15th century Europeans believed they had hit upon a miracle cure: a remedy for epilepsy, hemorrhage, bruising, nausea, and virtually any other medical ailment. This brown powder could be mixed into drinks, made into salves or eaten straight up. It was known as mumia and made by grinding up mummified human flesh.
Evropljani su u 15. veku verovali da su pronašli čudesan lek: sredstvo za epilepsiju, krvarenje, modrice, mučninu i skoro svaki drugi zdravstveni problem. Ovaj smeđi prah se mogao pomešati sa pićem, pretvoriti u melem ili se pojesti bez ičega. Bio je poznat kao mumija i pravljen je mlevenjem mumificiranog ljudskog mesa.
The word "cannibal" dates from the time of Christopher Columbus; in fact, Columbus may even have coined it himself. After coming ashore on the island of Guadaloupe, Columbus' initial reports back to the Queen of Spain described the indigenous people as friendly and peaceful— though he did mention rumors of a group called the Caribs, who made violent raids and then cooked and ate their prisoners. In response, Queen Isabella granted permission to capture and enslave anyone who ate human flesh. When the island failed to produce the gold Columbus was looking for, he began to label anyone who resisted his plundering and kidnapping as a Caribe. Somewhere along the way, the word "Carib" became "Canibe" and then "Cannibal." First used by colonizers to dehumanize indigenous people, it has since been applied to anyone who eats human flesh.
Reč „kanibal“ datira iz vremena Kristofera Kolumba; zapravo, možda ju je skovao sam Kolumbo. Po dolasku na obalu ostrva Gvadalupe, prvi Kolumbovi izveštaji kraljici Španije opisivali su domoroce kao prijateljske i miroljubive, mada je pomenuo glasine o grupi zvanoj Karibi, koji su vršili nasilne napade i zatim kuvali i jeli svoje zatvorenike. Kao odgovor na to, kraljica Izabela je dozvolila da se uhvati i zarobi svako ko jede ljudsko meso. Kada ostrvo nije uspelo da proizvede zlato koje je Kolumbo tražio, počeo je da svakoga ko se opirao pljački i otmici etiketira kao Kariba. Nekako je vremenom reč „Karib“ postala „Kanibe“ i potom „kanibal“. Najpre su je kolonizatori koristili da bi dehumanizovali domoroce, a od tada se upotrebljava za svakog ko jede ljudsko meso.
So the term comes from an account that wasn't based on hard evidence, but cannibalism does have a real and much more complex history. It has taken diverse forms— sometimes, as with mumia, it doesn't involved recognizable parts of the human body. The reasons for cannibalistic practices have varied, too. Across cultures and time periods, there's evidence of survival cannibalism, when people living through a famine, siege or ill-fated expedition had to either eat the bodies of the dead or starve to death themselves. But it's also been quite common for cultures to normalize some form of eating human flesh under ordinary circumstances. Because of false accounts like Columbus's, it's difficult to say exactly how common cultural cannibalism has been— but there are still some examples of accepted cannibalistic practices from within the cultures practicing them.
Dakle, termin proističe iz izveštaja koji nisu zasnovani na čvrstim dokazima, ali kanibalizam ima stvarnu i mnogo složeniju istoriju. Imao je različite oblike - ponekad, kao u slučaju mumije, ne uključuje prepoznatljive delove ljudskog tela. Razlozi kanibalističke prakse takođe su varirali. Kroz razne kulture i vremenske periode, postoje dokazi o kanibalizmu radi preživljavanja, kada su ljudi koji su prolazili kroz glad, opsade ili nesrećne espedicije morali ili da jedu tela mrtvih ili da i sami umru od gladi. Takođe je bilo prilično uobičajeno da neke kulture smatraju da je normalno jesti ljudsko meso u nekom obliku u običnim okolnostima. Zbog lažnih izveštaja kao što je Kolumbov, teško je tačno reći koliko je bio uobičajen kulturološki kanibalizam, ali još uvek postoje neki primeri prihvaćene kanibalističke prakse
Take the medicinal cannibalism in Europe during Columbus's time. Starting in the 15th century, the demand for mumia increased. At first, stolen mummies from Egypt supplied the mumia craze, but soon the demand was too great to be sustained on Egyptian mummies alone, and opportunists stole bodies from European cemeteries to turn into mumia. Use of mumia continued for hundreds of years. It was listed in the Merck index, a popular medical encyclopedia, into the 20th century. And ground up mummies were far from the only remedy made from human flesh that was common throughout Europe. Blood, in either liquid or powdered form, was used to treat epilepsy, while human liver, gall stones, oil distilled from human brains, and pulverized hearts were popular medical concoctions.
unutar kultura koje to upražnjavaju. Uzmimo medicinski kanibalizam u Evropi za vreme Kolumba. Počev od 15. veka, potražnja za mumijom je rasla. U početku su ukradene mumije iz Egipta snabdevale pomamu za mumijom, ali uskoro je potražnja bila prevelika da bi je održale samo egipatske mumije, i oportunisti su krali tela sa grobalja u Evropi da bi ih pretvarali u mumiju. Upotreba mumije trajala je stotinama godina. Navođena je u Merk indeksu, popularnoj medicinskoj enciklopediji, sve do 20. veka. Daleko od toga da su samlevene mumije bile jedini lek od ljudskog tela, a koji je bio uobičajen širom Evrope. Krv je, bilo u tečnom obliku ili u prahu, bila korišćena za lečenje epilepsije, dok su ljudska jetra, kamen u žuči, ulje destilovano iz ljudskog mozga i srca pretvoreni u prah bili popularna medicinska sredstva.
In China, the written record of socially accepted cannibalism goes back almost 2,000 years. One particularly common form of cannibalism appears to have been filial cannibalism, where adult sons and daughters would offer a piece of their own flesh to their parents. This was typically offered as a last-ditch attempt to cure a sick parent, and wasn't fatal to their offspring— it usually involved flesh from the thigh or, less often, a finger.
U Kini, pisani tragovi društveno prihvaćenog kanibalizma sežu još od pre 2000 godina. Posebno čest oblik kanibalizma izgleda da je bio roditeljski kanibalizam, gde bi odrasli sinovi i ćerke nudili deo svog mesa svojim roditeljima. To je obično bio poslednji pokušaj izlečenja bolesnog roditelja i nije bilo smrtonosno za potomke - obično je bilo u pitanju meso sa butine ili, ređe, prst.
Cannibalistic funerary rites are another form of culturally sanctioned cannibalism. Perhaps the best-known example came from the Fore people of New Guinea. Through the mid-20th century, members of the community would, if possible, make their funerary preferences known in advance, sometimes requesting that family members gather to consume the body after death. Tragically, though these rituals honored the deceased, they also spread a deadly disease known as kuru through the community.
Kanibalistički pogrebni obredi su drugi oblik kulturno sankcionisanog kanibalizma. Možda najpoznatiji primer potekao je od naroda Fore sa Nove Gvineje. Sredinom 20. veka, članovi zajednice bi, ukoliko je to moguće, unapred obznanili svoje želje u vezi sa sahranjivanjem, a nekad bi tražili da se članovi porodice okupe i konzumiraju telo nakon smrti. Tragično je to što su ovi rituali, mada su odavali počast preminulom, takođe zajednicom širili smrtonosnu bolest poznatu kao kuru.
Between the fictionalized stories, verifiable practices, and big gaps that still exist in our knowledge, there's no one history of cannibalism. But we do know that people have been eating each other, volunteering themselves to be eaten, and accusing others of eating people for millennia.
Između izmišljenih priča, proverljivih praksi i velikih praznina koje i dalje postoje u našem znanju, ne postoji jedinstvena istorija kanibalizma. Ali znamo da ljudi milenijumima jedu jedni druge, nude sebe za jelo drugima i optužuju druge da jedu ljude.