Path: kudonet.com!kudo20!tyagi
From: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (boboroshi/CoE)
Newsgroups: alt.pagan,talk.euthanasia,alt.animals,alt.consumers,alt.tasteless
Subject: CDaae: Cannibalism
Followup-To: talk.euthanasia,alt.animals
Date: 27 Dec 1996 00:39:32 -0800
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Reply-To: Christine Daae 
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Xref: kudonet.com alt.pagan:160438 talk.euthanasia:4336 alt.tasteless:104323

[from alt.pagan: Christine Daae ]

[uncited:]
> However, my question there is whether you take a morally superior
> attitude to cultures who eat other humans?

Me?  Not at all.  Cannibals are just dandy in my book.  I've always 
wanted a picture of myself at Donner National Park (right in front 
of the memorial) eating a big ham sanwich.  


> (I know these are rare, if they exist at all, these days - but remember
> the Aztecs, who fought wars for the primarily purpose of gathering humans
> for food.  They ripped their hearts out to kill them, rolled them down
> to the kitchens where they were prepared and stuffed, and ate them.
> Yes, I can go and look up a source if someone wants it.)

Here we get to the "heart" of the matter, the real "meat" of the 
question!  

Contrary to popular misconception, most cannibal societies do not eat 
people for food.  It is a ritual practice, usually eating enemies as a 
means of taking their essences, or as a funeral rite in which the dead 
are eaten by relatives.  It doesn't happen all that often in these 
societies, just special occasions; like when the in-laws show up.

I know of no society in recorded history that can be said to have eaten 
people as a dietary staple rather than as a ritual practice.

Now there is some debate bout the Aztecs, and I want to stress it is
_debate_;  they are said to have had an otherwise protein deficient diet,
(they lived in huge urban centers with no large domesticated stock animals
anywhere in the Mexico) that would have encouraged the eating of their
sacrificial victims as a matter of good nutrition.  It is true that they
did practiced continual sacrifices, sometimes thousands a year in the city
of Tenochtitlan a year (far more than any of their neighbors, who
definitely only sacrificed for ritual purposes, and weren't keen on eating
the remains).  It is said that they took a liking to pork (introduced by
the Spaniards) because it tasted like human flesh. 

On the other hand, like I said, all known cultural practices of
cannibalism have been ritual based instead of dietary based, and all the
cannibal sacrifices practiced by the Aztecs were of a ritual form.  And as
there was an alternative source of protein at Lake Texcoco (in which
Tenochtitlan occupied the center) in the form of green algae (Spirulina?),
some say that this dietary-cannabalism theory is pure hogwash. 

As an interesting side-note on the topic, the Spaniards were struck by
similarities between the Aztec religion and their own Catholicism.  The
assumption they reached was that the New World was a kind of mirror image
of their own "Christian" continent, an evil Eden ruled over by the Devil,
who had mocked Christian rites in order to take God's place.  Cannibalism
among the Aztecs was often practiced with the victim standing in as a
human form of the worshiped god.  The eating of the victim was a means of
introducing the god into yourself, and the pieces were parceled out in
much the same way a Christian priest delivers the consecrated host.  This
"perversion" particularly inflamed Cortez' men. 


Bon Apatite!


Christine

[EOF]