Cannibalism and the experience of survival

Last June, a plane crashed in a remote, inaccessible area of the Chilean Andes. Nine survivors were eventually rescued after four days without food and temperatures below zero degrees. What did they eat? They survived thanks to grass, milk powder and biscuits from the plane. The day before they were rescued, they were completely exhausted and without any strength to carry on living. A question came to my mind when comparing this episode with the one that happened in 1972, where another airplane crashed into the Andes (the real-life plane crash that inspired the book and movie entitled ‘Alive’). In this case, the survivors were exposed to the extreme cold of the night air and by the tenth day in the Andes, their food supplies had run out. Their only means of survival then became to eat the human flesh of their fallen friends. Cannibalism saved them in their fight for life.

The question I asked myself when thinking about this issue was the following one. In which societies, or in which ‘life or death’ scenarios, does cannibalism become perceived as a socially accepted practice? According to research, there is little evidence that cannibalism has ever been practiced as a routine source of nutrition. It is generally agreed that the custom usually carried a special meaning, often related to social rituals, for its practitioners, or else it has occasionally been necessary for survival in extreme cases, like that of the 1972 plane crash. Cannibalism has been associated with famine and has been occasionally practiced as a last resort by people suffering from starvation. There are some allegations that cannibalism was widespread during the famine of Ukraine in the 1930s and also during World War II, when Japanese troops are said to have practiced cannibalism in the Pacific theatre.

I wondered if I could find some more information on IBSS specifically about ‘survival’, cannibalism and famine, so I searched using the keywords of ‘cannibalism’, ‘nutrition’ and ‘food’ and came across a comment for the article ‘The limited nutritional value of Cannibalism’ (1971) by Mark E. Randal, which exposes the nutritional value of human flesh and the human body as a nutrient source based on pure biological criteria, stating that cannibalism is valid only as an emergency supply of protein and not as a regular source. Interestingly enough, however, I also found on IBSS an anthropological article, ‘Feasting on people: eating animals and humans in Amazonia’ (2007) by Carlos Fausto, which emphasised the lack of distinctions made between humans and animals in some Amazonian societies. If people are animals, how can one distinguish between everyday eating and cannibalism? So humans are treated like animals and their flesh is consumed as part of their diet. In this case, obviously, the nutritional value of cannibalism takes on the same significance as that of any other protein source.

On the other hand a third article, “Consommation d’aliments immondes et cannibalisme de survie dans l’Occident du Haut Moyen Age” (1984) by Pierre Bonassie, seems to suggest that the consumption of human flesh is separated from that of other animals by concerns of both ethics and taste (the title promotes this implicit judgement of cannibalism as wrong and distasteful by linking it to other “aliments immondes” – vile, hideous, almost ‘immoral’ foodstuffs). According to Bonassie, there is evidence that cannibalism has been practiced throughout history in Western societies as a means of surviving famine and starvation, yet this repeated cannibalism has not resulted in a relaxing of the taboos surrounding the consumption of human flesh, which remains one of the ‘aliments immondes’ described by the writer. However, like other major social taboos, cannibalism has been projected upon and used to define the savage ‘Other’. For example during the colonisation of the Caribbean islands in the fifteen and sixteenth centuries, the linguistic coincidence between ‘Canib’ and ‘Carib’ led the Spanish to portray the indigenous peoples as savage ‘man-eaters’ and ‘cannibals’.

In another search, this time using ‘cannibalism’ and ‘survival’ as keywords, I came across an interesting mixture of anthropological and sociological articles on examples of how the discourse on ’savage cannibalism could turn inward in the right situations. To give an example, the article “Man-eating and menace on Richard Hore’s expedition to America” (2005) by Philip Levy describes how Richard Hore’s 1536 New World expedition brought a group of sailors and thirty five wealthy ‘tourists’ to the Labrador coast, where near-starvation allegedly drove them to cannibalism. Also the article, “Alfred Packer’s world: risk, responsibility, and the place of experience in mountain culture 1873-1907″ (2006) by Diana Stefano, tells the story of Alfred Packer, a prospector and mountain guide who appeared at the Los Pinos Indian Agency in South West Colorado. He declared that all his comrades had died, and near starvation had forced him to eat their flesh.

In conclusion, the articles that my searches brought up seem to suggest that the practice of anthropophagy, or the consumption of human flesh for sustenance, has been common in many societies throughout history. Discourses surrounding this subject have however been distorted by accusations of ‘savage cannibalism’ against other societies and questions of taboo and immorality that continue to make this a controversial, but very interesting, area of research.