FAQ entry on Cannibalism
rsscmh
http://www.tafkac.org/faq2k/food_378.html
Entries on cannibalism.
In the news today:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/americas/01/22/human.sacrifice.ap/index.html
New findings change thinking on human sacrifices . . .
Sunday, January 23, 2005 Posted: 5:07 PM EST (2207 GMT)
MEXICO CITY (AP) -- It has long been a matter of contention: Was the
Aztec and Mayan practice of human sacrifice as widespread and
horrifying as the history books say? Or did the Spanish conquerors
overstate it to make the Indians look primitive? . . .
For decades, many researchers believed Spanish accounts from the 16th
and 17th centuries were biased to denigrate Indian cultures. Others
argued that sacrifices were largely confined to captured warriors,
while still others conceded the Aztecs were bloody, but believed the
Maya were less so.
"We now have the physical evidence to corroborate the written and
pictorial record," archaeologist Leonardo Lopez Lujan said. "Some
'pro-Indian' currents had always denied this had happened. They said
the texts must be lying." . . .
But there is no longer as much doubt about the nature of the killings.
Indian pictorial texts known as "codices," as well as Spanish accounts
from the time, quote Indians describing multiple forms of human
sacrifice. . .
The dig turned up other clues to support descriptions of sacrifices in
the Magliabecchi codex, a pictorial account painted between 1600 and
1650 that includes human body parts stuffed into cooking dishes, and
people sitting around eating, as the god of death looks on.
"We have found cooking dishes just like that," said archaeologist Luis
Manuel Gamboa. "And, next to some full skeletons, we found some
incomplete, segmented human bones." . . .
For Lopez Lujan, confirmation has come in the form of advanced chemical
tests on the stucco floors of Aztec temples, which were found to have
been soaked with iron, albumen and genetic material consistent with
human blood.
"It's now a question of quantity," said Lopez Lujan, who thinks the
Spaniards -- and Indian picture-book scribes working under their
control -- exaggerated the number of sacrifice victims, claiming in one
case that 80,400 people were sacrificed at a temple inauguration in
1487. "We're not finding anywhere near that ... even if we added some
zeros," Lopez Lujan said.
Researchers have largely discarded the old theory that sacrifice and
cannibalism were motivated by a protein shortage in the Aztec diet,
though some still believe it may have been a method of population
control. . .
========================
The FAQ entry begins by citing W. Arens "The Man-eating Myth:
Anthropology and Anthropophagy" (Oxford University Press, Oxford,
1979)and goes on to state that Arens showed "(quite successfully)" that
the belief cannibalism was common in many cultures had been
uncritically accepted, and careful examination of the evidence showed
that it was very weak. Arens suggested that NO culture had EVER had
culturally-approved cannibalism. The FAQ conceeds that "Since then
careful archaeological work has strongly suggested that at least some
cultures have had more than incidental cannibalism, but that it
certainly was much less common that previously believed."
I am not (Thank God) a professional anthropologist, but every article I
have seen on this subject in the 26 years since Arens book was
published has adduced forensic evidence of human sacrifice or
cannibalism. I doubt that Arens can be taken as much more than the
first PC/Multi-Culti provocature anymore. The FAQ entry needs to be
re-written by somebody who can give it a firmer basis in science.
Trianna
its assertions. Given that the Fore themselves have stated clearly, to
the Papua New Guinea government and to numerous anthropologists of all
nationalities, that part of their funerary rites included ritual
cannibalism, it frankly seems astonishingly racist and colonialist to
me to assume that they must somehow be lying or confabulating...
T "This is my body--take and eat. Fries with that?" dN
Jack Campin - bogus address
tafkac? what are you referring to?
> is ridiculously tendentious and gives no backup to
> its assertions. Given that the Fore themselves have stated clearly, to
> the Papua New Guinea government and to numerous anthropologists of all
> nationalities, that part of their funerary rites included ritual
> cannibalism, it frankly seems astonishingly racist and colonialist to
> me to assume that they must somehow be lying or confabulating..
As I remember it, the prevailing wisdom on kuru transmission got
revised not as a result of doubting that ritual brain eating
happened, but that other events surrounding the funeral rite
were more likely to result in transmitting the pathogen. In
particular, getting brain tissue into a cut. Transmission into
the bloodstream is more likely to result in infection than an
oral route for practically anything. The rest of the story is
a matter of correlating exactly who did what with the clinical
outcome - a kind of medical detective work which has been routine
since Ross's investigations of malaria.
============== j-c ====== @ ====== purr . demon . co . uk ==============
Jack Campin: 11 Third St, Newtongrange EH22 4PU, Scotland | tel 0131 660 4760
<http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/> for CD-ROMs and free | fax 0870 0554 975
stuff: Scottish music, food intolerance, & Mac logic fonts | mob 07800 739 557
Alice Faber
Jack Campin - bogus address <bo...@purr.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> > That tafkac entry
>
> tafkac? what are you referring to?
Er...you go back to the cathouse days. Cathouse is no more. The archive
that used to be at cathouse is now elsewhere.
Alice "sometimes the old jokes are just...old jokes" Faber
--
"My theory is that KKs are the bastard offspring of the beignet
and the assembly line."
--Lee Rudolph reviews Krispy Kreme donuts
tinman
<bo...@purr.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> That tafkac entry
>
>tafkac? what are you referring to?
>
>> is ridiculously tendentious and gives no backup to
>> its assertions. Given that the Fore themselves have stated clearly, to
>> the Papua New Guinea government and to numerous anthropologists of all
>> nationalities, that part of their funerary rites included ritual
>> cannibalism, it frankly seems astonishingly racist and colonialist to
>> me to assume that they must somehow be lying or confabulating..
>
>As I remember it, the prevailing wisdom on kuru transmission got
>revised not as a result of doubting that ritual brain eating
>happened, but that other events surrounding the funeral rite
>were more likely to result in transmitting the pathogen. In
>particular, getting brain tissue into a cut. Transmission into
>the bloodstream is more likely to result in infection than an
>oral route for practically anything.
so all those mad cows we had in Britain were cutting themselves whilst
wading through sheep bits, rather than eating Scrapie infected sheep?
eugene