Constructing the Cannibal

The May 2013 unearthing of what Nicholas Wade of The New York Times calls “the first physical evidence of cannibalism among the desperate population” at the Jamestown colony site in Virginia demonstrates how pervasive cannibalism becomes when survival depends upon it. According to Wade, archeologists found “cut marks on the skull and skeleton of a 14-year-old girl [that] show that her flesh and brain were removed, presumably to be eaten by the starving colonists during the harsh winter of 1609.” This evidence corroborates written reports from the period and builds on a history of cannibalism among humans and other species.[i] As paleoanthropologist Carole Travis-Henikoff declares, “Few people believe their ancestors practiced cannibalism, and some scholars deny its existence altogether, but the truth is … we all have cannibals in our closets” (23). According to Travis-Henikoff,

Cannibalism is the ingestion of other of one’s own species and is practiced throughout the animal kingdom, from one-celled organisms to humans. The reason for cannibalism’s ubiquitous nature lies in its antiquity. Recent finds of species-specific tooth marks on dinosaur bones prove occurrences of cannibalism dating back to the Mesozoic era” (23).

 

In her Dinner with a Cannibal: The Complete History of Mankind’s Oldest Taboo, Travis-Henikoff offers evidence for multiple types of cannibalism, from the survival cannibalism noted in Jamestown to the medicinal cannibalism of the Inquisition. [ii] As she and others note, cannibalism is celebrated in at least one book and film, Alive (1993), despite the R rating for cannibalism and ulcerative sores. Her work builds on the research of scientists and scholars from multiple fields, substantiating the existence of cannibalism without condemning its practice.

 

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[i] In her Rural Gothic in American Popular Culture chapter, “Going Windigo: Civilisation

and Savagery,” Bernice M. Murphy further explains this history.

[ii] In a May 2012 Smithsonian Magazine article, Maria Dolan suggests a contemporary form of medicinal cannibalism might be the black market in body parts for transplants.