October 9, 2008 • 18 mins
Cannibalism is one of humanity's near-universal taboos, but it has been practiced in widely varying circumstances throughout history. Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn the difference between the three types of cannibalism.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should Know
from house Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast Josh and Chuck here Say hi, Chuck, Hi,
Chuck Chuck. Um. Have you been paying attention to that
that story that came out of Canada this past ually,
(00:20):
that that um grizzly murder on the on the Greyhound bus. Yeah,
that was It's you couldn't write something that ghastly. No, No,
you really can't. So well, I guess we should probably
fill in anybody who's not aware of it. There's this guy,
UM named Vince Lee who allegedly, out of nowhere, uh
leans over in this bus and the dark of night
(00:40):
that's just traveling down the planes of Manitoba thing uh
and he just leans over and um starts stabbing this
guy sitting next to him, who's never met before, and
apparently witnesses say that they hadn't even spoken. Now, completely unprovoked.
Um and just stabs him and stabs and stabs him,
and everybody just starts fleeing the bus and they end
(01:01):
up locking this guy on there and he starts walking
around back and forth like kind of I got the
impression kind of like a caged animal. And then I
guess he gets the the idea to go back and
UM cut the victim's head off. He's not dead, but
he cuts his head off, and he's walking around with
the bus exactly and apparently he dropped this poor guy's
(01:23):
head um in front of the witnesses, like at the
steps at the front door of the bus, who were
these people were holding the doors closed to trap them on. Um.
And there's this one other This is bad enough, right right, um,
but there's this he did something else that just I
think it makes everything kind of even worse. Um. He
(01:44):
he walked back and started cutting off pieces of the
guy and eating them. And this should have had a
little warning before this podcast this, yeah, maybe, so hopefully
from the title people will be a little prepared. So basically, UM,
I started researching this. I had heard about it. Um,
this this incredibly ghastly murder. Uh. And I at the time,
(02:07):
I was writing or researching h an article how cannibalism works.
So I'm thinking, you know, as as grim as it is,
like this is this is pretty good story to use
as a lead as an introduction for the article, right,
And the more I started researching it, the more I
realized I had this perfect line. It was like, you know,
(02:27):
when uh, when Mr Lee, I should say, allegedly he's
been charged, but he hasn't been convicted. Um, you know
eight that that those bits of flesh. He went from
a mere murderer to you know, something like a monster,
like a cannibal. Right. But the more I looked into
this story, like, honestly, the cannibalism almost falls in line
(02:50):
with everything else he was doing. It was such an
unspeakable act that didn't stand out. The cannibalism was also
or almost muted by the rest of this stuff. So
instead I went with armand Mavus, right, which was another
really bizarre and ghastly story. It really was. It was.
It's not nearly I don't find it nearly as disconcerting
(03:12):
as as um the greyhound bus story. Yeah, that was
a little more frightening. This is definitely definitely creepy, though.
I mean, this was a consenting adult, right, So you
want to tell them about Mr MAVs, Well, yeah, this
is a guy I believe he put an ad on
in the newspapers or on a website, personal's website. Yeah,
looking for someone who would allow themselves to be eaten
(03:36):
by this guy. And what's that's remarkable enough? But he
had he had a taker, well, he had he got
close a few times apparently. But yeah, this one guy
named Burnt Jurgen Brandis right, forty three wasn't exactly what
Mavas was looking for. Mavus was advertising in eighteen to
thirty year old well built guy and apparently, you know,
(03:59):
a little less picky time on exactly. Yeah, Um, so
Brandis comes over and um, they basically get him drunk,
he's taken some painkillers and um Mr Mivas cuts off
his his penis and proceeds to cook it for the
both of them, for the both of them, and um,
I didn't put in the article, but what I gathered
(04:20):
was that they both ate some and didn't really like it. Right, So, um,
this by this time, Brandis, who's like totally concerning, fully
aware of what's going on, what's going to happen, that
he's going to die tonight. This is what he came
over for. Um, he goes to take a bath because
he's just bleeding everywhere. His penis is cut off right, um,
(04:42):
and he goes to take a bath and uh he
loses consciousness in the bath. So myvas is like, all right,
it's it's you're done, and uh cuts the guy's throat
and actually had set up like a basically a butcher
room where he butchered guy and um, I guess made
(05:03):
steaks out of him flying over a period of time,
he ate ate his body, right, four pounds of this
guy's body over there over a few months. The thing
is he was he had totally gotten away with it, right,
like there was the police had no idea this had happened. Um,
there was no like missing person's report as far as
I know or anything like that. And the way he
was Um, the way he was caught was uh, some
(05:25):
some fellow chat room dwellers uh knew what Mivas was
doing and apparently got when that it had been successful
or whatever an alerted police and they found out and
he's like, oh, yeah, totally, it was great. Right. So UM,
I think what's most remarkable about this story is not
(05:45):
only that this guy did this, but there was no
law against cannibalism at the time in Germany, so he
was tried from or is being tried for murder. First
they had him on UM. I think they had him
on manslaughter, right, and because you know other guy consented,
he consented uh And and there was such outrage in
Germany um against it that that they're they're retrying him
(06:08):
somehow for murder um. But yeah, there there is no
law in the books. I think there is now um.
And the same goes for the UK. I really really
try to could not find any federal statute outlawing cannibalism
in the US, but I did find vague references that
it is illegal, but I couldn't find any actual law.
(06:28):
But the thing is, it's almost like you don't really
have to outlaw cannibalism because it's a taboo completely. It's
it's like it's beyond the law. It exists beyond the law.
It's something way worse than anything that we need to
sanction legally. You would think you would think, right, So, um,
what what Mivas and um Lee allegedly and Albert Fish
(06:52):
who is a murdering uh pederas cannibal of the nineteen twenties, um,
and of course one of the most famous of all,
Jeffrey Dahmer, what what they're what they were doing is
called pathological cannibalism, which basically that's that's psychology that has
very little to do with anthropology. The rest of cannibalism
(07:13):
falls very much into the realm of anthropology, and it's
been studied and study. It's actually one of the more
interesting fields of study, or sub fields of study, I think,
in in any aspect of anthropology. What what do you think? Well,
I mean, as far as cannibalism is religious custom and
offering up to the gods, that kind of thing with
the as, that's part of it. Yeah, there's there's a
(07:34):
bunch of different Yeah, there's different subsets and different kinds
you know, probably disturbing. Well, I don't, I know, you
do you school me? Okay, So you've got survival cannibalism,
learned cannibalism, which is which is subdivided into endocannibalism, but
which is eating like members of your family or your
tribe or whatever, and exo cannibalism, which is the opposite
(07:58):
it's eating um, members of outside your tribe or family.
And that's mainly for a religious uh not necessarily. We'll
get to that in a second. Um, there's there's also
pathological right, and then There's another one that I find
arguably the most disturbing auto cannibalism. That's eating oneself. Correct, Yes, Now,
(08:18):
I I didn't find any examples of some an actual
documented case of a person voluntarily eating themselves, aside for
from Jurgen Brandis, who apparently ate some of his penis
but didn't really like it. So usually cannibalism it's forced. Yeah,
but what about like, I know, I bite my nails,
and a lot of people think that that is it
(08:41):
is technically, Um, do you eat your fingernails clippings? Do
you just bought your nails? Because now, when I was younger, Yeah,
when I was younger, I would swallow my fingernail clippings
and uh, you would have like stomach problems and stuff,
I would imagine. So so I'm not supposed to swallow. Well,
I did those a little kid. I didn't know that.
I didn't realize that was a nervous kid. Kind of
it's a little more fortunate, I take it, so I don't.
(09:02):
I don't do that anymore. I don't swallow. That's good.
But yeah, you people do consider technically that biting your
fingernails is a form of auto cannibalism. UM. More often
it's uh, it's forced auto. Auto cannibalism is forced. UM.
I think in like two thousand three or two thousand four, UM,
in in the Congo, some Congolese rebels were accused of
(09:23):
um killing pigmies and uh and forcing other pigmies or no,
I'm sorry, forcing pigmies to eat parts of themselves before
killing them. And also you know, practicing cannibalism by eating
the pygmies themselves. Just some pretty terrible stuff going on
down in Congo. Yeah. And I know in the in
the early nineteen thirties and the United States even they
(09:43):
had a lot of racist fueled uh acts of auto cannibalism.
You know, I don't think enough people know about this.
I hadn't heard about this guy until UM I wrote
this article. Claude Neil. Had you heard of him before?
And now I hadn't because you know, they don't teach
the stuff in historical no, and they really should, so
I think it's kind of up to us to to
(10:04):
to teach it. Right. So in in Florida, UM, about
two thousand white Southerners gathered and basically sacrifice this black
guy named Claude neil and they advertise that they advertised
in the paper. They sent out invitation, right, and so
all these people show up and it's like this um
(10:27):
uh just kind of orgiastic um sacrifice or ritual where
they basically, um, they tortured him. They they cut off
his penis and made him eat it. It was forced
auto came right. And one thing that didn't make in
the article is that they forced him to say that
he liked how it tasted. And then finally, after a
(10:50):
couple of hours I take it, um, they finally lynched him.
They killed they hung him. And the sad thing is
this doesn't go down as like a sacrifice or an
auto can ballistic. It's called the lynching, which it's a
lynching is bad enough, but this seems so much further
beyond well it is, and it's a way, it's kind
of a way of even whitewashing. I mean, lynching is
bad enough, you're right, but when you don't hear about
(11:11):
those details, you think this guy was taking out and hung,
which is already horrible, but it just goes so far
beyond that. It's just it definitely isn't And like you said,
they don't teach that in the history books, and I
think they should so, but um, those are the types
of cannibalism, right, Um, what about you knew much about
survival cannibalism, like Alive and all that. Yeah, Well, the
(11:32):
Donner Party was one of the earlier ones. That was
the group of settlers that were heading out west right,
and they splinter group went off in this year in
Nevada Mountains and kind of encountered some bad badness weather
and the like, and they resorted to cannibalism. And then
the film and book Alive about the soccer team that
(11:53):
crashed in the andies, I think, yeah, you're team yeah,
And they ended up resorting to cannibalism from some of
their comrades who had who had already died. They survived
like seventy one days like that now, And you know,
that's one of the more forgivable, probably the most forgivable. Definitely,
cannibalis definitely because it's survival. I'd say, you're you're you're surviving.
(12:13):
And then these guys wanted to do what they had
to do, but they you know, they needed to agreed.
And and this was in nineteen seventy two or something
like that I think, thank you. Yeah, it was the
early seventies. Um, so this is really really recent. The
thing is is this has been going, This has happened
many many times. The dinner party. Um, there was a
there was actually something in the nineteenth century called the
(12:34):
custom of the sea, right, which is where, um, you
know where you uh, you're not happy with your lot
in life. That phrase that actually comes from the customer
to see where you're drawing lots drawing straws. Right, So
you you have the straws cut up two different lengths,
and everybody draws them. And as as per the custom
of the sea, the person who drew the shortest straw,
(12:55):
and this is like if you were stranded, if if
you were shipwrecked and you were forced to resort to
survival cannibalism, whoever drew the shortest straw, um was that
person was tapped to die. And whoever drew the next
shortest straw was a person manity to kill them, and
then everybody ate the person that was killed. It was
like basically a codified survival canibalism because it happened. It
(13:18):
was just a fact of life when you were a sailor. Yeah,
I guess it's because there were no rescuing parties or
anything like that. I mean, like you may just if
you were rescued somebody stumbled upon you, you know, So
it did happen a lot, and like you said, it
is the most forgivable form, at least in the eyes
of Westerners. It's survival, canibell, and you did what you
had to do to stay a lot. But at the
same time, um, it's kind of chilling in that how
(13:42):
how easy it seems like it it would be under
those circumstances to eat another person, you know, which kind
of points out that at any given point in time,
where like one plane crash or shipwreck away from you know,
eating one another. Yeah, it's it's a little kind of
spooky to realize, is that it's it's there. It's innate
in all of us, right, nobody would think that they
(14:04):
would want to do something like that. But when push
comes to shove and you face you're facing death, and
there's a difference also, I mean, I guess you're a
lot in life that that story. You're actually killing somebody
to eat them. But in the case of the alive ones,
they they you know, they ate they ate the dead Yeah,
they're falling comrades. So so that's that's a difference. Yeah, yeah,
(14:26):
that's survival cannibalism. And then you've got learned cannibalism, right,
and this is the stuff that's like really heavily studied.
Um there's uh, basically they call it learned cannibalism or
customary cannibalism because it's it's a socially indoctrinated right. Um.
For with endo cannibalism, generally it's part of like a
(14:46):
funeral rite. The four A people in Peppua, New Guinea
and the Worry in the Amazon were very well studied
for their practices of cannibalism. Like the Worry for example,
what they were doing this. Uh, this anthropologist named Beth
Conklin found out that they were by eating there they're
(15:07):
um recently deceased, they were transforming them. The warrior were
really big on or are really big on changing their
surroundings so that they're not reminded. Now, actually it's for
the it's for them for the survivors. Uh. They they
were they're supposed to change everything that reminds them of
the dead person so they're not sad or depressed. It's
(15:30):
the way, their way of getting over grief and and
eating the dead body is um, it's a method of
transforming it. So that's a that's a pretty peaceful method
of cannibalism. That's endocannibalism, and the foray do the same
thing for slightly different reasons. They're actually looking to gain uh,
certain attributes like say wisdom or strength or that kind
(15:54):
of thing. And it's very specific to the body part, right,
so like uh, and and only on certain people can
eat certain parts of a deceased relative. It's it's really
interesting how you know, over the course of centuries or millennia,
humans can really slap labels on all sorts of different stuff. Yeah,
but you know, this kind of deserves to be broken
(16:15):
down because they're they're also different, you know, all the
different forms. So I don't think it's just willy nilly
the way they slap different names on the know, but
that raises the question why, like why why do people
you know, why do why do cultures around the world
have codified socially sanctioned UM cannibalism? And I think UM
(16:38):
really in the article I divided that between two approaches
and anthropology, it's materialism and idealism. Right, So material did
you get this far in the article? And actually I
fell asleep about at that point. I think I'm just
of our readers are or listeners are asleep as well.
It's my voice that has a very lolling uh. So basically, um,
(17:02):
the materialists say that cannibalism generated from necessity, like there's
a drought, that kind of thing, and um, some some
people who adhere to that are saying, you know, hey,
it happens this cannibalism would would just be logical when
you know, you don't have a grocery store. We didn't
know how to tame crops and we were just hunter gatherers,
(17:23):
and all of a sudden there's a drought, so you
do survival cannibalism. Uh. And then the idealists say, no, no, no, Um,
it's we interpret the world through symbols and uh so
the human brain represents wisdom and that's and then cannibalism
came after we started interpreting things as symbols. Uh. And
(17:43):
nobody has figured out who's right. But I tend to
lean more towards the materialists. Yeah, I think cannibalism it's like, yeah,
it's like we were saying, it's it's I think it's
innate and all of us and when the chips are down,
I would eat you, you know. And his gibson already
told me that she would eat me. She called me meaty. Well,
(18:03):
I think i'd provide a hearty meal as well, you would.
I think I think we're about on par Yeah, yeah,
I think, uh at the very least, arm in mipas
could live on us for a very long time. Well,
I'm hungry. I'm a little hungry too, Chuck. Do you
want to go get something to eat? That's a great idea.
I mean, nice rare burger might go with a salad.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
(18:25):
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thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should Know
from house Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast Josh and Chuck here Say hi, Chuck, Hi,
Chuck Chuck. Um. Have you been paying attention to that
that story that came out of Canada this past ually,
(00:20):
that that um grizzly murder on the on the Greyhound bus. Yeah,
that was It's you couldn't write something that ghastly. No, No,
you really can't. So well, I guess we should probably
fill in anybody who's not aware of it. There's this guy,
UM named Vince Lee who allegedly, out of nowhere, uh
leans over in this bus and the dark of night
(00:40):
that's just traveling down the planes of Manitoba thing uh
and he just leans over and um starts stabbing this
guy sitting next to him, who's never met before, and
apparently witnesses say that they hadn't even spoken. Now, completely unprovoked.
Um and just stabs him and stabs and stabs him,
and everybody just starts fleeing the bus and they end
(01:01):
up locking this guy on there and he starts walking
around back and forth like kind of I got the
impression kind of like a caged animal. And then I
guess he gets the the idea to go back and
UM cut the victim's head off. He's not dead, but
he cuts his head off, and he's walking around with
the bus exactly and apparently he dropped this poor guy's
(01:23):
head um in front of the witnesses, like at the
steps at the front door of the bus, who were
these people were holding the doors closed to trap them on. Um.
And there's this one other This is bad enough, right right, um,
but there's this he did something else that just I
think it makes everything kind of even worse. Um. He
(01:44):
he walked back and started cutting off pieces of the
guy and eating them. And this should have had a
little warning before this podcast this, yeah, maybe, so hopefully
from the title people will be a little prepared. So basically, UM,
I started researching this. I had heard about it. Um,
this this incredibly ghastly murder. Uh. And I at the time,
(02:07):
I was writing or researching h an article how cannibalism works.
So I'm thinking, you know, as as grim as it is,
like this is this is pretty good story to use
as a lead as an introduction for the article, right,
And the more I started researching it, the more I
realized I had this perfect line. It was like, you know,
(02:27):
when uh, when Mr Lee, I should say, allegedly he's
been charged, but he hasn't been convicted. Um, you know
eight that that those bits of flesh. He went from
a mere murderer to you know, something like a monster,
like a cannibal. Right. But the more I looked into
this story, like, honestly, the cannibalism almost falls in line
(02:50):
with everything else he was doing. It was such an
unspeakable act that didn't stand out. The cannibalism was also
or almost muted by the rest of this stuff. So
instead I went with armand Mavus, right, which was another
really bizarre and ghastly story. It really was. It was.
It's not nearly I don't find it nearly as disconcerting
(03:12):
as as um the greyhound bus story. Yeah, that was
a little more frightening. This is definitely definitely creepy, though.
I mean, this was a consenting adult, right, So you
want to tell them about Mr MAVs, Well, yeah, this
is a guy I believe he put an ad on
in the newspapers or on a website, personal's website. Yeah,
looking for someone who would allow themselves to be eaten
(03:36):
by this guy. And what's that's remarkable enough? But he
had he had a taker, well, he had he got
close a few times apparently. But yeah, this one guy
named Burnt Jurgen Brandis right, forty three wasn't exactly what
Mavas was looking for. Mavus was advertising in eighteen to
thirty year old well built guy and apparently, you know,
(03:59):
a little less picky time on exactly. Yeah, Um, so
Brandis comes over and um, they basically get him drunk,
he's taken some painkillers and um Mr Mivas cuts off
his his penis and proceeds to cook it for the
both of them, for the both of them, and um,
I didn't put in the article, but what I gathered
(04:20):
was that they both ate some and didn't really like it. Right, So, um,
this by this time, Brandis, who's like totally concerning, fully
aware of what's going on, what's going to happen, that
he's going to die tonight. This is what he came
over for. Um, he goes to take a bath because
he's just bleeding everywhere. His penis is cut off right, um,
(04:42):
and he goes to take a bath and uh he
loses consciousness in the bath. So myvas is like, all right,
it's it's you're done, and uh cuts the guy's throat
and actually had set up like a basically a butcher
room where he butchered guy and um, I guess made
(05:03):
steaks out of him flying over a period of time,
he ate ate his body, right, four pounds of this
guy's body over there over a few months. The thing
is he was he had totally gotten away with it, right,
like there was the police had no idea this had happened. Um,
there was no like missing person's report as far as
I know or anything like that. And the way he
was Um, the way he was caught was uh, some
(05:25):
some fellow chat room dwellers uh knew what Mivas was
doing and apparently got when that it had been successful
or whatever an alerted police and they found out and
he's like, oh, yeah, totally, it was great. Right. So UM,
I think what's most remarkable about this story is not
(05:45):
only that this guy did this, but there was no
law against cannibalism at the time in Germany, so he
was tried from or is being tried for murder. First
they had him on UM. I think they had him
on manslaughter, right, and because you know other guy consented,
he consented uh And and there was such outrage in
Germany um against it that that they're they're retrying him
(06:08):
somehow for murder um. But yeah, there there is no
law in the books. I think there is now um.
And the same goes for the UK. I really really
try to could not find any federal statute outlawing cannibalism
in the US, but I did find vague references that
it is illegal, but I couldn't find any actual law.
(06:28):
But the thing is, it's almost like you don't really
have to outlaw cannibalism because it's a taboo completely. It's
it's like it's beyond the law. It exists beyond the law.
It's something way worse than anything that we need to
sanction legally. You would think you would think, right, So, um,
what what Mivas and um Lee allegedly and Albert Fish
(06:52):
who is a murdering uh pederas cannibal of the nineteen twenties, um,
and of course one of the most famous of all,
Jeffrey Dahmer, what what they're what they were doing is
called pathological cannibalism, which basically that's that's psychology that has
very little to do with anthropology. The rest of cannibalism
(07:13):
falls very much into the realm of anthropology, and it's
been studied and study. It's actually one of the more
interesting fields of study, or sub fields of study, I think,
in in any aspect of anthropology. What what do you think? Well,
I mean, as far as cannibalism is religious custom and
offering up to the gods, that kind of thing with
the as, that's part of it. Yeah, there's there's a
(07:34):
bunch of different Yeah, there's different subsets and different kinds
you know, probably disturbing. Well, I don't, I know, you
do you school me? Okay, So you've got survival cannibalism,
learned cannibalism, which is which is subdivided into endocannibalism, but
which is eating like members of your family or your
tribe or whatever, and exo cannibalism, which is the opposite
(07:58):
it's eating um, members of outside your tribe or family.
And that's mainly for a religious uh not necessarily. We'll
get to that in a second. Um, there's there's also
pathological right, and then There's another one that I find
arguably the most disturbing auto cannibalism. That's eating oneself. Correct, Yes, Now,
(08:18):
I I didn't find any examples of some an actual
documented case of a person voluntarily eating themselves, aside for
from Jurgen Brandis, who apparently ate some of his penis
but didn't really like it. So usually cannibalism it's forced. Yeah,
but what about like, I know, I bite my nails,
and a lot of people think that that is it
(08:41):
is technically, Um, do you eat your fingernails clippings? Do
you just bought your nails? Because now, when I was younger, Yeah,
when I was younger, I would swallow my fingernail clippings
and uh, you would have like stomach problems and stuff,
I would imagine. So so I'm not supposed to swallow. Well,
I did those a little kid. I didn't know that.
I didn't realize that was a nervous kid. Kind of
it's a little more fortunate, I take it, so I don't.
(09:02):
I don't do that anymore. I don't swallow. That's good.
But yeah, you people do consider technically that biting your
fingernails is a form of auto cannibalism. UM. More often
it's uh, it's forced auto. Auto cannibalism is forced. UM.
I think in like two thousand three or two thousand four, UM,
in in the Congo, some Congolese rebels were accused of
(09:23):
um killing pigmies and uh and forcing other pigmies or no,
I'm sorry, forcing pigmies to eat parts of themselves before
killing them. And also you know, practicing cannibalism by eating
the pygmies themselves. Just some pretty terrible stuff going on
down in Congo. Yeah. And I know in the in
the early nineteen thirties and the United States even they
(09:43):
had a lot of racist fueled uh acts of auto cannibalism.
You know, I don't think enough people know about this.
I hadn't heard about this guy until UM I wrote
this article. Claude Neil. Had you heard of him before?
And now I hadn't because you know, they don't teach
the stuff in historical no, and they really should, so
I think it's kind of up to us to to
(10:04):
to teach it. Right. So in in Florida, UM, about
two thousand white Southerners gathered and basically sacrifice this black
guy named Claude neil and they advertise that they advertised
in the paper. They sent out invitation, right, and so
all these people show up and it's like this um
(10:27):
uh just kind of orgiastic um sacrifice or ritual where
they basically, um, they tortured him. They they cut off
his penis and made him eat it. It was forced
auto came right. And one thing that didn't make in
the article is that they forced him to say that
he liked how it tasted. And then finally, after a
(10:50):
couple of hours I take it, um, they finally lynched him.
They killed they hung him. And the sad thing is
this doesn't go down as like a sacrifice or an
auto can ballistic. It's called the lynching, which it's a
lynching is bad enough, but this seems so much further
beyond well it is, and it's a way, it's kind
of a way of even whitewashing. I mean, lynching is
bad enough, you're right, but when you don't hear about
(11:11):
those details, you think this guy was taking out and hung,
which is already horrible, but it just goes so far
beyond that. It's just it definitely isn't And like you said,
they don't teach that in the history books, and I
think they should so, but um, those are the types
of cannibalism, right, Um, what about you knew much about
survival cannibalism, like Alive and all that. Yeah, Well, the
(11:32):
Donner Party was one of the earlier ones. That was
the group of settlers that were heading out west right,
and they splinter group went off in this year in
Nevada Mountains and kind of encountered some bad badness weather
and the like, and they resorted to cannibalism. And then
the film and book Alive about the soccer team that
(11:53):
crashed in the andies, I think, yeah, you're team yeah,
And they ended up resorting to cannibalism from some of
their comrades who had who had already died. They survived
like seventy one days like that now, And you know,
that's one of the more forgivable, probably the most forgivable. Definitely,
cannibalis definitely because it's survival. I'd say, you're you're you're surviving.
(12:13):
And then these guys wanted to do what they had
to do, but they you know, they needed to agreed.
And and this was in nineteen seventy two or something
like that I think, thank you. Yeah, it was the
early seventies. Um, so this is really really recent. The
thing is is this has been going, This has happened
many many times. The dinner party. Um, there was a
there was actually something in the nineteenth century called the
(12:34):
custom of the sea, right, which is where, um, you
know where you uh, you're not happy with your lot
in life. That phrase that actually comes from the customer
to see where you're drawing lots drawing straws. Right, So
you you have the straws cut up two different lengths,
and everybody draws them. And as as per the custom
of the sea, the person who drew the shortest straw,
(12:55):
and this is like if you were stranded, if if
you were shipwrecked and you were forced to resort to
survival cannibalism, whoever drew the shortest straw, um was that
person was tapped to die. And whoever drew the next
shortest straw was a person manity to kill them, and
then everybody ate the person that was killed. It was
like basically a codified survival canibalism because it happened. It
(13:18):
was just a fact of life when you were a sailor. Yeah,
I guess it's because there were no rescuing parties or
anything like that. I mean, like you may just if
you were rescued somebody stumbled upon you, you know, So
it did happen a lot, and like you said, it
is the most forgivable form, at least in the eyes
of Westerners. It's survival, canibell, and you did what you
had to do to stay a lot. But at the
same time, um, it's kind of chilling in that how
(13:42):
how easy it seems like it it would be under
those circumstances to eat another person, you know, which kind
of points out that at any given point in time,
where like one plane crash or shipwreck away from you know,
eating one another. Yeah, it's it's a little kind of
spooky to realize, is that it's it's there. It's innate
in all of us, right, nobody would think that they
(14:04):
would want to do something like that. But when push
comes to shove and you face you're facing death, and
there's a difference also, I mean, I guess you're a
lot in life that that story. You're actually killing somebody
to eat them. But in the case of the alive ones,
they they you know, they ate they ate the dead Yeah,
they're falling comrades. So so that's that's a difference. Yeah, yeah,
(14:26):
that's survival cannibalism. And then you've got learned cannibalism, right,
and this is the stuff that's like really heavily studied.
Um there's uh, basically they call it learned cannibalism or
customary cannibalism because it's it's a socially indoctrinated right. Um.
For with endo cannibalism, generally it's part of like a
(14:46):
funeral rite. The four A people in Peppua, New Guinea
and the Worry in the Amazon were very well studied
for their practices of cannibalism. Like the Worry for example,
what they were doing this. Uh, this anthropologist named Beth
Conklin found out that they were by eating there they're
(15:07):
um recently deceased, they were transforming them. The warrior were
really big on or are really big on changing their
surroundings so that they're not reminded. Now, actually it's for
the it's for them for the survivors. Uh. They they
were they're supposed to change everything that reminds them of
the dead person so they're not sad or depressed. It's
(15:30):
the way, their way of getting over grief and and
eating the dead body is um, it's a method of
transforming it. So that's a that's a pretty peaceful method
of cannibalism. That's endocannibalism, and the foray do the same
thing for slightly different reasons. They're actually looking to gain uh,
certain attributes like say wisdom or strength or that kind
(15:54):
of thing. And it's very specific to the body part, right,
so like uh, and and only on certain people can
eat certain parts of a deceased relative. It's it's really
interesting how you know, over the course of centuries or millennia,
humans can really slap labels on all sorts of different stuff. Yeah,
but you know, this kind of deserves to be broken
(16:15):
down because they're they're also different, you know, all the
different forms. So I don't think it's just willy nilly
the way they slap different names on the know, but
that raises the question why, like why why do people
you know, why do why do cultures around the world
have codified socially sanctioned UM cannibalism? And I think UM
(16:38):
really in the article I divided that between two approaches
and anthropology, it's materialism and idealism. Right, So material did
you get this far in the article? And actually I
fell asleep about at that point. I think I'm just
of our readers are or listeners are asleep as well.
It's my voice that has a very lolling uh. So basically, um,
(17:02):
the materialists say that cannibalism generated from necessity, like there's
a drought, that kind of thing, and um, some some
people who adhere to that are saying, you know, hey,
it happens this cannibalism would would just be logical when
you know, you don't have a grocery store. We didn't
know how to tame crops and we were just hunter gatherers,
(17:23):
and all of a sudden there's a drought, so you
do survival cannibalism. Uh. And then the idealists say, no, no, no, Um,
it's we interpret the world through symbols and uh so
the human brain represents wisdom and that's and then cannibalism
came after we started interpreting things as symbols. Uh. And
(17:43):
nobody has figured out who's right. But I tend to
lean more towards the materialists. Yeah, I think cannibalism it's like, yeah,
it's like we were saying, it's it's I think it's
innate and all of us and when the chips are down,
I would eat you, you know. And his gibson already
told me that she would eat me. She called me meaty. Well,
(18:03):
I think i'd provide a hearty meal as well, you would.
I think I think we're about on par Yeah, yeah,
I think, uh at the very least, arm in mipas
could live on us for a very long time. Well,
I'm hungry. I'm a little hungry too, Chuck. Do you
want to go get something to eat? That's a great idea.
I mean, nice rare burger might go with a salad.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
(18:25):
it how stuff works dot com? Let us know what
you think. Send an email to podcast at how stuff
works dot com. Brought to you by the reinvented two
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