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83-658: The Creswellian is a British Upper Palaeolithic culture named after the type site of Creswell Crags in Derbyshire by Dorothy Garrod in 1926. It is also known as the British Late Magdalenian . According to Andreas Maier: "In current research, the Creswellian and Hamburgian are considered to be independent but closely related entities which are rooted in the Magdalenian." The Creswellian

166-798: A core through striking in a single direction, leaving a distinct 'spur' on the platform. The tools were made using a soft hammerstone or an antler hammer. Other finds include Baltic amber , mammoth ivory and animal teeth and bone. These were used to make harpoons, awls, beads and needles. Unusual bevelled ivory rods, known as sagaies have been found at Gough's Cave in Somerset and Kent's Cavern in Devon . Twenty eight sites producing Cheddar points are known in England and Wales though none have so far been found in Scotland or Ireland , regions which it

249-476: A "shortage of animal protein" was also the underlying reason for Aztec cannibalism. The cultural anthropologist Marshall Sahlins , on the other hand, rejected such explanations as overly simplistic, stressing that cannibal customs must be regarded as "complex phenomen[a]" with "myriad attributes" which can only be understood if one considers "symbolism, ritual, and cosmology" in addition to their "practical function". In pre-modern medicine, an explanation given by

332-914: A belief that eating a person's flesh or internal organs will endow the cannibal with some of the positive characteristics of the deceased. However, several authors investigating exocannibalism in New Zealand , New Guinea , and the Congo Basin observe that such beliefs were absent in these regions. A further type, different from both exo- and endocannibalism, is autocannibalism (also called autophagy or self-cannibalism ), "the act of eating parts of oneself". It does not ever seem to have been an institutionalized practice, but occasionally occurs as pathological behaviour, or due to other reasons such as curiosity. Also on record are instances of forced autocannibalism committed as acts of aggression, where individuals are forced to eat parts of their own bodies as

415-697: A boy aged around 5 or 6. As the daily energy need of an adult man is about 2,400 kilocalories, a dead male body could thus have fed a group of 25 men for a bit more than two days, provided they ate nothing but the human flesh alone – longer if it was part of a mixed diet. The nutritional value of the human body is thus not insubstantial, though Cole notes that for prehistoric hunters, large megafauna such as mammoths , rhinoceros , and bisons would have been an even better deal as long as they were available and could be caught, because of their much higher body weight. Cases of people eating human livers and hearts , especially of enemies, have been reported from across

498-702: A double bag ... which was put into a large pot" and so boiled alive. While not mentioning live roasting or boiling, European authors also complained about cannibalism and cruelty during the Mongol invasion of Europe , and a drawing in the Chronica Majora (compiled by Matthew Paris ) shows Mongol fighters spit-roasting a human victim. Pedro de Margarit  [ es ] , who accompanied Christopher Columbus during his second voyage , afterwards stated "that he saw there with his own eyes several Indians skewered on spits being roasted over burning coals as

581-459: A form of torture . Exocannibalism is thus often associated with the consumption of enemies as an act of aggression, a practice also known as war cannibalism . Endocannibalism is often associated with the consumption of deceased relatives in funerary rites driven by affection – a practice known as funerary or mortuary cannibalism . Medicinal cannibalism (also called medical cannibalism ) means "the ingestion of human tissue ... as

664-525: A group of cannibals in West Africa in the 14th century, the Moroccan explorer Ibn Battuta recorded that, according to their preferences, "the tastiest part of women's flesh is the palms and the breast." Centuries later, the anthropologist Percy Amaury Talbot  [ fr ] wrote that, in southern Nigeria , "the parts in greatest favour are the palms of the hands, the fingers and toes, and, of

747-533: A highly mobile population. This matches evidence from the Magdelanian cultures elsewhere in Europe and may suggest that exchange of goods and the sending out of specialised expeditions seeking raw materials may have been practised. Analysis of debitage at occupation sites suggests that flint nodules were reduced in size at source and the lighter blades carried by Creswellian groups as 'toolkits' in order to reduce

830-471: A major part of the grieving process. It has also been explained as a way of guiding the souls of the dead into the bodies of living descendants. In contrast, exocannibalism is the consumption of a person from outside the community. It is frequently "an act of aggression, often in the context of warfare", where the flesh of killed or captured enemies may be eaten to celebrate one's victory over them. Some scholars explain both types of cannibalism as due to

913-545: A member of the enemy faction, which was enough to get her killed by an angry mob. After the others had left, he "cut open the girl's chest ..., dug out her heart, and took it home to enjoy". In a further case that took place in Wuxuan County , likewise in the Guangxi region, three brothers were beaten to death as supposed enemies; afterwards their livers were cut out, baked, and consumed "as medicine". According to

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996-438: A narrow sense), but also " lungs , liver , brain , heart , nervous tissue , bone marrow , genitalia and skin ", as well as kidneys . For a typical adult man, the combined nutritional value of all these edible parts is about 126,000 kilocalories (kcal). The nutritional value of women and younger individuals is lower because of their lower body weight – for example, around 86% of a male adult for an adult woman and 30% for

1079-486: A single cooking pot." Al-Latif notes that, while initially people were shocked by such acts, they "eventually ... grew accustomed, and some conceived such a taste for these detestable meats that they made them their ordinary provender ... The horror people had felt at first vanished entirely". After the end of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), a Chinese writer criticized in his recollections of

1162-489: A specific purpose. The early modern humans who expanded into Europe, commonly referred to as the Cro-Magnons , left many sophisticated stone tools, carved and engraved pieces on bone, ivory and antler , cave paintings and Venus figurines . The Neanderthals continued to use Mousterian stone tool technology and possibly Châtelperronian technology. These tools disappeared from the archeological record at around

1245-462: A supposed medicine or tonic". In contrast to other forms of cannibalism, which Europeans generally frowned upon, the "medicinal ingestion" of various "human body parts was widely practiced throughout Europe from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries", with early records of the practice going back to the first century CE. It was also frequently practised in China . Sacrificial cannibalism refers

1328-558: A treat for the gluttonous." Jean de Léry , who lived for several months among the Tupinambá in Brazil, writes that several of his companions reported "that they had seen not only a number of men and women cut in pieces and grilled on the boucans , but also little unweaned children roasted whole" after a successful attack on an enemy village. According to German ethnologist Leo Frobenius , children captured by Songye slave raiders in

1411-678: A variety of circumstances and for various motives. To adequately express this diversity, Shirley Lindenbaum suggests that "it might be better to talk about 'cannibalisms ' " in the plural. One major distinction is whether cannibal acts are accepted by the culture in which they occur – institutionalized cannibalism – or whether they are merely practised under starvation conditions to ensure one's immediate survival – survival cannibalism – or by isolated individuals considered criminal and often pathological by society at large – cannibalism as psychopathology or "aberrant behavior". Institutionalized cannibalism, sometimes also called "learned cannibalism",

1494-475: A way to convey seasonal behavioural information about hunted animals. Lines (|) and dots (•) were apparently used interchangeably to denote lunar months, while the (Y) sign apparently signified "To give birth". These characters were seemingly combined to convey the breeding period of hunted animals. The climate of the period in Europe saw dramatic changes, and included the Last Glacial Maximum ,

1577-573: A woman, the breast." Regarding the north of the country, his colleague Charles Kingsley Meek added: "Among all the cannibal tribes the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet were considered the tit-bits of the body." Among the Apambia, a cannibalistic clan of the Azande people in Central Africa, palms and soles were considered the best parts of the human body, while their favourite dish

1660-492: A young cannibal who had just participated in a "human barbecue" and told him without hesitation: "It tastes just like chicken. Especially the liver – just the same as chicken." In 2013, during the Syrian civil war , Syrian rebel Abu Sakkar was filmed eating parts of the lung or liver of a government soldier while declaring that "We will eat your hearts and your livers you soldiers of Bashar the dog". Various accounts from around

1743-524: Is "eaten without ceremony (other than culinary), in the same manner as the flesh of any other animal". While the term has been criticized as being too vague to clearly identify a specific type of cannibalism, various records indicate that nutritional or culinary concerns could indeed play a role in such acts even outside of periods of starvation. Referring to the Congo Basin, where many of the eaten were butchered slaves rather than enemies killed in war,

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1826-579: Is a debate among anthropologists on how important functionalist reasons are for the understanding of institutionalized cannibalism. Diamond is not alone in suggesting "that the consumption of human flesh was of nutritional benefit for some populations in New Guinea" and the same case has been made for other "tropical peoples ... exploiting a diverse range of animal foods", including human flesh. The materialist anthropologist Marvin Harris argued that

1909-618: Is also the first monograph about the Upper Paleolithic of Britain at the national level and it remained the only one on the subject for half a century. Garrod suggested that the British variant of the Magdalenian industry is different enough to create a specific name: "I propose tentatively "Creswellian", since Creswell Crags is the station in which it is found in greatest abundance and variety." The definition of Creswellian

1992-598: Is based on a cave lion skeleton found in Seigsdorf, Germany which has hunting lesions. 14,000 BP Fertile Crescent : Europe : Africa : Siberia : The Upper Paleolithic in the Franco-Cantabrian region : Human cannibalism Note: Varies by jurisdiction Note: Varies by jurisdiction Human cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh or internal organs of other human beings. A person who practices cannibalism

2075-582: Is called a cannibal . The meaning of " cannibalism " has been extended into zoology to describe animals consuming parts of individuals of the same species as food. Anatomically modern humans , Neanderthals , and Homo antecessor are known to have practised cannibalism to some extent in the Pleistocene . Cannibalism was occasionally practised in Egypt during ancient and Roman times , as well as later during severe famines. The Island Caribs of

2158-575: Is close to modern explanations. He also pointed out that some acts of Europeans in his own time could be considered as equally barbarous, making his essay " Of Cannibals " ( c.  1580 ) a precursor to later ideas of cultural relativism . Archaeologist James Cole investigated the nutritional value of the human body and found it to be similar to that of animals of similar size. He notes that, according to ethnographic and archaeological records, nearly all edible parts of humans were sometimes eaten – not only skeletal muscle tissue ("flesh" or "meat" in

2241-594: Is dated between 13,000 and 11,800 BP and was followed by the most recent ice age, the Younger Dryas , when Britain was at times unoccupied by humans. The term Creswellian appeared for the first time in 1926 in Dorothy Garrod 's The Upper Palaeolithic Age in Britain . This was the first academic publication by the woman who in 1939 became the first woman ever to be elected as a professor at Cambridge . It

2324-525: Is otherwise clearly rejected. The survivors of the shipwrecks of the Essex and Méduse in the 19th century are said to have engaged in cannibalism, as did the members of Franklin's lost expedition and the Donner Party . Such cases often involve only necro-cannibalism (eating the corpse of someone already dead) as opposed to homicidal cannibalism (killing someone for food). In modern English law,

2407-483: Is probably also the ultimate reason why cannibalism was widespread in traditional New Guinea highland societies", and both in New Zealand and Fiji , cannibals explained their acts as due to a lack of animal meat. In Liberia , a former cannibal argued that it would have been wasteful to let the flesh of killed enemies spoil, and eaters of human flesh in New Guinea and the neighbouring Bismarck Archipelago expressed

2490-524: Is the consumption of human body parts as "an institutionalized practice" generally accepted in the culture where it occurs. By contrast, survival cannibalism means "the consumption of others under conditions of starvation such as shipwreck, military siege, and famine, in which persons normally averse to the idea are driven [to it] by the will to live". Also known as famine cannibalism , such forms of cannibalism resorted to only in situations of extreme necessity have occurred in many cultures where cannibalism

2573-574: Is thought were not colonised by humans until later. Most sites are caves but there is increasing evidence for open air activity and that preferred sources of flint were exploited and that tools travelled distances of up to 100 miles from their sources. Some of the flint at Gough's Cave came from the Vale of Pewsey in Wiltshire whilst non-local seashells and amber from the North Sea coast also indicate

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2656-523: The DSM , presumably because at least serious cases (that lead to murder) are very rare. Within institutionalized cannibalism, exocannibalism is often distinguished from endocannibalism . Endocannibalism refers to the consumption of a person from the same community. Often it is a part of a funerary ceremony, similar to burial or cremation in other cultures. The consumption of the recently deceased in such rites can be considered "an act of affection" and

2739-840: The Balkans , parts of the Iberian Peninsula and areas around the Black Sea . This period saw cultures such as the Solutrean in France and Spain. Human life may have continued on top of the ice sheet, but we know next to nothing about it, and very little about the human life that preceded the European glaciers. In the early part of the period, up to about 30 kya, the Mousterian Pluvial made northern Africa, including

2822-545: The Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), hundreds of incidents of cannibalism occurred, mostly motivated by hatred against supposed "class enemies", but sometimes also by health concerns. In a case recorded by the local authorities, a school teacher in Mengshan County "heard that consuming a 'beauty's heart' could cure disease". He then chose a 13- or 14-year-old student of his and publicly denounced her as

2905-626: The Democratic Republic of the Congo . It was still practised in Papua New Guinea as of 2012, for cultural reasons. Cannibalism has been said to test the bounds of cultural relativism because it challenges anthropologists "to define what is or is not beyond the pale of acceptable human behavior ". A few scholars argue that no firm evidence exists that cannibalism has ever been a socially acceptable practice anywhere in

2988-474: The Lesser Antilles , whose name is the origin of the word cannibal , acquired a long-standing reputation as eaters of human flesh, reconfirmed when their legends were recorded in the 17th century. Some controversy exists over the accuracy of these legends and the prevalence of actual cannibalism in the culture. Cannibalism has been well documented in much of the world, including Fiji (once nicknamed

3071-570: The Middle Paleolithic , until about 50,000 years ago, when there was a marked increase in the diversity of artefacts found associated with modern human remains. This period coincides with the most common date assigned to expansion of modern humans from Africa throughout Asia and Eurasia, which contributed to the extinction of the Neanderthals . The Upper Paleolithic has the earliest known evidence of organized settlements , in

3154-833: The Sahara , well-watered and with lower temperatures than today; after the end of the Pluvial the Sahara became arid. The Last Glacial Maximum was followed by the Allerød oscillation , a warm and moist global interstadial that occurred around 13.5 to 13.8 kya. Then there was a very rapid onset, perhaps within as little as a decade, of the cold and dry Younger Dryas climate period, giving sub-arctic conditions to much of northern Europe. The Preboreal rise in temperatures also began sharply around 10.3 kya, and by its end around 9.0 kya had brought temperatures nearly to present day levels, although

3237-660: The Solomon Islands in the 1980s, anthropologist Michael Krieger met a former cannibal who told him that women's breasts had been considered the best part of the human body because they were so fatty, with fat being a rare and sought delicacy. They were also considered among the best parts in New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago . Based on theoretical considerations, the structuralist anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss suggested that human flesh

3320-629: The Southern New Guinea lowland rain forests , hunting people "was an opportunistic extension of seasonal foraging or pillaging strategies", with human bodies just as welcome as those of animals as sources of protein, according to the anthropologist Bruce M. Knauft. As populations living near coasts and rivers were usually better nourished and hence often physically larger and stronger than those living inland, they "raided inland 'bush' peoples with impunity and often with little fear of retaliation". Cases of human predation are also on record for

3403-439: The fish hook , the oil lamp , rope , and the eyed needle . Fishing of pelagic fish species and navigating the open ocean is evidenced by sites from Timor and Buka ( Solomon Islands ). The changes in human behavior have been attributed to changes in climate, encompassing a number of global temperature drops. These led to a worsening of the already bitter cold of the last glacial period (popularly but incorrectly called

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3486-581: The "Cannibal Isles"), the Amazon Basin , the Congo , and the Māori people of New Zealand. Cannibalism was also practised in New Guinea and in parts of the Solomon Islands , and human flesh was sold at markets in some parts of Melanesia and of the Congo Basin . A form of cannibalism popular in early modern Europe was the consumption of body parts or blood for medical purposes . Reaching its height during

3569-482: The 13th century and their subsequent rule over China during the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), some Mongol fighters practised cannibalism and both European and Chinese observers record a preference for women's breasts, which were considered "delicacies" and, if there were many corpses, sometimes the only part of a female body that was eaten (of men, only the thighs were said to be eaten in such circumstances). After meeting

3652-844: The 17th century, this practice continued in some cases into the second half of the 19th century. Cannibalism has occasionally been practised as a last resort by people suffering from famine . Well-known examples include the ill-fated Donner Party (1846–1847), the Holodomor (1932–1933), and the crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 (1972), after which the survivors ate the bodies of the dead. Additionally, there are cases of people engaging in cannibalism for sexual pleasure, such as Albert Fish , Issei Sagawa , Jeffrey Dahmer , and Armin Meiwes . Cannibalism has been both practised and fiercely condemned in several recent wars, especially in Liberia and

3735-726: The Americas by about 15 ka. In Western Eurasia, the Paleolithic eases into the so-called Epipaleolithic or Mesolithic from the end of the LGM, beginning 15 ka. The Holocene glacial retreat begins 11.7 ka ( 10th millennium BC ), falling well into the Old World Epipaleolithic, and marking the beginning of the earliest forms of farming in the Fertile Crescent . Both Homo erectus and Neanderthals used

3818-452: The Arab physician Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi repeatedly saw "little children, roasted or boiled", offered for sale in baskets on street corners during a heavy famine that started in 1200 CE. Older children and possibly adults were sometimes prepared in the same way. Once he saw "a child nearing the age of puberty, who had been found roasted"; two young people confessed to having killed and cooked

3901-573: The Chinese author Zheng Yi, who researched these events, "the consumption of human liver was mentioned at least fifty or sixty times" in just a small number of archival documents. He talked with a man who had eaten human liver and told him that "barbecued liver is delicious". During a massacre of the Madurese minority in the Indonesian part of Borneo in 1999, reporter Richard Lloyd Parry met

3984-441: The Congo Basin, where cannibalism had been quite widespread and where even in the 1950s travellers were sometimes served a meat dish, learning only afterwards that the meat had been of human origin. The term gastronomic cannibalism has been suggested for cases where human flesh is eaten to "provide a supplement to the regular diet" – thus essentially for its nutritional value – or, in an alternative definition, for cases where it

4067-456: The anthropologist Emil Torday notes that "the most common [reason for cannibalism] was simply gastronomic: the natives loved 'the flesh that speaks' [as human flesh was commonly called] and paid for it". The historian Key Ray Chong observes that, throughout Chinese history, "learned cannibalism was often practiced ... for culinary appreciation". In his popular book Guns, Germs and Steel , Jared Diamond suggests that "protein starvation

4150-452: The cases, with roasting being slightly more common. In contrast to Lévi-Strauss's predictions, boiling was more often used in exocannibalism, while roasting was about equally common for both. Shankman observed that various other "ways of preparing people" were repeatedly employed as well; in one third of all cases, two or more modes were used together (e.g. some bodies or body parts were boiled or baked, while others were roasted). Human flesh

4233-611: The child. Another time, remains were found of a person who had apparently been roasted and served whole, the legs tied like those of "a sheep trussed for cooking". Only the skeleton was found, still undivided and in the trussed position, but "with all the flesh stripped off for food". In some cases children were roasted and offered for sale by their own parents; other victims were street children, who had become very numerous and were often kidnapped and cooked by people looking for food or extra income. The victims were so numerous that sometimes "two or three children, even more, would be found in

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4316-693: The climate was wetter. This period saw the Upper Paleolithic give way to the start of the following Mesolithic cultural period. As the glaciers receded sea levels rose; the English Channel , Irish Sea and North Sea were land at this time, and the Black Sea a fresh-water lake. In particular the Atlantic coastline was initially far out to sea in modern terms in most areas, though the Mediterranean coastline has retreated far less, except in

4399-457: The coldest phase of the last glacial period , which lasted from about 26.5 to 19 kya, being coldest at the end, before relatively rapid warming (all dates vary somewhat for different areas, and in different studies). During the Maximum, most of Northern Europe was covered by an ice-sheet , forcing human populations into the areas known as Last Glacial Maximum refugia , including modern Italy and

4482-919: The consumption of the flesh of victims of human sacrifice , for example among the Aztecs . Human and animal remains excavated in Knossos , Crete , have been interpreted as evidence of a ritual in which children and sheep were sacrificed and eaten together during the Bronze Age . According to Ancient Roman reports, the Celts in Britain practised sacrificial cannibalism, and archaeological evidence backing these claims has by now been found. Infanticidal cannibalism or cannibalistic infanticide refers to cases where newborns or infants are killed because they are "considered unwanted or unfit to live" and then "consumed by

4565-708: The form of campsites, some with storage pits. Artistic work blossomed, with cave painting, petroglyphs , carvings and engravings on bone or ivory. The first evidence of human fishing is also found from a 125,000 years old artefacts in Buya , Eritrea and in other places such as Blombos cave in South Africa . More complex social groupings emerged, supported by more varied and reliable food sources and specialized tool types. This probably contributed to increasing group identification or ethnicity . The peopling of Australia most likely took place before c. 60 ka . Europe

4648-599: The human bones. They also show the signs of the same treatments as the animal bones. These findings were interpreted in the sense of a nutritional cannibalism . However, slight differences from other sites in skull treatment leave open the possibility of elements of ritual cannibalism. Upper Palaeolithic Anatomically modern humans (i.e. Homo sapiens ) are believed to have emerged in Africa around 300,000 years ago. It has been argued by some that their ways of life changed relatively little from that of archaic humans of

4731-445: The last ice age ). Such changes may have reduced the supply of usable timber and forced people to look at other materials. In addition, flint becomes brittle at low temperatures and may not have functioned as a tool. Some notational signs, used next to images of animals, may have appeared as early as the Upper Palaeolithic in Europe circa 35,000 BCE, and may be the earliest proto-writing : several symbols were used in combination as

4814-464: The latter is always considered a crime, even in the most trying circumstances. The case of R v Dudley and Stephens , in which two men were found guilty of murder for killing and eating a cabin boy while adrift at sea in a lifeboat, set the precedent that necessity is no defence to a charge of murder. This decision outlawed and effectively ended the practice of shipwrecked sailors drawing lots in order to determine who would be killed and eaten to prevent

4897-622: The like". Human flesh was also often "cooked into soup " or stewed in cauldrons. Eating human flesh raw was the "least popular" method, but a few cases are on record too. Chong notes that human flesh was typically cooked in the same way as "ordinary foodstuffs for daily consumption" – no principal distinction from the treatment of animal meat is detectable, and nearly any mode of preparation used for animals could also be used for people. Though human corpses, like those of animals, were usually cut into pieces for further processing, reports of people being roasted or baked whole are on record throughout

4980-425: The marketplace" during the Taiping Rebellion in 1850–1864, human hearts became a popular dish, according to some who afterwards freely admitted having consumed them. According to a missionary's report from the brutal suppression of the Dungan Revolt of 1895–1896 in northwestern China, "thousands of men, women and children were ruthlessly massacred by the imperial soldiers" and "many a meal of human hearts and livers

5063-443: The mother, father, both parents or close relatives". Infanticide followed by cannibalism was practised in various regions, but is particularly well documented among Aboriginal Australians . Among animals, such behaviour is called filial cannibalism , and it is common in many species, especially among fish. Human predation is the hunting of people from unrelated and possibly hostile groups in order to eat them. In parts of

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5146-470: The neighbouring Bismarck Archipelago and for Australia . In the Congo Basin, there lived groups such as the Bankutu who hunted humans for food even when game was plentiful. The term innocent cannibalism has been used for cases of people eating human flesh without knowing what they are eating. It is a subject of myths, such as the myth of Thyestes who unknowingly ate the flesh of his own sons. There are also actual cases on record, for example from

5229-431: The north of the Adriatic and the Aegean . The rise in sea levels continued until at least 7.5 kya ( 5500 BC ), so evidence of human activity along Europe's coasts in the Upper Paleolithic is mostly lost, though some traces have been recovered by fishing boats and marine archaeology , especially from Doggerland , the lost area beneath the North Sea. The first direct evidence for Neanderthals hunting cave lions . This

5312-450: The now-discredited theory of humorism for cannibalism was that it was caused by a black acrimonious humor, which, being lodged in the linings of the ventricles of the heart, produced a voracity for human flesh. On the other hand, the French philosopher Michel de Montaigne understood war cannibalism as a way of expressing vengeance and hatred towards one's enemies and celebrating one's victory over them, thus giving an interpretation that

5395-512: The others from starving, a time-honoured practice formerly known as a " custom of the sea ". In other cases, cannibalism is an expression of a psychopathology or mental disorder , condemned by the society in which it occurs and "considered to be an indicator of [a] severe personality disorder or psychosis". Well-known cases include Albert Fish , Issei Sagawa , and Armin Meiwes . Fantasies of cannibalism, whether acted out or not, are not specifically mentioned in manuals of mental disorders such as

5478-404: The period that some Mongol soldiers ate human flesh because of its taste rather than (as had also occurred in other times) merely in cases of necessity. He added that they enjoyed torturing their victims (often children or women, whose flesh was preferred over that of men) by roasting them alive, in "large jars whose outside touched the fire [or] on an iron grate". Other victims were placed "inside

5561-400: The repast" at feasts for chiefs and warriors. The ethnologist Felix Speiser  [ de ] writes: "Apart from the breasts of women and the genitals of men, palms of hands and soles of feet were the most coveted morsels." He knew a chief on Ambae , one of the islands of Vanuatu, who, "according to fairly reliably sources", dined on a young girl's breasts every few days. When visiting

5644-709: The same crude stone tools. Archaeologist Richard G. Klein , who has worked extensively on ancient stone tools, describes the stone tool kit of archaic hominids as impossible to categorize. He argues that almost everywhere, whether Asia , Africa or Europe , before 50,000 years ago all the stone tools are much alike and unsophisticated. Firstly among the artefacts of Africa, archeologists found they could differentiate and classify those of less than 50,000 years into many different categories, such as projectile points, engraving tools, knife blades, and drilling and piercing tools. These new stone-tool types have been described as being distinctly differentiated from each other; each tool had

5727-624: The same sentiment. In many cases, human flesh was also described as particularly delicious, especially when it came from women, children, or both. Such statements are on record for various regions and peoples, including the Aztecs, today's Liberia and Nigeria , the Fang people in west-central Africa, the Congo Basin, China up to the 14th century, Sumatra , Borneo , Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand, Vanuatu , and Fiji. Some Europeans and Americans who ate human flesh accidentally, out of curiosity, or to comply with local customs likewise tended to describe it as very good. There

5810-421: The same time the Neanderthals themselves disappeared from the fossil record, about 40,000 cal BP. Settlements were often located in narrow valley bottoms, possibly associated with hunting of passing herds of animals. Some of them may have been occupied year round, though more commonly they appear to have been used seasonally; people moved between the sites to exploit different food sources at different times of

5893-760: The weight carried. Comparison of flint from Kent's Cavern and Creswell Crags has led some archaeologists to believe that they were made by the same group. Food species eaten by Creswellian hunters focused on the wild horse ( Equus ferus ) or the red deer ( Cervus elaphus ), probably depending on the season, although the Arctic hare , reindeer , mammoth , Saiga antelope , wild cow, brown bear, lynx , Arctic fox and wolf were also exploited. Highly fragmentary fossil bones were found in Gough's Cave at Cheddar. They had marks that suggested actions of skinning, dismembering, defleshing and marrow extraction. The excavations of 1986-1987 noted that human and animal remains were mixed, with no particular distribution or arrangement of

5976-480: The world mention women's breasts as a favourite body part. Also frequently mentioned are the palms of the hands and sometimes the soles of the feet , regardless of the victim's gender. Jerome , in his treatise Against Jovinianus , claimed that the British Attacotti were cannibals who regarded the buttocks of men and the breasts of women as delicacies. During the Mongol invasion of Europe in

6059-551: The world, but such views have been largely rejected as irreconcilable with the actual evidence. The word "cannibal" is derived from Spanish caníbal or caríbal , originally used as a name variant for the Kalinago (Island Caribs), a people from the West Indies said to have eaten human flesh. The older term anthropophagy , meaning "eating humans", is also used for human cannibalism. Cannibalism has been practised under

6142-498: The world. After the Battle of Uhud (625), Hind bint Utba ate (or at least attempted to) the liver of Hamza ibn Abd al-Muttalib , an uncle of Muhammad . At that time, the liver was considered "the seat of life". French Catholics ate livers and hearts of Huguenots at the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572, in some cases also offering them for sale. In China, medical cannibalism

6225-591: The world. At the archaeological site of Herxheim , Germany, more than a thousand people were killed and eaten about 7000 years ago, and the evidence indicates that many of them were spit-roasted whole over open fires. During severe famines in China and Egypt during the 12th and early 13th centuries, there was a black-market trade in corpses of little children that were roasted or boiled whole. In China, human-flesh sellers advertised such corpses as good for being boiled or steamed whole, "including their bones", and praised their particular tenderness. In Cairo , Egypt,

6308-486: The year. Hunting was important, and caribou/wild reindeer "may well be the species of single greatest importance in the entire anthropological literature on hunting". Technological advances included significant developments in flint tool manufacturing, with industries based on fine blades rather than simpler and shorter flakes . Burins and racloirs were used to work bone, antler and hides . Advanced darts and harpoons also appear in this period, along with

6391-732: Was baked in steam on preheated rocks or in earth ovens (a technique widely used in the Pacific), smoked (which allowed to preserve it for later consumption), or eaten raw. While these modes were used in both exo- and endocannibalism, another method that was only used in the latter and only in the Americas was to burn the bones or bodies of deceased relatives and then to consume the bone ash. After analysing numerous accounts from China, Key Ray Chong similarly concludes that "a variety of methods for cooking human flesh" were used in this country. Most popular were " broiling , roasting, boiling and steaming", followed by " pickling in salt, wine, sauce and

6474-459: Was most typically boiled , with roasting also used to prepare the bodies of enemies and other outsiders in exocannibalism , but rarely in funerary endocannibalism (when eating deceased relatives). But an analysis of 60 sufficiently detailed and credible descriptions of institutionalized cannibalism by anthropologist Paul Shankman failed to confirm this hypothesis. Shankman found that roasting and boiling together accounted for only about half of

6557-545: Was partaken of by soldiers", supposedly out of a belief that this would give them "the courage their enemies had displayed". In World War II, Japanese soldiers ate the livers of killed Americans in the Chichijima incident . Many Japanese soldiers who died during the occupation of Jolo Island in the Philippines had their livers eaten by local Moro fighters, according to Japanese soldier Fujioka Akiyoshi. During

6640-487: Was peopled after c. 45 ka. Anatomically modern humans are known to have expanded northward into Siberia as far as the 58th parallel by about 45 ka ( Ust'-Ishim man ). The Upper Paleolithic is divided by the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), from about 25 to 15 ka. The peopling of the Americas occurred during this time, with East and Central Asia populations reaching the Bering land bridge after about 35 ka, and expanding into

6723-659: Was practised over centuries. People voluntarily cut their own body parts, including parts of their livers, and boiled them to cure ailing relatives. Children were sometimes killed because eating their boiled hearts was considered a good way of extending one's life. Emperor Wuzong of Tang supposedly ordered provincial officials to send him "the hearts and livers of fifteen-year-old boys and girls" when he had become seriously ill, hoping in vain this medicine would cure him. Later private individuals sometimes followed his example, paying soldiers who kidnapped preteen children for their kitchen. When "human flesh and organs were sold openly at

6806-471: Was prepared with "fat from a woman's breast", according to the missionary and ethnographer F. Gero. Similar preferences are on record throughout Melanesia . According to the anthropologists Bernard Deacon and Camilla Wedgwood , women were "specially fattened for eating" in Vanuatu , "the breasts being the great delicacy". A missionary confirmed that "a body of a female usually formed the principal part of

6889-501: Was refined since then and now refers exclusively, in the British context, to the Late Magdalenian-style industry. Diagnostic tools used to identify the period include trapezoidal backed blades called Cheddar points, variant forms known as Creswell points, and smaller bladelets . Other tool types include end scrapers made from long, straight blades. A special preparation technique was employed to remove blades from

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