A programme on UK TV about the ancient Aztecs indicated that they used to practice cannibalism.
Now the very thought of chewing on someones soft dangly bits or gnawing on a medium rare leg of man makes me feel queasy but I have to ask …
What is it that makes the practice so abhorrent, we are, after all, made of meat
I suspect it arose as a cultural survival mechanism.
Those who felt a deep repulsion at eating another member of the tribe were less likely to resort to cannibalism during times of famine. If you resorted to it during a famine, you had a greater likelihood of resorting to it as a matter of course, and thus reducing the size of your breeding group.
It’s like the taboo against incest - it tends to reduce the temptation to resort to an easier but less adaptive behavior.
I am speaking of cannibalism-for-food here, not ritual cannibalism, which has a different set of motives.
Regards,
Shodan
I always thought that an underlying scientific basis for the social taboo (like recessive gene problems in incest) was that cannibalism causes scrapies.
But some quick googling seems to suggest that this is a myth. Hm. Learn something new every day.
My first thought was that maybe it had something to do with the human ability to empathize. Who wants to eat a meal thinking this could be me someday? But then I thought about other species. With rare exceptions, don’t most mamals avoid eating members of the same species? I mean sure if they get hungry enough but you never hear about lions hunting other lions. Chimps being one exception that comes to mind. While dominence fights are common they usually don’t end in death. Granted the loser may wander off and die as a result of injuries but they are not usually pursued and killed and eaten by the winner. So is this a human trait or a mamalian one?
Eating the brain causes Kuru
Cannibalism is a factor for the disease kuru.
Did you hear about the cannibal that passed his friend in the woods ?
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Well, to be perfectly accurate, cannibalism doesn’t cause Kuru, it spreads it. As appears to be the case with other forms of TSE (transmissible spongiform encephalopathies), one can contract kuru by eating infected brain tissue–and apparently only infected brain tissue.
But as kuru seems to be a fairly recent disease in human history, is not prevalent throughout the species, and appears only to be contractible through consumption of the brain and not the rest of the meat, I can’t see it being any factor in cannibalism taboos.
AFAIK, there are no other illnesses resulting from the consumption of clean, fresh human meat. That’s assuming safe food-handling procedures, of course–let’s avoid that cross-contamination, people!
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Sure… his place was a dump.
One reason cannibalism is unpopular is that most people do not want to be eaten. Though willing victims have existed, Og help us.
It’s a prion disease, which as I understand it means that a propensity towards it is built into the DNA. Unless the body makes the right wrong version of a protein, it can’t happen. That means that kuru’s likely old indeed.
As for reasons why it’s unpopular, I expect it’s a combination of morality, instinct and practicality. I do recall studies in species that practice cannibalism that the cannibals tend to suffer more from parasites and disease; that’s both a practical reason to avoid it, and a reason for an instinct to evolve against it. Humans are also the most dangerous “food animal” you could go after, and economically one of the less efficient ( being at the top of the food chain and all ). And as pointed out, humans do have a tendancy towards empathy; you have to really dehumanize your target to eat them. I’ve heard that both the Crusaders and the Cultural Revolution era Chinese Communists did on occasion cannibalize enemies.
And to anyone trying to create a moral code, “don’t eat each other” is a fairly obvious principle to put in. After all, if stealing your gold is bad, stealing your flesh must be worse.
I’m not sure how that follows.
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As I understand it ( I’m not an expert ), prions are a distorted version of a protein, that on contact with other proteins of the same kind can make them distort in the same way. It takes a particular variant of a protein to distort in that particular way, so prions can’t hurt anything that lacks that variant. Such varients are widespread, which implies great age, and a prion disease is capable of appearing spontaneously in anything with a vulnerable protein. So kuru almost certainly is very old.
:eek: What are you, from fuckin’ Mars?!
You know, honestly, if things were as bad as they were in Soylent Green, and I knew that they made crackers from dead dudes *but *they were processed all to fuck and gone 1st? Wouldn’t bother me a bit. After all, there’s a bit of people in everything we eat.
And if was really a survival situation, I’d eat human before I’d starve, I think.
Reading this thread is making me hungry.
I imagine that, back in the old days, people were stringy and gamy. Modern North Americans and Europeans are probably well marbled and tender. But I’m afraid their diet might taint the flavor of the meat.
I can think of a couple regions that have chubby folks that don’t eat the same crap that we do, but I’m not going to name them in case I go on a trip and need to invite someone along in case of emergency.
WTF are you wittering on about?
You must not have read Stranger in a Strange Land. Martians are most fond of this little practice.
No I haven’t read the book, any good?