Anthropophagy

History

Paleolithic

It seems that the cannibalism was practiced as of the Paléolithique. Traces of cutting-up were observed on prehistoric human bones, but the indices in question are not however evidence of anthropophagy. It is indeed often difficult to differentiate from the funerary practices, with emaciation post-mortem of the bodies, the actions anatomically identical to goal anthropophagic (Neolithic cave of Fontbrégoua, with Salernes and of Adaouste, close to Jouques in France).

The cannibalism is regarded as probable in certain sites of the Paléolithique inferior like Gran Dolina with Atapuerca) in Spain or the Caune of Arago in France, of the Paléolithique means as the Balsam Moulded-Guercy with Are in France, in sites Mesolithic S (cave of Perrats with Agris) and in North-American more recent populations (site of Mancos in the Colorado).

So certain cultures had practices socially instituted cannibals, the occasional cannibalism in the event of serious shortage (famine or of loss of the reserves of food on a boat) was a recurring practice in all the companies.

Antiquity

The Greek myths bring back many cases of cannibalism: Cronos devouring his/her children, the cyclops Polyphème put in failure by Ulysses, anthropophagous people of the Lestrygons about which the Odyssée speaks, etc

In its History , Hérodote describes the funerary traditions several people, among whom Massagètes, Padéens, Issédons, Scythians and Thraces, of which some are necrophagous and others sacrifice the old men and the patients before making them cook and consuming them.

One can consider that they are only symbols, but he is probable, as thinks it Robert Graves in his work the Greek Myths , than these myths referred to the antiquated practices and the fights carried out by the first Greeks against anthropophagous people. Many old religious practices comprised human sacrifices followed cannibalism.

According to the Christian dogma of the Transsubstantiation, the Communion itself is based on the meal taken jointly during which one receives “the flesh and the blood of Christ”. The dominant interpretation of this practice is the following one: nonviolent religion, Christianity would have replaced the real practice of the human sacrifice and the cannibalism by a practice symbolic system.

11th at the 19th century

Corroborating sources bring back practices cannibals during the Croisades, of the behaviors which would be the fact of the Francs. In the crusades seen by the Arabs Amin Maalouf joins together several frank and Arab testimonys reporting these facts, in particular that of the frank chronicler Raoul of Caen: With Maarrat, ours made boil pagan adults in pots, they fixed the children on pins and devoured them roasted . In Chronic anonymity of the first crusade , one can read: The Francs were delayed with Maarrat one month and four days. There were ours which missed necessary Alors, they opened the corpses, because, in their bellies, one found besants hidden. Or, they cut out the flesh of it of pieces, and they made it cook to eat it .

At the 16th century, one found cannibals in Central America (the Aztèques), in South America (Tupinambas and Tupinikims), and until the beginning of the 20th century in equatorial Africa or in the Pacific Islands (Fiji, etc). For all, to eat human flesh was a normal act.

The Aztec ones ate the victims of the sacrifices to the god of the sun Huitzilopochtli. With the the Middle East, the Hittites impaled, with all their family, the chiefs of the cities which revolted against their domination, cut out them alive of pieces which they put to cook and distributed to the people to strike terror the opponents by the cruelty of the torment. In Very short relation of the destruction of the Indies , Bartolomé de Las Put reports that certain Spanish chiefs, who had been combined with the natives to conquer the country, tolerated that these Indians trailed with them prisoners intended to nourish the troop. When the campings were installed, a butchery was set up, and of the men, women and children were cut down, cut out and sold like pourceaux.

Andre Thévet, priest catholic who had accompanied Villegagnon to bay by Rio de Janeiro, then went up along the coasts of America in the French possessions. After having found cannibals in Brazil (Tupinambas), it also found some in Guyana and Florida. Jean de Léry, Pasteur Protestant who succeeded Thevet at Villegagnon, brings back to him also the habits cannibals of the Indians Tupis in its writings.

In its book the social fray , Georges Clémenceau reports that at the end of the 19th century, one found on the markets of equatorial Africa of the individuals, men and women, on which each one marked the piece that it wished to buy to eat. When all was sold, the person was killed, cut out, and the pieces distributed to the purchasers. He adds: “Which could be the thoughts of these blacks which saw their brothers dividing their future corpse? Undoubtedly thought that the day before still, they did as much of it. ” It finishes: “If we bring with civilization the prohibition of the cannibalism, won't we condemn them to the famine? ”

20th century

Several cases of cannibalism touching of the villages or the whole areas were reported during the blackest periods of the Soviet Russia. According to a report/ratio of the Safety of State, in 1922, “the famine reaches terrible proportions. The peasants ate all that could be used as food, cats, dogs. At present, they are unearthing deaths to eat them (…) According to testimonys of the members of the executive committee of the volost , the cannibalism in the borough of Lioudbimovka takes dramatic proportions. ”.

Many written reports/ratios and testimonys colligés by the Australian section of the war crimes of the Court of Tokyo and analyzed by the investigator William Webb (the future judge as a chief), show that the soldiers Japan board made at the time of the Second world war acts of cannibalism against the allied prisoners and civil populations to the occupied territories. In certain cases, these acts were justified by the famine, but according to the historian Yuki Tanaka, “the cannibalism was often a systematic activity undertaken by whole sections and under the command of officers. ”

According to the testimony of several prisoners, like the Indian soldier Hatam Ali, the victims were sometimes cut up alive. Highest graded known having practiced the cannibalism are the lieutenant-general Yoshio Tachibana who, with eleven members of his personnel, was judged to have made decapitate and eat an American aviator in August 1944 with Chichi Jima and the Mori vice-admiral, to have eaten a prisoner at the time of a held reception in February 1945.

Charges of cannibalism

Enough frequently, of the charges of anthropophagy was carried against such or such group, in order to discredit it or to make it inhuman. During the Revolt of the stamped paper, the soldiers of Louis XIV, according to Madam de Sévigné, would have put a child at the pin. It is in addition probable that the characters of Ogre S eating of the children in the tales such as Tom Thumb of Charles Perrault were inspired by the anthropophagous individuals or groups who prevailed in the European forests at the time of the famines. However, such charges were always carried against those which one wanted to fight to them in order to diaboliser, and this since Antiquity. Thus the first Chrétiens they were shown to eat alive children, and various Secte S fought by the mode always underwent the same charges.

Psychological interpretations

August 1st

In liaison with the people améridiens, the explorers sought to explain the motivations of the tribes cannibals. In its History of a voyage faict in the ground of Brazil , Jean de Léry explains why “more than by revenge and for the taste (...), their principal intention is, than while continuing and thus corroding deaths to the bones, they give by this average fear and deadly terror to alive”.

The cannibalism is generally regarded as an act of madness in the Western companies. It is also perceived among certain people like an act of humiliation for the cut up person and her family .

Legal aspect

In Europe, the Capitulaire of Charlemagne of 789 is one of the first legal texts to be concerned with acts of cannibalism: “If somebody, misled by the Devil, believes that a woman is a Sorcière which eats men, and which for that it burns it and gives his flesh to be eaten or itself eats it, it will be punished capital punishment”.

Today, several countries, in particular in Africa, registered the crime of cannibalism in their legislation. With the Gabon, article 211 of the Penal code stipulates that “any act of anthropophagy, any transfer of human flesh subject to payment or free made with a same aim, will be punished imprisonment in time”. With the Burundi, it is article 165 of the Penal code which applies: “Whoever will have caused or prepared acts of anthropophagy, will have taken part, or will have been found in it in possession of human flesh intended for acts of anthropophagy, will be punished capital punishment”.

But in other countries, in particular in France and Germany, the legislation does not envisage a sanction for the acts of cannibalism. The French magistrates can nevertheless be based on article 222 of the Penal code which punishes tortures and barbarous acts from 15 to 30 years of imprisonment.

Ritual cannibalism

the Amerindians Guayaki of the Paraguay, endocannibales, ate their clean dead, which is a Nécrophagie, thus ensuring the shape of human burial to them. In other anthropophagous people, the alive ones think of adapting the merits and the strength of their deaths.

In North America, the Algonquins, the Huron , the Create and the Iroquois were strictly exocannibales and ate only those which died in the combat.

In Brazil, the Amerindians Tupi, exocannibales, killed and ate their prisoners at the conclusion of engagements with the close people. The prisoner - or the captive one - was preserved a certain time in the village before being killed. According to Jean de Léry, the victims did not seek to flee, becoming even merry at the time to be eaten. Léry even tells that arriving one day in a village, and seeing several Indians prepared and about to be killed, he saw an young woman whom he had converted with Christianity at the time of preceding passage. He approached her and proposed to him to request God, saying to him that he was going to intervene to save it. The woman then started to laughing, informant that “God did not have nothing to do there, that it was its turn to be eaten, and that she hoped that its meat would be good”. Jean de Léry finishes: “and, while laughing, it advanced, made a sign with the torturer and it died thus”. The ritual was immutable: the entirely shaved body, the anus stopped by a wood or grasses so that nothing is lost, condemned were maintained by a cord tightened around its chest. That which was to kill it held in hand a strong emplumé club, and declared to him that it was going to be killed and eaten. The prisoner answered whereas it had killed and eaten much of this village, and that them his would come to avenge it and would eat them all. After which, out of a great blow on the head, the prisoner was killed. The women seized, scraped the skin it and poured warm water on the corpse, like one makes in Europe for a pig. Then a man cut the members, which the women seized to dance and run around fire. Lastly, the trunk was opened and cut up, the internal organs and the head misent in a pot for the women and the children, while the members and the trunk were posed on a grid out of wooden above fire. That which had killed withdrew to fast during one day. sources: Jean de Lery, Hans Staeden, Andre Thevet, Charles Villeneuve, Martin Monestier

The Tupinamba S, practice the ritual cannibalism .

Criminal cannibalism

the recent fact most known is the work of a Japanese student, Issei Sagawa which devoured part of his/her friend Dutchwoman in Paris in 1981.
Listes of criminals cannibals condemned afterwards of the murders and evidence of consumption (and/or of resale of human flesh):

Alferd Packer (American, arrété in 1874 and died in 1907)
Georges Grossman (German, stopped in 1921),
Karl Denke (German, stopped in 1924),
Fritz Haarmann (German, 1925),
Albert Fish (American, stopped in 1934),
Anna Zimmermann (German, stopped in 1981),
Jeffrey Dahmer (American, stopped in 1991),
Daniel Rakowitz (American, 1989),
Hachim Riad (Moroccan, ever found),
Andrei Chikatilo (Ukrainian, condemned to died in 1994),
Armin Meiwes (German, 2001): called by the media the “cannibal of Rotenbourg” had émasculé, cut out and eaten partly Bernd Brandes, which was voluntary. He was condemned to Frankfurt on May 9th 2006 with the prison with perpetuity.

Cannibalism of survival

In 1816, following the shipwreck of the frigate the Jellyfish, 139 sailors and soldiers piled up on a raft during 13 days, practitioner the anthropophagy to survive. There were only 15 survivors. See also table the Raft of the Jellyfish of Theodore Géricault.
During the winter 1846 - 1847, in the Sierra Nevada in California, a group of colonists blocked by snow had recourse to the cannibalism.
One supposes that the members of forwarding Franklin in 1847 also had recourse there.
In 1972, an Uruguyan team of Rugby was found isolated during 72 days on a glacier from the Andes cordillera following an air crash before receiving help. The 16 survivors last their survival with the anthropophagy. This tragedy gave place to the book and the film the Survivors . See the article Flight 571 Fuerza Aérea Uruguaya.
During the World wars, several acts of cannibalisms was made, not only because of the famine, but also in a systematic way by the enemy camps, of which Japan during the Second world war. Example: History of Nauru.

Cannibalism in the fiction

Cinema

That it was good my small French ( Como Era Gostoso O Meu Francês ) (1971)
green Sun ( Soylent Green ) (1973)
Blue Holocaust ( Buio Omega ) (1979)
Cannibal Holocaust (1980)
Cannibal Ferox (1981)
Delicatessen (1991)
the Silence of the lambs ( The Silence off the Lambs ) (1991)
Them Survivors ( Alive ) (1993)
Cannibal! Musical The (1996)
Voracious (1999)
Hannibal (2001)
green Butchers ( De Grønne slagtere ) (2003)
New kitchen ( Gaau ji ) (2004)
red Dragon (2002)
Hannibal Lecter: origins of the evil (2007)
" The cook, the robber, his wife and her amant" Peter Greenaway, 1989 (original English title: The cook, the thief, his wife and her to coil)

Literature

the Survivors ( Alive: The Story off the Andes Survivors ) (1974)
the trilogy of Hannibal Lecter books on a Serial killer cannibal of Thomas Harris.
" The body excquis" of Poppy Z. Brite