Cannibals in the South Pacific wrapped human cuts in leaves and cooked them in a pit. Sumatran cannibals once served criminals with salt and lemon. Perpetrators of the recent spate of cannibalism have each gone for different body parts.
Rudy Eugene, an attacker in Florida, ate his victim's face. A Swedish cannibal went for only the lips, while a Tokyo man reportedly cooked and served his genitals to the highest bidders.
Cannibalistic tribes show a similar diversity. Seabrook's West African cannibals preferred the loin, rump, ribs and palms, which were considered especially tender.
They ate organs, he wrote, but found them indistinguishable from those of other animals. Cannibals in 19th-century Fiji reportedly preferred the heart, thigh and upper arm. Other tribes apparently held the breasts of young women in high esteem. Ritualistic cannibals are sometimes more interested in the symbolic significance of parts than taste. Eating the heart of a brave warrior or the arm muscles of a powerful fighter is thought by some to imbue the eater with the deceased's desirable qualities.
In , Meiwes made an online post hoping to find a "man to slaughter," and found a victim in year-old computer engineer Bernd Brandes. Meiwes said that he'd fantasized about cannibalism ever since he was a child, when he began hoping to have a younger brother who could "be inside him.
In his book Jungle Ways , William Seabrook recounts his travels to West Africa to observe a cannibalistic tribe and admits he ended up going native.
Seabrook thought human tasted so good that you wouldn't know you were eating people unless someone told you:. It was like good, fully developed veal , not young, but not yet beef.
It was very definitely like that, and it was not like any other meat I had ever tasted. It was so nearly like good, fully developed veal that I think no person with a palate of ordinary, normal sensitiveness could distinguish it from veal.
In , a Japanese illustrator named Mao Sugiyama invited anyone who was interested to eat his severed genitals for the sake of art. Sugiyama is asexual and had his penis and testicles surgically removed, and after he got them back from his doctor, he decided that they would make a tasty meal for someone. At a banquet, Sugiyama served the genitals to five people including himself and anyone who attended who wasn't able to gain a seat at the "lucky" table was served a meal consisting of beef and alligator.
According to one of the eaters, the meat was hard and rubbery , and it bent his fork when he tried to pierce it. The testicles were hard on the outside and soft and glutinous in the middle, with a fishy or gamey taste.
In Sugiyama's defense, he's an illustrator, not a chef. While searching for gold in Colorado in , Alfred Packer and his crew ran out of food in the middle of a harsh winter and had to resort to cannibalism to survive. At the end of their trek, only Packer survived, and after he was arrested, he described a horrific series of slayings that makes it seem like human meat is worth ending your friends for.
In his confession, he made sure to note, " The breasts of man After a whirlwind romance and one month of marriage, Omaima Nelson took the life of her husband Bill and dismembered him on Thanksgiving before mixing his excess body parts in with the day's leftovers.
What do you want the reader to take away from reading the book? Certainly that culture is king. Culture dictates what is disgusting and what is a ritual, or even sacred. Already a subscriber? Sign in. Thanks for reading Scientific American. Create your free account or Sign in to continue. See Subscription Options. Go Paperless with Digital.
Recent Articles by Ryan F. Get smart. Sign up for our email newsletter. What with cannibalism being illegal and all, we only really have the unreliable testimonies of murderers and long-dead explorers to go on.
Here are some notable human-eaters' tasting notes:. He reportedly made these comments shortly before being hanged. I had it with Princess croquettes, Brussels sprouts and a green pepper sauce. The flesh tastes like pork, a little bit more bitter, stronger.
0コメント