I spend a great deal of my time thinking about cannibalism. Unfortunately I have no formal education in Anthropology and I have little, if any, morbid fascination with madmen and murderers or even the recent Jeffrey Dahmers (that is murderers AND cannibals) of this world. I will also add here that I do not harbour any peculiar notions of having the odd bite myself! However, you will have to forgive me if I refuse to answer any questions as to why exactly I have recently read a book entitled “Cannibal: The History of the People-Eaters”!
I’m not saying, I refuse to be drawn, my lips are sealed (and other sayings…)
What I will say about this book however, is that it certainly does make compelling reading.
It is a Channel 4 publication which was originally produced to go hand-in-hand with a 2001 TV series by the same name. I somehow entirely missed the fact that this television first was occurring and saw nothing of the series. As I placed my order to receive the accompanying book I had images of a picture-rich and text-poor “coffee-table” sort of book. That was not really what I wanted, but up to date books about cannibalism are few and far between so I ordered it anyway, and three days later what landed on my doormat was nothing like my imaginings anyway…
This is actually a fairly robust and detailed history of cannibalism, or as much as we know about it. I was genuinely impressed that it does bring a very complicated subject to the “common man” without losing too much academic input and debate.
Korn et al quickly divide cannibalism into its component parts, namely Exo-Cannibalism which is the act of eating your enemies (usually as the ultimate revenge in war), and Endo-Cannibalism which is eating your own dead, (most typically relatives to keep their spirits alive in you).
Much of the debate in the narrative is really answering Dr William Arens whose 1979 “The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophagy” went to great lengths to claim that no cannibalism had ever occurred in the history of man. His argument was based on discrediting missionaries and settlers accounts as being non-scientific and full of assumption rather than thorough proof.
We learn of different cultures and taboos from the remotest islands of the Philippines through to the amazing Umeda tribe of West Sepik in Papua New Guinea. Have you ever licked your finger when you prick it and it bleeds? Do you know anyone who has dined on placenta? Both acts are known as auto-cannibalism, acceptable in our culture but deemed as heinous by the Umeda people as taking a bite out of a healthy adult rump would be.
Have you ever consider just how people can make claims about cannibalism having occurred? Well my friends, it very quickly comes down to the analysis of bone tissue. This amazing substance reacts slightly differently to force before, around the time of death and after death. There is a whole fascinating and morbid science called Taphonomy which is built entirely around this very fact and we will be lead more and more deeply into their workings and their discoveries.
OK I know. I’ve tried to be very matter-of-fact so far. I’ve tried really hard but I can’t keep up the brave face really and I’ll tell you why. It was when they started discussing how the meat is generally removed from the bones that the room started spinning for me. This text is really serious, there are no jokes, there are no sentences that start “now brace yourself…”, they just keep on keeping on.
So here say I, Kirsty1 to anybody (anybody?!) reading this…
“now BRACE yourselves…”
…because what really made the room spin for me was the wording of this section…they talk about “filleting” and they talk about “processing”. I suppose I had not spent a great deal of thought on WHAT meat is generally eaten and how it is erm, “retrieved” from a corpse before. Now I know, I know from spine-tingling chapter after chapter about how inventive cannibals have been over the years, and how amazingly little often remains after said “filleting” has occurred.
Oh my.
Having informed us about cannibalism on every continent from the iron age and before, the “social history” aspects of this book have been fascinatingly, stomach-churningly and thoroughly detailed.
We have also amazingly (and rather alarmingly) only read chapters 1-5.
The second half of the chapters of this book come as something of a mild relief after the Taphonomy and general “processing” of the first half. The second half of the book veritably skips along, moving as it does from one maniac, psychotic, axe-wielding murderer to the next.
Did you know that there is no law-breaking involved in cannibalism in this country? No? Possibly it is regarded as such a deeply taboo act that we can’t even communally agree a punishment for it (because we refuse to believe that it could ever happen and generally don’t want to talk about it…) Alternatively it is safe to assume that you are going to need to murder somebody before you can eat them so we’ll get you on that technicality!
There is the notable exception of the unfortunate amateur rugby team of old boys of the Uruguayan Catholic School who found themselves stranded in the Andes after their plane crashed on it’s way to Montevideo in 1972. Sixteen of the party survived for 72 days by eating the body parts of their deceased colleagues.
Other than this we face the fascinating chronicle of individual cannibals, motivated by starvation, madness, sex or an intriguing variety of them all. Let me introduce to a few:
Alexander Zapiontsev killed his friend in 1999 but had the good grace to pass some of the meat around to others in his tenement block. Valentina Dolbinina and Vitaly Bezrodnev killed Leonid Komarov and shared their feast with his unwitting brother Boris. In 1996 a Siberian prisoner, Andrei Maslich was found with an interesting bowl of soup…he had made it with the liver of his cell mate. Fritz Haarman (affectionately known as the “Butcher of Hanover) was only convicted of killing 27 young boys although in truth he probably managed to top 50. Albert Fish was only found to have killed and eaten Gracie Budd after he wrote to her mother to explain his fascination…
Do you get the idea? The second half of this book is truly shocking in the sheer volume of individual cannibals each with a different story to tell.
The most infamous obviously get the most page space but I will spare you the horrors of Andrei Chikatilo and Issei Sagawa (The Gentleman Ghoul of Japan) and leave you with a thought:
If you need to know about cannibalism then this thorough examination moves from the 5th century, across the five continents and takes with it forensic scientists, psychologists and archaeologists. If you are looking for specific information about a cannibal trial in the last hundred years the chances are exceedingly high that some detail of the individual, the motivation and the modus operandi will all be right here for you.
However, if you have a sensitive stomach or a sensitive soul why don’t you just read a good Agatha Christie instead?
Just because this isn’t everybody’s idea of a must-read book it does do its job very well. The writing is clear, factual and interesting throughout. Debates are played out logically and come to clear conclusions and thankfully there aren’t too many pictures. It gets 4 out of 5 stars for me because I felt it could have been somewhat less dry at times without detracting from its serious intent.
The correct authorship is “Daniel Korn, Mark Radice & Charlie Hawes.” Ciao are working frantically to include the missing co-authors as we speak. The ISBN is 0-7522-1942-1 and it is published by Channel 4 Books. The cover price for the hard-back 2001 edition was £14.99. Don’t pay that, I recently bought my copy for £6 second-hand on Amazon.
Thanks for reading.
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