The name "cannibals" comes from the word "caniba" - as in pre-Columbian times the inhabitants of the Bahamas called the inhabitants of Haiti, the terrible cannibals. Subsequently, the name "cannibal" became equivalent to anthropophagus (from the Greek anthropos - "man" and phagein - "to absorb"). It should be noted that a cannibal is always a cannibal, but not every cannibal, like a predatory beast, is a cannibal. This "title" is awarded only to a person.
Cannibalism has been in use since the Stone Age. With the increase in the food resources harvested by man, it was preserved, but already only as an exceptional phenomenon caused by hunger at certain periods (crop failure, etc.). In particular, the lack of food explains the cannibalism of the Neanderthals.
Ritual cannibalism lasted longer. It was expressed in eating various parts of the body of slain enemies, dead relatives, and was based on the belief that the strength and other virtues of the slain passed on to the one who eats his flesh. Sometimes, however, the results were the opposite: for example, in some tribes, where it was customary to eat the victim's brain, the incurable kuru disease spread.
But it should not be assumed that the times of cannibalism have sunk into eternity forever, and the traditions of cannibalism have remained attributes of ancient times. No, they safely survived all the stages of the formation of human society and have survived to this day. The geography of cannibalism is still broad.
In modern times (from the 16th century), cannibalism was noted among many peoples, in all parts of the world, including Europe. It was practiced in inland Africa, Papua New Guinea, some of the islands of the Malay Archipelago, and inland Brazil. Until the 20th century, cannibalism was not uncommon in many of the islands of Polynesia, Australia and South Africa. There are many examples of this.
In the 17th century, the natives of one of the islands of Oceania completely devoured the entire crew of the pirate John Davis Jr. that was captured by them in a shipwreck. The captain himself narrowly escaped this fate.
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In 1772, the French traveler M. Marion-Dufresne, along with 14 of his associates, was captured by New Zealand Maori. They were all killed and eaten.
The famous seafarer James Cook ended his life in the same way, and it happened in 1779 in Hawaii. Cook had already met the cannibals on his first voyage around the world. Then he gave them pigs, sheep and goats to wean them from cannibalism.
But the experiment failed: the natives could not understand what the whites still want from them. They quickly ate the cattle, and then returned to eating captured enemies and travelers who wandered into their land. And how many missionaries who came to convert the savages into the bosom of the church were eaten!
Anthropologist G. Eremin commented on this as follows:
On the islands, where there was enough animal food, cannibalism was not known. On other islands, cannibalism is explained by the lack of animal proteins in the body of the aboriginal people with an excess of vegetable proteins obtained from the consumption of sweet potatoes and corn.
Historical sources have survived that tell about mass cannibalism in Egypt during the famine caused by a prolonged drought (1200-1201). There were rumors of cannibalism during the First Crusade, when the crusaders allegedly fed on the bodies of enemies from the captured Arab city of Maarra. Later historians tried to remove these shameful facts from the descriptions of the campaigns.
German map of cannibalistic tribes, late 19th century
The historian K. Valishevsky wrote about the Poles and Lithuanians besieged in the Kremlin in 1612:
They began to kill their captives, and with increasing fever delirium they reached the point that they began to devour each other. And this is a fact that cannot be doubted: an eyewitness to Budzilo told terrible details about the last days of the siege - the strong used the weak, and the healthy - the sick. They quarreled over the dead, and the most amazing ideas of justice were mingled with the strife generated by the cruel madness.
So, one soldier complained that people from the other company ate his relative, while in all fairness he should have eaten it himself. The accused referred to the rights of the entire regiment to the corpse of a fellow soldier, and the colonel did not dare to end this feud, fearing that the losing side would eat him out of revenge.
And yet the reader has the right to note that all this is an old matter. Let's see what happened later. In New Zealand, in 1809, 66 passengers and crew of the Boyd brigantine were killed and eaten by the Maori tribes. In November 1820, sailors who escaped from the sunken whaling ship Essex, by common agreement, resorted to cannibalism so that at least someone could survive (this story was partly included in H. Melville's novel Moby Dick).
In 1920-1930, in the Volga region, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, during the mass famine, multiple cases of cannibalism were recorded.
There is documentary evidence of cannibalism in Japanese troops during the Second World War. When they ran out of food, Japanese soldiers killed and dismembered enemy soldiers. A well-known incident in 1945, when Japanese soldiers killed and ate eight captured American pilots. The case was investigated in 1947, and 30 Japanese were on trial, including five senior officers, including a general and an admiral, who were hanged.
During the terrible years of the Leningrad blockade, already in December 1941, the first cases of cannibalism were recorded. From the archives of the NKVD it is known that in December 1941, 26 cannibals were brought to criminal responsibility, and in January-February 1942 - already 860.
Later, up to January 1943, their number only increased. Most of the detainees were shot. In January 2014, Daniil Granin, himself a blockade leader and a militia fighter, spoke about this in his emotional speech in the German Bundestag.
The world war ended, but cannibalism did not end there. Quite recently, in Yakutia, fishermen, lost in the taiga and starving, killed and ate one of their company. The court sentenced each of the survivors to 3.5 years of probation. Why is this liberalism? The fact of the murder was not proven unequivocally - it is possible that the victim died himself, and the article is not provided for in the Russian Criminal Code for cannibalism.
The motive for the crime in this story is clear - hunger. And how to qualify the story that happened 10 years ago in the Bavarian Rothenburg? Its resident, adhering to non-traditional sexual inclinations, a certain Army Meiwes, found a masochist partner via the Internet and invited him to his place, where by mutual consent he castrated him.
While drinking, they ate the genitals together, after which the owner killed the guest and ate him almost entirely. Today the cannibal is serving time, in prison he leads the Green Party cell and enjoys authority. These are the realities of today's civilized Europe.
Used materials from the article by Konstantin Shadetsky