I’ve just run across a second account of cannibalism by pre-European aborigines. That leads me to suspect that cannibalism was popular in Australian aborigines, or at least among those of south-east Australia.
That made me wonder about the pre-history of cannibalism. Did we inherit cannibalism from our ape ancestors? Or did it spread around the world with the diasopa of Homo sapiens circa 60,000 to 40,000 years ago? Or did it develop independently in island nations such as polynesia and the west indes?
I suspect that cannibalism has never been a major source of protein for human or ape populations. The three situations in which cannibalism seem to appear are:
1) when starving
2) eating opponents after a battle
3) as punishment for criminals sentenced to death – or as personal reprisal
The third case has been recorded from Mesoamerica, China and Australia, and in each case I’ve heard of seems to be limited to eating the liver and/or heart. That suggests that possibly it was a practice that began before 60,000 years ago in Africa and spread around the world.
There are a large amount of butchered human bones found in Neanderthal and other Lower/Middle Palaeolithic sites. Lower Palaeolithic ends 300,000 years ago, before Homo sapiens first appeared. That suggests that we might have inherited cannibalism from our ape ancestors.
Jan Goodall found that cannibalism in chimpanzees is largely associated with infanticide, which seems different to human cannibalism?
On the other hand, it is certain that many European reports of cannibalism among native tribes have been grossly exaggerated. In 1979 the book “The Man-Eathing Myth” by William Arens concluded that accounts of cannibalism among the Aztec, Maori and Zulu were either false or inadequately documented.
There are myths involving cannibalism. A recent one is “Hansel and Gretel”. An old one is the ancient Greek story of Tantalus, who cooked and served his son as a feast for the Gods. The Gods refused to eat the son and restored him to life.