Away for the weekend for Dave's work, we went out for a group dinner last night not long after I finished reading Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History, and as one does, I steered the conversation around to the topic of cannibalism – even as we nibbled our artisanal pizzas – and I held the group in thrall with a couple of the anecdotes I had gleaned from this book. We returned to the hotel and someone suggested we play the game Table Talk. The first question was, “If you were cremated, what would you want done with your ashes?” and I was the first to reply with, “I'd want to be snorted by Keith Richards”, getting a huge laugh. Thanks Bill Schutt: this may not have been the most valuable pop science book I've ever read, but I learned just enough to add to my social capital.
Bill Schutt is a zoologist (Biology Professor at LIU Post and researcher at the Museum of Natural History), so when he decided to investigate the history and prevalence of human cannibalism, he started by looking at the animal world; arguing that what's natural in the wild must be natural for us, too. He approached the topic thinking that cannibalism is rare in nature (it's not), and was surprised to find that those famous animal cannibals (from Black Widow Spiders and Praying Mantises to the Global Warming-affected Polar Bears who are seen eating their own cubs) have actually been misunderstood. What I found most interesting in the animal sections are the variety of ways in which different species have evolved to become cannibals (from spadefoot toad tadpoles, some percentage of which will have carnivorous teeth and guts to munch on their omnivorous siblings, to the African caecilian, the brooding mother of which will rapidly regrow her epidermis for its young to peel and eat “like a grape”), and while I found these stories to be fascinating, they rather undermine Schutt's initial point: since humans haven't evolved any cannibal-specific features, it's hard to compare what's “natural” (beyond making the point that just about any animals, when overcrowded and starved, will resort to eating each other).
When Schutt turns to humans, he discusses the first allusions to cannibalism in Western writing (which is there right from the start in Homer and Herodotus; which was especially interesting to me as the last book I read included the myth of Thyestes being tricked into eating his own sons), and through Shakespeare and the Brothers Grimm, right up to Cormac McCarthy and The Walking Dead, we in the West have always thought of cannibalism as particularly unnatural (reinforced by the Judeo-Christian belief in keeping the body whole for the Resurrection). This paved the way for Christopher Columbus to justify enslaving the Caribbean people he encountered after misinterpreting (or lying about) their funerary rites; and this set the tone for all of European colonisation. Contrasted with this is thousands of years of Chinese writings in which cannibalism has been seen as acceptable: necessary in times of war and famine; an epicurean curiosity; a matter of filial duty in which people have always been happy to cut off pieces of themselves to feed their elders. What's ironic is the West's long history of using human body parts as medicine (from drinking the blood of a hanged man to ingesting ground up mummy dust) and not considering this cannibalism.
Schutt examines the famous stories of human cannibalism – Was it really that prevalent in the South Pacific? What really happened with the Donner Party or the Siege of Leningrad? Why is it becoming trendy for women to eat their placentas after giving birth? – and ends with a very long section on the similarities between kuru and Mad Cow Disease, and while I didn't find this part that interesting, I was surprised to learn that the science behind these diseases hasn't been settled (apparently, it was never about prions). Ultimately, Schutt concludes that we're heading towards a Soylent Green future.
So, that's the what, and as for the how: Schutt attempts a jokey-accessible tone (like Mary Roach or Sarah Vowell), and I don't know if he really pulls it off. An early example of the jokes, while discussing that spadefoot toad tadpole:
It was evident that the jaw muscles were significantly enlarged in the cannibals, especially the jaw-closing levator madibulae, whose bulging appearance reminded me of a kid with six pieces of Dubble Bubble jammed into each cheek (a dangerous behavior I only rarely attempt anymore).Is that lame joke worth the change in tone? I also didn't really like the way that Schutt mocks some interview subjects on the page. While talking with Dr. William Arens – an Anthropologist who made a stir in the 70s by declaring that all stories of “social” cannibalism in “primitive societies” are inventions of Western researchers – Schutt writes that he's listening politely to the man while thinking, “Yeah right”. Schutt does the same thing throughout the chapter about the woman who promotes placenta-eating – first underlining the hilarity of her having ten kids, and then mentally correctly her as she shares with him what she understands to be the scientific benefits of placenta-eating (can you believe she thought the main research was done on mice when they used rats?)
Ultimately, this is what I learned: Cannibalism is pretty common in nature, and under starvation conditions, it's something we're
