed Egyptian mummies”, and people literally engulfed other people in powdered form. It was at first prepared from Egyptian mummies and a huge trade sat up between Europe and Egypt until Egypt banned its trade in 16^th century, then after mummia got prepared from local corpse in the name of Egyptian Mummy until  Renaissance scholar came into the field.

Cases of cannibalism are well documented in the time of famine where there remained only two options – either eat the dead or starve to death. Such things occurred during the Great Chinese Famine of 1959-1961 and on seeing the scale of famine this particular event of cannibalism was described as unprecedented in the history of the 20^th century. It was one of the many cases present all along the history to mention.

Same things did happened in wars, when supply line got disrupted and in some time to consolidate the group feeling of the troop. These cases are well documented in World War II, cases appeared during 872-days siegeof Leningrad. And these came front from the interviews with survived prisoners of the war. These war crimes continued in many wars across the history including those of very recent times.

There are also cases where there were no option for survival other than eating those who already died. And these were numerous in shipwrecks of the 19^th century as sea provide nothing to eat or drink, survivors often resorted on cannibalism, they used to eat the flesh and drink the blood and that was their only means of survival.

There is another famous story of cannibalism of survival category come from 1972, when Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crashed in Andes with some youngsters,

where they remained for 83 days straight, without any supply and stock, and eventually hit by an avalanche. They resorted to cannibalism of the dead, so that they can survive the battle against hunger.

The history of human cannibalism is too big to fit in such small articles.

This thing is horrifying and at the same time is against the humanity, and that was the perfect chance for a community to make other inferior. And that thing happened since the time of Christopher Columbus. His first visit with red-Indian described them friendly, but when they failed to produce gold, they were tagged Cannibals and that was enough for Columbus to make them slaves as a price for gold. And this thing happened across the history of colonization.

Yes, human cannibalism is inhumane but the circumstances that caused this matters more than anything in the story.

Although it is abundant in animal kingdom but human are abit different. And use it in some different way other than satisfying the belly. In this context author T. H. White wrote "true warfare is rarer in nature than cannibalism"

  But for now the things are different and what drive to cannibalism should be uprooted. And in this there is a famous quote by holocaust survivor Lou Dunst that 

                  "Starvation was so bad that cannibalism became stylish" -- Lou Dunst