The word cannibal probably first brings to mind an island of savage tribesmen ripping men limb from limb to roast and consume in some sort of barbaric tribal ritual. Maybe your mind goes instead to the depraved serial killer sort of Cannibal, the Hanibal Lecters. Or legions of undead Zombies, arms outstretched, jaws unhinged, desperate to sink their rotting teeth into the living. Whatever comes to mind, it’s dark. Cannibalism, or more specifically, anthropophagy, the eating of other human beings, is as taboo as it gets in modern western culture. But did you know that, throughout history, it’s not actually as uncommon or unnatural as you might think? That even the most sophisticated among us consumed human flesh medicinally as recently as one century ago? And that cannibalism in misunderstood indigenous cultures was exaggerated and twisted by these same sophisticated men into justification for slavery? Let’s fix that. 

 

Hello, I’m Shea LaFountaine and you’re listening to History Fix where I discuss lesser known true stories from history you won’t be able to stop thinking about. I’m sorry I’m just realizing I’m following up crucifixion with cannibalism. Sheesh it’s getting real dark and gory on History Fix y’all. I’ll try to do something more light-hearted next week. Real quick before I get into this one, I have more History Fix stickers I would love to give away. All you have to do is tell me your mailing address. You can message me on Instagram or Facebook or TikTok @historyfixpodcast, you can email me historyfixpodcast@gmail.com however you manage to reach me, just tell me your mailing address and I will send you a sticker, totally free, just cause I love you. For real, hit me up. It makes me real happy every time I pop one of these suckers in the mailbox. It’s a win win. 

 

Okay let’s talk about eating human flesh. Cannibalism refers to the eating of an individual that is the same species as you. It doesn’t necessarily refer to humans. It is quite common and even considered natural in a lot of animal populations as many as 1,500 different species are known to eat their own kind for one reason or another. For example, many species of insects eat one another as a way of controlling the population or eliminating weak individuals. Other species like bears, hamsters, certain birds, and fish have also been known to eat each other or eat their young in times of high stress or when starving. Frogs just eat each other whenever the heck they want for no reason at all. This is all considered cannibalism. It’s a natural animal behavior. However, when it comes to humans, we don’t think of cannibalism as natural at all. You probably get an icky feeling just thinking about eating human flesh. A lot of that is societal, cultural ideals that have been passed down through the ages. The masses decided at some point that cannibalism, or anthropophagy to be more specific, was bad or wrong and because you were born into a culture that adopted that sentiment, you also adopted it. This is a widely held opinion, not a fact. But cannibalism among humans, anthropophagy, is really not that black and white.  

 

Let’s get into the earliest evidence of human cannibalism. According to forensic scientist Roger W. Byard in an article for the National Library of Medicine, intentional cut marks have been found on 780,000 year old hominid bones, so ancestors of modern humans, and also on 100,000 year old Neanderthal bones. So if you listened to mini fix number 3 about the Jamestown Jane, you know that cut marks on bone suggest that the body was consumed by other humans. They cut it up, and cooked, and ate it. There’s just no real reason to cut a body into pieces otherwise. I mean, okay, I listen to a lot of true crime podcasts. I know this happens in modern times as a way to hide a body, a murder victim. Neanderthals had no reason to hide their victims. If they’re going through the laborious effort of dismembering a body, they’re eating it. But there’s also other evidence like tooth marks (yeah that’s pretty convincing), signs of cooking, and also the remains being found with animal bones in like a trash pit situation. 

 

So as far back as 780,000 years ago we have human-like species eating one another. According to Byard quote “it has been proposed that cannibalism in early hominid populations was driven by the ready availability of fellow hominids with respect to other food sources making them a ‘high-ranked prey type’” end quote. So basically, other food was harder to get. You had to go hunt it and kill it with your bare hands pretty much or like a spear or whatever. This dude sitting next to you around the fire, he’s easy pickings. He’s just sitting there. Way easier. But also, a lot of times cannibalism wasn’t like a kill you and eat you situation. It was more of a “oh look he died, bummer, let’s eat him while he’s still fresh.” So there’s that. That’s what most likely happened to Trash Pit Jane. 

 

Byard talks about 3 different reasons why humans eat other humans. Number 1 nutritional, they need food. This is probably what was happening with the Neanderthals and it was definitely what was happening during Jamestown’s Starving Time when Jane was eaten and we’ll get into some more examples of this later. Number 2 ritual, where cannibalism is part of a cultural, religious ritual of some kind. And number 3 pathological, this is your Hanibal Lecter type cannibalism. Think Jeffrey Dahmer, Albert Fish. These are the sick freak serial killer cannibals. We’ll also come back to this later. Yay. 

 

Human remains found in Gough’s (Goff’s) Cave in Somerset, England show clear signs of cannibalism from around 14,700 years ago. And this one’s kind of special because it’s an example of number 2, the ritual type of cannibalism. According to Dr. Silvia Bello with the UK Natural History Museum in an article by Lisa Hendry quote “The evidence at Gough's Cave points to a sophisticated culture of butchering and carving human remains,” end quote. Hendry details that evidence in her article “The Cannibals of Gough’s Cave.” So basically they found skeletal remains in the cave from several different individuals including a teenager and a three year old that showed clear signs of cannibalism. There were intentional cut marks where soft tissue had been removed from bone. Many of the bones had obviously been chewed on by humans. Long bones like arm and leg bones had been cracked open and gnawed on to get the marrow out. And the skulls had been meticulously shaped to create cups and bowls. So, yeah, if you’re starving, you aren’t shaping skull cups. You’re just cracking the skull into bits like an egg to get to the brains. According to Bello, the skull cups found at Gough’s cave as well as a few other nearby sites from the same period suggest symbolic meaning. Also, there were a ton of horse bones in the cave with the human bones. The horses had also been butchered and eaten. These dudes appeared to have no shortage of food. This was not survival cannibalism. One final piece of evidence was a forearm bone with zig zag marks carved into it to create an intentional pattern. According to Bello quote “it is the oldest example of an engraved human bone now known.” end quote. So I don’t know what the heck was going on in that cave but starving people do not carve intricate designs into bone and craft cups out of skulls. These are in the realm of art. Starving people don’t create art according to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. This suggests ritual cannibalism. And yes of course I have photos of the carved arm bone and the skull cup on my instagram and website historyfixpodcast.com because who wouldn’t want to see that? In another find, 4,000 year old bones were excavated in El Mirador cave in Spain with cuts, tooth marks, and signs of cooking. This is believed to be a case of what Byard calls nutritional cannibalism, number one. You can also call it gastronomic or survival cannibalism. 

 

So it was happening, not a lot, but happening throughout human history. The ancient Greeks and Romans were likely the first to twist cannibalism into the ultimate forbidden human behavior. They sort of created the taboo when they incorporated cannibalism into some of their myths. One in particular about a tribe of dog headed cannibals living in India was particularly prevalent. Yes, dog headed, as in humans with dog heads. Okay so this is a myth, like Medusa with her snake hair, it’s not real. I mean obviously it’s not real. We haven’t found any remains of dog headed men. But these cynocephali (sino-sef-a-lie) as they were called really left their mark. According to Terry Madenholm in an article for Haaretz called “A Brief History of Cannibalism: Not Just a Matter of Taste,” quote “the earliest known reference to them is in Indica, a 5th-century B.C work written by Ctesias (tee-shee-us), the Greek physician to Artaxerxes II of Persia. He was the first prominent writer to report about dark-skinned dog-like creatures who lived in India and consumed human flesh with relish. He wasn't the only one. Herodotus (hee-row-dittus) too wrote about androphagi (man-eaters) ostensibly living in India, and Pliny the Elder refreshingly placed them in Ethiopia. One might think those were bedtime stories for naughty children, but when Alexander the Great invaded India in the 4th century B.C., he wrote to his dear teacher Aristotle that he had fought the dog-headed men, the "cynocephalic" (sino-seff-a-lick). As the adventurous Europeans began to explore new promising lands to exploit, they carried their perceptions of cannibalism with them. Among the first brave ones was Marco Polo (one of the first modern creators/propagators of fake news), who claimed that the men of the… Andaman Islands, were cynocephalic and ate everybody that they could catch: [writing] ‘I assure you all the men of this Island… have heads like dogs, and teeth and eyes likewise; in fact, in the face they are all just like big mastiff dogs! They have a quantity of spices; but they are a most cruel generation, and eat everybody that they can catch, if not of their own race,’ he wrote.” end quote

 

So what is going on here? Clearly there are not actually dog headed men in any of these places. How is this “fake news” as Madenholm referred to it catching on? I mean I have to believe we’re just seeing some really severe racism going on here. Is it possible they were encountering real cannibals, yeah they probably were. Did these guys have mastiff heads. No. They probably looked different, had darker skin, different facial features from Europeans, and were likened to dogs in a dehumanizing way, like early explorers of the Americas referring to the indigenous people as “savages.” Like that. 

 

But I’m not saying they weren’t cannibals, they very well may have been. In certain cultures and religions, ritualistic cannibalism was not seen as a bad thing. Number 2 right? For example, during the Tang dynasty in China from the year 618 until 907, people practiced a healing tradition called gegu. According to Madenholm, quote “Gegu consisted of slicing a piece of flesh from one's thigh or any other part of the body with the intention of preparing it for a sickly loved one. In most descriptions, the son or daughter-in-law secretly commits the act for a parent, who is left ignorant of the meal's origin (or pretending not to know). Only after the lucky patient recovers [is the act revealed.] It is, however, not the flesh that has healing value but the act itself, the remarkable display of filial piety, which is at the core of Confucianism.” end quote. So this is very much a religious ritual. They are hoping to heal their mother, or whatever. It’s completely horrifying to us in western culture. It’s hard to even wrap your head around. If I got sick I would be like “don’t you freaking dare chop your butt cheek off and try to feed it to me. I’m fine.” 

 

It’s wild but it is certainly not the only time human flesh has been consumed medicinally. This was actually pretty common practice for much of history, even among the western dog man believers. According to Pliny the Elder in ancient Rome, what he described as quote “warm, living blood” was often collected from dying gladiators because it was thought to cure epilepsy if ingested. And then there’s mummies. Starting in the 12th century, so the 1100s, Europeans have been eating or snorting powdered Egyptian mummies. And you're probably like, “okay, yeah, 12th century, those were weird times, that checks out.” But actually you guys, this carried on until at least the early 1900s. I mean I don’t know, maybe people are still doing this. I don’t know. But Terry Madenholm reports extensively on this practice in that article I mentioned earlier, citing several specific examples of evidence we have to back this up. 

 

One account comes from Nicasius (Nick-ass-see-us) le Febure who was appointed professor of chemistry and apothecary by Charles II of England so we’re talking mid 1600s. He wrote that the best mummies quote “were those of bodies dried up in the hot sands of Libya,” end quote. He goes on to say that if those cannot be found, it’s best to eat the body of a healthy man between the ages of 25 and 30 who had died of suffocation or from being hanged. 

 

Edward Taylor was a Puritan physician, pastor, and poet living in the Massachusetts colony in the late 1600s and early 1700s. As a doctor for 40 years, he administered medicine made from human corpses. We have documentation of this in the form of human parts and quote “mummy” listed in his handwritten medical dispensatory, which is like a book with directions for how to prepare medicines like a cookbook with medicine recipes or a potions book if you want to get witchy with it. 

 

A 1747 edition of the London Pharmacopoeia noted that genuine mummy tasted quote “somewhat acrid and bitterish,” so that people could be sure they were getting the real deal. And an English dictionary from 1785 went as far as to give a brief description of where these mummies were coming from stating quote “What our druggists are supplied with is the flesh of any bodies the [creators of mummies] can get, who fill them with … common bitumen … and adding aloes … send them to be baked in an oven till the juices are exhaled and the embalming matter has penetrated.” end quote. Because, I mean of course Egyptian mummies are ideal but there was definitely a limited supply of those so people had to get creative. But if you could get the real deal, that was, that was what you wanted. 

 

According to the 18th century dispensatory of a Dr. Robert James, mummy could be used as a blood thinner, a painkiller, a cough suppressant, an anti-inflammatory, a menstrual aid, and a means of promoting wound healing. I mean geez, this is like a miracle drug. But it’s not actually the dead body itself they are claiming has all these health benefits. It’s the bitumen. Bitumen is a binding agent that comes from petroleum, it’s basically asphalt, like what they use to pave roads. They thought bitumen was used in the ancient Egyptian mummification process. It actually wasn’t. According to the National Library of Medicine, they used resin, which looks very similar to bitumen. So quite interesting that they are snorting powdered mummy in order to get the bitumen that isn’t even in there and then when they run out of the OG Egyptian stuff they start drying out freshly dead bodies and being like “Oh it’s fine. The body is just as good as the bitumen. Who needs bitumen anyway? This will do.” It’s all snake oil.  

 

In 1908 a German company called E. Merck Darmstadt published an ad in a publication called Comparative Folk Medicine offering quote “genuine Egyptian mummy, as long as the supply lasts, 17 marks 50 per kilogram,” end quote. In 1908. This company still exists by the way. It’s just called Merck now and it moved from Germany to New Jersey. It’s a major American pharmaceutical company, like definitely top 5. It’s up there. But around a hundred years ago, they were advertising genuine Egyptian mummy dust for people to snort. So that’s fun. 

 

So what I find interesting about this medicinal cannibalism, is that it’s being practiced by people who consider themselves quite civilized. And I’m just realizing that, okay so we kind of still do this. When you have a baby, if you want to, you can have your placenta encapsulated which is when they dry it out, powder it, and turn it into pills that you can take as like a vitamin, a nutritional supplement. That’s cannibalism. But I don’t think people see it that way. Madenholm writes quote “Of course, the Europeans who practiced corpse medicine didn't think of themselves as cannibals; for them, the term was reserved for the savage unchristian people who lived on the edge of civilization.” end quote. Unchristian. But even that gets a bit hypocritical. In the very very beginning of Christianity, between the crucifixion in 30 something and when Rome officially adopted Christianity in the 300s, early Christians were mercilessly persecuted and often crucified for being Christian. And part of the justification for that was cannibalism. Romans saw the ritual of consuming the quote “body and the blood of Christ” as symbolic cannibalism. I mean they weren’t eating Jesus’ actual body. It’s bread and wine, right? But it represents the body and the blood and that was enough I guess for them to condemn the Christians to die while they slurp up their warm Gladiator blood for epilepsy. But it’s not just the Romans, the Christians turned out to be pretty hypocritical when it comes to cannibalism as well. During the first crusade a French chaplain named Fulcher (Full-shay) de Charte (Shat) wrote after the siege of Maarat in Syria quote “I shudder to tell that many of our people, harassed by the madness of excessive hunger, cut pieces from the buttocks of the Saracens (sira-seens) already dead there, which they cooked, but when it was not yet roasted enough by the fire, they devoured it with savage mouth.” end quote. Now, that’s survival cannibalism though, right? So that’s a little more excusable. 

 

What isn’t excusable is what happened with Christopher Columbus in the late 1400s. No, he didn’t eat people but this might actually be worse. Christopher Columbus is the one who came up with the term cannibal, by the way. So, initially when Columbus landed in the Caribbean, he described the Arawak Natives as peaceful, generous, and open to converting to Christianity. Okay, he’s writing this stuff and sending these reports back to Spain, because although he was actually Italian he was sent by the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella. He’s like “yeah, they’re great we should totally settle here, this is a go.” But after some time he sort of realizes “you know what, where’s all the gold? I sort of expected to be lavished with silver and gold upon arrival. There doesn’t appear to be much of that going on. Let’s pivot. Let’s do sugar instead. We’ll set up sugar plantations, we’ll start growing white gold” which, if you listened to my Rum episode, episode 37, you know sugar was an extremely valuable trade good at the time. And Columbus is the one who introduced it to the Americas. But growing sugar is an extremely labor intensive endeavor. Columbus realizes that the only way to do this efficiently is to enslave people to work the plantations. He goes to the Queen, Isabella. He’s like “I have this great plan, we can start growing and selling sugar but we’re gonna have to enslave these native people. It’s the only way.” And she’s like “hard pass.” Because she viewed slavery as immoral. She condemned it as incompatible with Christian values. Which it is. This is why more women need to rule the world. But she does sort of offer up a loophole. She’s like “if they’re peaceful and generous and willing to convert to Christianity like you said in your earlier report, then no, we are not enslaving them, they are our people and we will treat them humanely. If, however, they were like say I don’t know blood thirsty savage man eaters or something, well then we could consider the whole slavery idea.” And Columbus is like “you don’t say?” and the tone of his reports from then on completely shifts. During his second voyage, he’s suddenly encountering all of these dangerous cannibals who simply must be hunted down and enslaved. We saw this some with the Roanoke colony if you listened to episodes 27 and 28. In those initial reports, Amadas and Barlowe are like “they’re awesome, they are wining and dining us, we are all BFFs” and then a year later Ralph Lane is like “they’re all out to get me. They are conspiring against me. I’m left with no choice but to decapitate their leader and flee.” It’s all very self serving. European reports could twist and turn the indigenous people into whoever they wanted them to be to best fit their needs, to get what they wanted because it’s a completely one sided account. 

 

Madenholm writes quote “The explorers tended to emphasize the violent side of cannibalism but what they omitted to tell, or didn't know, is that cannibalism was sometimes performed out of love and devotion. For instance, the indigenous people of Brazil, the Wariʼ were horrified to learn that Europeans were burying their people. For them, it was unthinkable to leave a loved one to rot and be eaten by worms. Consuming body parts was seen as the best way to keep that person close [and] alive.” end quote. So it was basically a cultural difference that they exploited in order to justify enslaving the native people. 

 

So we have reports of ritual cannibalism throughout human history. A lot of times this is happening in remote places, like islands, mostly cut off from the rest of the world. It’s just normal for these people, part of their customs. They don’t think of it as weird or gross like we do in mainstream culture. I have to imagine these European explorers are coming in, just completely horrified and the indigenous people are like “what? You guys don’t eat your grandmas when they die? Huh.” But let’s go back to number 1, what Byard referred to as nutritional cannibalism. We’ve already touched on a couple examples of this, that cave in Spain from 4,000 years ago, the crusaders in Syria, and the Jamestown colonists during the starving time. But there have been other situations that we know of that have led people to such desperation for food that they have resorted to cannibalism. And I can’t decide if this is the best type of cannibalism or the worst. Because they aren’t really cannibals, right, they don’t want to eat people. So in that way, it’s kind of excusable. It’s just a matter of life and death. But then again they aren’t cannibals and they’re being forced to eat people. Can you imagine? In that sense, it’s pretty horrifying. 

 

So let’s get into some examples of nutritional cannibalism. What sorts of dire situations must unfold for people who aren’t cannibals to resort to eating each other. And I may end up doing full episodes on one or two of these because these stories are just nuts. Let’s start with the sinking of the Meduse (Me-doos) in 1816. You may be somewhat familiar with this one if you’re into art. There is a very famous painting titled “the Raft of the Meduse” by Theodore Gericault depicting this real life tragedy. The Meduse was a French naval ship, a frigate, on its way to Senegal in west Africa when it ran aground 60 miles off the coast of Mauritania which is just north of Senegal on July 2, 1816. The ship was carrying some 400 passengers, mostly a bunch of sailors and soldiers but 60 some odd of those were passengers, civilians.  So they run aground, but there’s no major damage. They’re like “okay, maybe we can refloat it.” They can’t. That plan fails. They start making plans to abandon the ship. The problem is, there are only 6 lifeboats, enough for 250 people. That leaves around 150 people behind. So, I mean 1816, 100 years before the Titanic and an extremely well known tragedy thanks to that painting and they still didn’t make a law that ships had to have enough lifeboats after this. Anyway, they start building a raft for the extra 150 people using wood from the boat. But raft is kind of an understatement, this thing is big at 20 meters long and 6 meters wide. That’s around 65 feet by 20 feet. I have a drawing of it on my instagram. They’re building this raft in case they need to bail but they’re still hanging on the Meduse. It’s fine, it’s just run aground so it’s stuck. Then they’re hit with a storm which opens up a hole in the ship and breaks the keel. They’re like “okay, good thing we made this raft, we gotta go.” But despite having time to prepare, the departure from the ship is a hot mess. People are panicking, it’s disorganized, they start looting each other’s belongings, they completely neglect transferring food and supplies to the lifeboats and raft. This leads me to believe there was very poor leadership. And this is confirmed by the fact that the captain got a spot on the lifeboats which are filled with mostly higher up officers, the governor of the colony they’re heading for. They are reserved for the elite. When all is said and done, 250 people are split between the 6 lifeboats and the remaining 147 pile onto the raft. This included 4 officers, 120 soldiers, 15 sailors, and 8 civilians including one woman. The raft is initially tied to the lifeboats but it’s not very hydrodynamic. It drags behind so badly that the line breaks and isn’t replaced. The captain promises them he’ll send help as the raft falls behind and starts to drift out to sea. The only food they have on the raft is a bag of biscuits that they eat on the first day. They accidentally knock the cask of drinking water overboard in a scuffle and all they’re left with is 6 casks of wine. This started so badly that chaos broke out on the very first day with fighting aboard the raft. By the end of the day 20 people had either been thrown overboard or committed suicide. Over the next few days, the crew aboard the raft was met with violent storms that drug people overboard. Others died fighting each other while trying to get to the center of the raft. It’s like the Hunger Games up in here. By the end of day 4, only 67 out of 147 people were left alive on the raft. Now starving and dehydrated, they try to catch fish using a bayonet but have no luck. Finally they resort to eating the dead, attempting to cook the flesh in an improvised hearth but eventually giving up and just eating it raw. By day 8 only 30 people remained on the raft and by day 15 they are down to just 15 people. These 15 had all but given up when a ship called the Argus stumbled upon them and rescued them. But 5 more would die on the voyage to shore. And you want to know the real kicker? 52 days after the Meduse ran aground, a ship named Colomba approached the wreck. Surprisingly, 3 survivors emerged who had decided to stay on board when the others left where they feasted on brandy, tallow, salted bacon, and plums that had been left behind. A terrible tragedy for sure and a terrifying look into the dismantling of humanity in times of life and death panic. Lot of lessons to be learned from this one. Might have to revisit.  

 

Next is the wreck of the whaling ship Essex. This is actually what inspired the famous novel Moby Dick, but author Herman Melville stopped his story before the real horrors took place. In November of 1820, the Essex was out whaling some 2000 miles west of Ecuador in the middle of the Pacific. They’re out there trying to kill whales, when the ship is rammed twice by an 85 foot sperm whale which irreparably damaged it. Wah. They decide to abandon the ship, get into the lifeboats, and head south just into open water instead of heading for one of the nearby islands. And the reason for this is quite ironic. You see, they are worried that they will encounter cannibals on the islands. The lifeboats get separated, the bread they brought with them gets saturated with sea water. Eventually they resort to cannibalism. On one boat they eat one already dead crew member before being rescued by a passing British ship. On another they eat three men. On the lifeboat the captain was on, Captain Pollard, who is just 29 years old by the way, they face the hardest decision of all. They don’t have any dead guys. But they’re all about to be dead guys because they’re starving. They decide they have to kill one of the men and eat him. They draw straws to decide who will be shot and eaten. Can you imagine? And like where did they get the straws from, I don’t know, they drew something. The guy who draws the short straw is Captain Pollard’s cousin. The man eats his own cousin. This boat is rescued by an American whaling ship but only 2 men are left alive, Pollard and one other guy. They were super out of it, barely registered that they were being rescued and were sucking on human bones when the ship approached. They stuffed the bones into their pockets before they were pulled aboard to safety. Some 30 years later, I assume after he’d gotten his sanity back somewhat at least, Pollard met author Herman Melville in Nantucket and relayed the Essex’ ordeal to him which inspired the plot of Moby Dick. 

 

I’m sure you’ve heard of the Donner party but we certainly can’t skip this one. In 1846 a group of American pioneers headed west towards California under the leadership of a man named George Donner. So this is during the time in American history when the western half of what is now the country was being explored and settled. People are heading out west in covered wagons and such to start new lives. This is Oregon Trail times, if you ever played that game. The 87 member Donner Party as they would come to be known, this group, gets some bad advice about a so called shortcut across the Sierra Nevada mountains. This short cut ends up being 125 miles longer than they were told and incredibly difficult to traverse. So difficult that they lost a dozen cattle and had to abandon several wagons along the way. They’ve lost valuable time on this short cut that ended up being a long cut and now winter weather is upon them. They are trapped in the Sierra Nevada with heavy snow falling. More cattle died or wandered off and now they’re starving. 10 men and 5 women leave the group to go find help. 8 of the men die on the way but the rest make it through to California. And the main way they were able to pull this off was by roasting and eating those 8 fallen men. Two of them were Native American and they flat out refused to eat the dead men. They ran off but were hunted down, killed, and eaten by the others. Back at the camp where the rest of them were stuck they had resorted to eating the dogs, cowhides, and then, like the others, the bodies of the dead. So that smaller group made it to California and a rescue party headed out to find the others. It took 2 months for them to be rescued. In that time, 42 out of 87 people had died and at least half of the survivors had resorted to cannibalism. 

 

And our final story happened much more recently, in 1972 when a rugby team from Uruguay was headed to Chile. Their plane crashed in the Andes mountains killing 16 of the 45 people onboard. 29 survived the crash but the ordeal was far from over in fact it would last for 72 days. Starvation set in quickly and they ultimately resorted to cannibalism to survive. The pilot had died in the crash so they ate him first. They didn’t know him. They had no emotional attachment to him. He was easier to eat, I guess? But, I mean 72 days, they eventually had to eat their friends who had died too. At some point there was an avalanche that killed 8 more people. At this point 2 men decide to head out looking for help. Cause they’ve just been kind of chilling near the wreck of the plane at this point. They set out west towards Chile. They climb up this mountain peak, a monumental feat in a starvation state, they get to the top and they find nothing. There’s no sign of civilization anywhere that they can see. They climb back down, sure now that they are all completely doomed. When they get to the bottom, they find a river and by the river they stumble upon a soup can, a horseshoe, a herd of cows, and finally a man on horseback. This man is able to contact help and rescue helicopters are dispatched from Chile. When they are rescued 72 days after the crash, there are only 16 survivors out of 45. I have a photo of them taken at the time that they were rescued if you’d like to peep that. 

 

So let’s do this. This is kind of fun. I just told you 4 stories of survival cannibalism, when people were forced to eat the dead or even kill and eat people in order to survive. Number one, the raft of the meduse, number two, the wreck of the Essex whaling ship, number 3 the Donner Party, and number 4 the Uruguayan rugby team plane crash in the Andes. Which one do you most want me to turn into a full length History Fix episode? I want to know. Hit me up @historyfixpodcast or historyfixpodcast@gmail.com. Tell me which one of the 4 you want to see as a full episode and, while your at it, go ahead and tell me your mailing address so I can send you a sticker. That’s your homework. 

 

That brings us to number 3, pathological cannibalism. This is when an unhinged murderer kills a then eats his victims. We’re gonna gloss over this one because, I mean yikes. There are a few major standout examples of this happening, mostly with well known serial killers. But honestly I feel like a lot of them did this sort of thing for the shock value because they wanted attention for it, they wanted notoriety and I really don’t want to give them that. But I do want to talk about the sort of psychology behind this type of cannibalism. A recent study in the Journal of Forensic Science sought to uncover what sort of mental issues drive a person to want to eat another person. They studied five patients at a mental institution in France with a history of violent acts that led to cannibalism. They were all men between the ages of 18 and 36. They found that the men fell into two distinct groups. Three of them suffered from severe schizophrenia and the other two had mixed personality disorders with extreme paraphilia. So paraphilia refers to abnormal or deviant sexual practices. Now, a lot of people have paraphilic fantasies, weird, freaky stuff. That’s actually pretty normal. There’s a difference between having paraphilic fantasies and an actual paraphilic disorder. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, in order to have a paraphilic disorder someone must quote “feel personal distress about their interest” or “have a sexual desire or behavior that involves another person’s psychological distress, injury, or death, or a desire for sexual behaviors involving unwilling persons or persons unable to give legal consent.” So all 5 of these guys killed and ate people. The three schizophrenic guys all attacked and killed a parent and then ate parts of them. For all three of them, the outburst happened impulsively during a time they perceived that they were being threatened by that parent. In that way it was sort of like an act of self defense. They also ate the flesh quickly raw and unprepared. Now the two personality disorder paraphilia guys also killed and ate people but for totally different reasons. Both admitted to having fantasies about eating people going back many years. What finally made them act on those fantasies was feelings of humiliation. They both attacked their victims during times of low self-esteem and both attacks involved sexual stuff before the victims were eaten. And they weren’t just hastily eaten raw like was the case for the 3 schizophrenic guys, they were quote savored. The study concluded that for these two quote “ego and narcissism are the central issue, with a desire to overcome deep-rooted frustrations by means of an extraordinary act," end quote as opposed to more of a self defense reaction from the schizophrenic guys. All 5 of them had a dysfunctional childhood characterized by sexual abuse, violence, and neglect. And the report even admits, you know, this is only 5 guys. This certainly doesn’t explain the psychology of everyone who does this but they didn’t have a ton of people to study. Pathological cannibalism is pretty rare, luckily, although not rare enough to rule out in a murder investigation. Byard says quote “ if ritualistic, serial and/or sadistic homicides are encountered, cannibalism should be considered, particularly if body parts are missing,” end quote.

 

And holy cow this one got sick and twisted. Sorry guys. I will try to do something a little less intense for next week. But I just got so lost in this topic that I had to share. There’s something so incredibly intriguing about cannibalism. For most of us it's absolutely horrific to even think about. I feel like I need to go wash my brain after this. And yet, it fascinates us. It’s almost like the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, right, the forbidden fruit. Because our society, mainstream culture tells us that it is wrong, beyond wrong, it’s one of the most vile, depraved things a human can do which is why some of the pathological cannibals do it. They get a sick satisfaction out of tasting that forbidden fruit. And yet we want to know about it. We hungrily take in the stories, push our minds to the limits of what they can handle to try to process these horrible atrocities, these acts that our society has told us are horrible atrocities. And yet, probably the most eye opening thing I uncovered in researching this episode, the most shocking, is not Captain Pollard eating his own cousin. It’s not the Donner Party killing and eating those Native American runaways. It’s not even the paraphilic psychopaths savoring their victims to get an ego boost. It’s the perspective of the Wari people of Brazil who ate their deceased loved ones out of respect, as a way of keeping them near, keeping their memories alive. Who were horrified that the Europeans were burying their dead in the dirt, letting them rot, letting the worms eat them. It just goes to show you that many of these ideas, these beliefs that we hold to be absolute truths are just completely made up. They’re social constructs. We view cannibalism as horrific because the culture that decided it was horrific is the culture that won. If it was the Wari or the Arawaks and not the Europeans who invaded, conquered, and settled most of the world, we might all be eating dead people right now and thinking nothing of it. I’m not saying you should eat dead people or that it’s right or whatever. Actually please don’t start eating dead people. All I’m saying is that a lot of our steadfast beliefs and customs and ways of doing things only exist because somebody at some point just made them up and that’s what stuck. It’s pretty eye opening and a good reminder to always think for yourself. You don’t have to live a certain way, think a certain way, do things just because it's the way things are done. Think for yourself. Because somebody just made that stuff up. 

 

Thank you all so very much for listening to History Fix, I hope you found this story interesting and maybe you even learned something new. Be sure to follow my instagram @historyfixpodcast to see some images that go along with this episode and to stay on top of new episodes as they drop. I’d also really appreciate it if you’d rate and follow History Fix on whatever app you’re using to listen, and help me spread the word by telling a few friends about it. That’ll make it much easier to get your next fix.  

 

Information used in this episode was sourced from the National Library of Medicine, The Collector, Live Science, IFL Science, International Boating Magazine, The Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology, Haaretz, the UK Natural History Museum, and Medical News Today. Links to these sources can be found in the show notes.