The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophagy

Dr. Arens' book is brilliant. I read the book during my freshman anthropology class. It is useful for people looking for sources on universal human traits or explring culture versus nature.

Will Rogers said it didn't bother him so much when people lied, but it did bother him when they just KNEW something that wasn't so. The myth of cannibalism is so ingrained among presumably educated people that when William Arens applied the scientific method and found the myth wanting, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. While it is true that during times of starvation, people have been known to eat human flesh, and serial killers like Gilles de Rais, Fritz Haarman and Jeffrey Dahmer have eaten their victims; cannibalism as a socially accepted practice is a racist myth.Like other legends (satanic ritual child abuse in day care centers, UFO abductions, etc), cannibalism stories are always second hand at best. Usually it's a smear by one ethnic or religious group against another from the old Blood Libel claiming Jews drink the blood of Christian babies, to the equally racist belief that Hawaiians like SPAM because it supposedly tastes like human flesh. No group ever claims that THEY eat people. It's always the hated enemy and/ or those slated for destruction. Arens notes how Columbus considered the natives of Hispanola to be the most docile and harmless people on Earth who could be enslaved easily. The Spanish Crown allowed the enslavement of the natives, but only those who ate human flesh. Of course like most peoples, the "Caribs" got rather insolent when Columbus started killing them and stealing their land and PRESTO! -the once peaceful, docile natives turned into vicious cannibals instantly! This gave Columbus and his successors a convenient excuse to rob, rape, murder, and enslave the natives, who became more uppity... This cycle was quite agreeable to those who stood to make money from genocide.If man-eating was socially acceptable, one would think someone could have produced a photograph or videotape since the man-eaters would not have gone to any lengths to hide something they weren't ashamed of. But no such evidence exists for the same reason there's no hard evidence for fire-breathing dragons, one-eyed giants, giant three-headed dogs, unicorns or other creatures from ancient bestiaries. They only exist in overheated imaginations.The reason this book caused such a ruckus when it was released, is not just the fact that it made anthropologists look as disreputable as phrenologists: charlatans, shysters and hucksters practicing a crank pseudo-science. Among the highly educated, it's fashionable to ridicule the bumpkins and yokels for being gullible enough to buy into astrology, creationism and other forms of nonsense. But as W. Arens proved with "The Man-Eating Myth", the intelligencia is just as easily fooled as what Mencken called "the booboise" and that in many cases, "PhD" means "piled high and deep".