# Were there cannibals in Papua New Guinea in the 1940's? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 22, 2024, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-cannibals-in-papua-new-guinea-in-the-1940s/1000634 "2024-04-22T23:56:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2024, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-cannibals-in-papua-new-guinea-in-the-1940s/1000634/21 "2024-04-24T04:51:35Z")
> [@Sigene](#): > > Its been a long running joke with me that anything western anthropologists don’t understand they automatically associate it with ritualistic/religious significance. A penis, or exaggerated breasts, drawn on a subway wall is crude graffiti. The same thing drawn on the wall of a cave 5000 years ago is a “fertility symbol”. I’m not sure whether this means modern graffitists are drawing fertility symbols, or ancient people were being crude. Could look at it either way, I guess. ---
**Author:** ![CaptMurdock](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/captmurdock/32/11736_2.png) [@CaptMurdock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaptMurdock)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2024, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-cannibals-in-papua-new-guinea-in-the-1940s/1000634/22 "2024-04-24T05:01:57Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > One of the Rockefeller heirs was supposedly eaten by Papuan cannibals in 1961, though it’s never been confirmed. I doubt it. Too rich for their blood… ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2024, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-cannibals-in-papua-new-guinea-in-the-1940s/1000634/23 "2024-04-24T05:20:32Z")
There was a brief snip of this in a 1988 (or 1992) campaign commercial. ---
**Author:** ![CC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f1d935/32.png) [@CC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CC)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2024, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-cannibals-in-papua-new-guinea-in-the-1940s/1000634/24 "2024-04-24T12:57:09Z")
Superb! ---
**Author:** ![sb1953](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a87d85/32.png) [@sb1953](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sb1953)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2024, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-cannibals-in-papua-new-guinea-in-the-1940s/1000634/25 "2024-04-24T16:47:50Z")
MY Dad served in the army air corps in WW-2 as a crew chief. His unit,… the 58th fighter group was based on several places in New Guinea. He loved to take a map and point out where his bases were. At the end of this stories he would always add:…“Son,… there are places in New Guinea where no white man has ever set foot,…and for good reason”. I never wanted to know what that “good reason” was,. I assumed snakes, spiders etc. etc. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2024, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-cannibals-in-papua-new-guinea-in-the-1940s/1000634/26 "2024-04-24T16:58:00Z")
Thanks for the cite, Dissonance. I have been in discussions about that. ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2024, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-cannibals-in-papua-new-guinea-in-the-1940s/1000634/27 "2024-04-25T20:33:30Z")
> [@Melbourne](#): > > My Mother , who also lived and worked in the PNG interior, was a medical doctor. When she was young, people asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, then laughed at her. > > She thought Diamond’s attitudes towards lazy men whose wives did all the work were colored by being a lazy white man who bought his food and had somebody else to do the cooking and cleaning. Oh, I don’t doubt that men took advantage of this “division of labour” - no different than our household division of labour that has roots in the days when the household itself was a fulltime job (and one wage could feed the whole family). Although women have been a growing much larger part of the workforce since WWII the traditional allocation of tasks still exists in the minds of many men… Except when cooking means barbacue. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2024, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-cannibals-in-papua-new-guinea-in-the-1940s/1000634/28 "2024-04-26T22:29:52Z")
> [@md-2000](#): > > Except when cooking means barbacue. … as it happens, Greek restaurants in my town are all “BBQ”. They serve party food, the kind of food you might cook when entertaining a big bunch of friends. Meat heavy. All originally cooked by men of course, because when the men were at work, cooking party food at the restaurant, the Greek women were at home cooking the kind of food Greeks eat at home. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-cannibals-in-papua-new-guinea-in-the-1940s/1000634.md?page=1)