Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History(53)
Anthropologists were not the only professionals talking about cannibalism and the primitive mind. For Sigmund Freud, the behavior denoted a pre-cultural stage of human development. In his appropriately named 1913 book, Totem and Taboo, Freud borrowed Darwin’s concept of a patriarchal horde, where a single mature male ruled over a harem of females. Immature males (“the brothers”), who were forbidden to mate, also belonged to this primitive social group. Freud assumed that these fellows would be quite grumpy and, as such, he proposed that they were hot to initiate some revision of the prehistoric status quo. They did so by killing their father, thus putting an end to the patriarchal horde. “Cannibal savages as they were, it goes without saying that they devoured their victim as well as killing him”—each of the sons acquiring a measure of their father’s strength. In order to commemorate the event, the brothers organized a totem feast, which Freud described as “mankind’s earliest festival.” This, though, was no ordinary party, since according to Freud, it marked the beginning of social organization, moral restrictions, and religion. Once cannibalism and its partner, incest, were abandoned, the group in question would be firmly on the road to civilization—a mindset that is highly reminiscent of the one espoused by explorers, missionaries, and early anthropologists as they encountered indigenous cultures. As Stony Brook University anthropologist Bill Arens wrote in 1979, “What could be more distinctive than creating a boundary between those who do and those who do not eat human flesh?”
Freud also went on to say that taboos (like cannibalism) represent forbidden actions for which there exist strong and unconscious predispositions—primitive urges buried deep within each of us. From a zoological perspective, these “primitive urges” can be seen as further evidence that we humans are (to paraphrase Stephen J. Gould) a part of nature, not apart from nature, and, as such, we still retain bits of an ancient genetic blueprint. We are also, however, of a lineage that has diverged greatly during our long evolution—and the more recently added or modified sections of our genetic code have seen us evolve us away from the behavior of spiders, mantises, and fish (though less so from our fellow mammals). Part of that divergence is that humans are cultural creatures, and for some of us the very underpinnings of our Western culture, starting with our literature, dictate that unless we are placed into extreme circumstances, certain practices, like cannibalism, are forbidden. But what about cultures in which those Western taboos were never established? Would they enact similar prohibitions on such behavior?
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28 An alternative source for Shakespeare’s cannibal scene may have been the Roman poet Ovid (ca. 43 BCE–18 CE) who also lifted Herodotus’s story of Astyages for parts of his own lyric poem, The Metamorphosis.
29 Alfred Hitchcock used a similar technique on many occasions, appearing at the conclusion of his famous TV show to assure viewers (and censors) that the villain didn’t really get away with his or her crime.
14: Eating People Is Good
I think there is nothing barbarous and savage in that nation, from what I have been told, except that each man calls barbarism whatever is not his own practices; for indeed it seems that we have no other test of truth and reason than the example and pattern of opinions and customs of the country we live in.
— Michel de Montaigne, Of Cannibals, 1580
Mr. Chambers! Don’t get on that ship! The rest of the book, To Serve Man, it’s—it’s a cookbook!
—Patty, “To Serve Man” (The Twilight Zone), 196230
One way to support a hypothesis that the origin, spread, and persistence of the Western cannibalism taboo can be traced along a line leading back to the Ancient Greeks, would be to find a culture with an extensive historical record that existed for millennia without the significant influences of Homer, Herodotus, and the Western writers who followed them.
Among many of the cultures that definitely weren’t reading the Greek mythology (the Aztecs and Caribs come to mind), there is little if any proof as to their definitive stance on cannibalism. While there is a significant body of evidence regarding the Aztec practice of human sacrifice, which was clearly depicted in both carved inscriptions (glyphs) and bark paper books known as codices, there is no such consensus among historians that the Aztecs ever practiced cannibalism, especially on a large scale. And while a few Spaniards present in Mexico during the Aztec conquest provided written accounts of cannibalism, skeptics might question whether sources like “The Anonymous Conquistador” were reliable witnesses. Other tales of Aztec man-eating are similar to the secondhand reports of Carib cannibalism in that most of them were written by men who weren’t present in Mexico until a decade after the Aztec empire had been destroyed—if they were present at all. Since there is no conclusive evidence the cannibalism was practiced by either the Aztecs or Caribs, we need to look elsewhere for a group not influenced by the Ancient Greeks.
Rather than focusing on one of the smaller linguistic groups, like the Wari’ of Brazil or the soon-to-be-discussed Fore of New Guinea, to whom cannibalism was apparently not a taboo, I chose instead to examine a culture with a lengthy, exquisitely detailed, and well-studied history. That culture belongs to the Chinese, and while their enormous country may not have been completely isolated from Western influences, its leaders have been obsessive in maintaining what is apparently the world’s longest unbroken historical record. How, then, did the Chinese deal with cannibalism—historically and in modern times? Are Western-style taboos present and, if not, what, if anything, does that tell us about humans as a species?