That's the Christian go-to to justify evangelizing tribes. Been done for 500 years now to great effect - complete destruction of said peoples and cultures!
Talk to a christian about how colonialism and capitalism took people who were indigenous and living dignified if precarious lives and then genocided them, took their land, and turned the survivors into wage slaves when they previously were able to sustain themselves.... and they will say without hesitation that it was worth it because now they know about Jesus.
A lot of indigenous economies were doing just fine and provided everyone involved with ample calories and nutrition. In a very serious way the only advantages the Europeans had in much of the world prior to the industrial revolution was ironmongery and a willingness to send as many poor people as it took to subjugate, enslave, and destroy other nations.
Also during the Crusades and just in warfare in general, because when all the crops are burned for miles and you're out of food you're not going to let that meat go to waste
Kuru is similar to mad cow disease, which is how I heard about it. Went down an internet rabbit trail when mad cow disease was in the news and the word "kuru" got burned into my brain because the word sounds cool and it describes a disease with some truly horrible symptoms. The disease was present among people groups in Papua New Guinea. Ritual cannibalism, as I recall, was a way of honoring the dead. So it wasn't some kind of vengeance or conquering thing like it's been depicted in the stereotypical "explorer with pith helmet in giant cauldron over a fire" image. It was more of a tender way to take a loved one's body into your own after death . Unfortunately, consuming the dead relative also meant that you consumed the prions, and you might develop the debilitating disease.
Mad cow disease, scrapie in sheep, and chronic wasting disease in north American deer are all prion disorders.
Mad cow disease was famously spread due to sick and dead cows being ground up and fed to healthy cows.
Prions are notoriously hard to destroy. They generally aren't rendered inert or safe by cooking or other processes so even cooked meat can spread the illness to healthy animals.
Chronic Wasting Disease is causing serious problems in the north American deer population as deer shed infectious prions as they feed, rest, or where they die. These prions are extremely hardy and can persist in then environment for months or years. Since natural predators are wiped out across most of the deer's range, and hunting practices are far from sufficient to cull the herd size, the disease is essentially spreading uncontrolled due to high population density bringing infected deer in contact with uninfected deer. The solution, of course, is to un-fence America and restore the wolf population but try to sell that in congress.
Yeah, seriously. Prion diseases are so scary to me, and the thought of Chronic Wasting Disease spreading throughout such a numerous animal as deer is completely terrifying. Wolf reintroduction is clearly the right choice, but I don't have much hope. It's wild the number of diseases that run rampant because humans upset the balance of the ecosystem. Just a couple months ago I was randomly reading about the extinct passengers pigeons that were so numerous that they used to blot out the sky. Turns out there's a theory that the reason why Lyme disease has become so rampant is because the massive population of pigeons used to compete with rodents for the same food, so now the rodent population is much larger than it used to be, and thus Lyme disease flourishes.
Kuru is a prion disease of human brain tissue. Prions are proteins that are incorrectly folded. They cause adjacent proteins to fold incorrectly, turning them in to new prions. The disease progresses slowly but eventually causes severe cognitive problems and death.
Kuru is endemic to the Fore people of Papua New Guinea. They have a funerary practice of eating the bodies of deceased community members. The practice has important religious and spiritual significance to them. Unfortunately, at some point in the past a member of the Fore spontaneously developed this prion disorder and their practice of funerary cannibalism provided a vector for it to spread in the community and become endemic.
It's really very tragic. The very practice that people used to honor their deceased loved ones and protect the community from spiritual dangers turned out to be the vector for a deadly disease that almost wiped them out.
Edit: Apparently there are scholars that argue that dismemberment of the body was practiced during funerary rights, but cannibalism was not, and that the spread of Kuru might have occurred during a specific period of famine when cannibalism was practiced out of desperation.
Sort of maybe in some places yes. If I recall, there's some evidence beyond the anecdotal (i.e. mistranslations or one tribe just slagging off the tribe that lives just up the river) that some cultures practised ritual cannibalism as part of funeral rites. Like a lot of anthropology though, it suffers somewhat due to a lot of the research being done by people who had a very entrenched mindest and viewpoint not conducting particulalry rigorous science.
I can't remember any details because my classes were so long ago, but I think there are like one or two cases of cultures that actually hunt and eat people deliberately, and I'm almost certain that it was tied to warfare practices and largely intended as a form of terrorism aimed at their military enemies. And again, it's so rare that there are only a few cases, even if I'm remembering this right.
deleted by creator
That's the Christian go-to to justify evangelizing tribes. Been done for 500 years now to great effect - complete destruction of said peoples and cultures!
Talk to a christian about how colonialism and capitalism took people who were indigenous and living dignified if precarious lives and then genocided them, took their land, and turned the survivors into wage slaves when they previously were able to sustain themselves.... and they will say without hesitation that it was worth it because now they know about Jesus.
A lot of indigenous economies were doing just fine and provided everyone involved with ample calories and nutrition. In a very serious way the only advantages the Europeans had in much of the world prior to the industrial revolution was ironmongery and a willingness to send as many poor people as it took to subjugate, enslave, and destroy other nations.
Are cannibals actually real (you know, besides cannibalism done out of desperation or individual people such as Jeffrey Dahmer or Armin Meiwes)?
Yes, and they're white people.
I shit you not Anglos literally ATE a lot of mummies that they pillaged
When they first tried to conquer parts of what is now the US, they resorted to cannibalism when crops failed.
So much for the civilized, noble, master race we're all supposed to look up to.
Also, cannibalism was super common among European sailors during the colonisation of the Americas.
Also during the Crusades and just in warfare in general, because when all the crops are burned for miles and you're out of food you're not going to let that meat go to waste
Ritual cannibalism is real (see: Kuru).
What's kuru? And why is my racism detector going haywire?
Kuru is similar to mad cow disease, which is how I heard about it. Went down an internet rabbit trail when mad cow disease was in the news and the word "kuru" got burned into my brain because the word sounds cool and it describes a disease with some truly horrible symptoms. The disease was present among people groups in Papua New Guinea. Ritual cannibalism, as I recall, was a way of honoring the dead. So it wasn't some kind of vengeance or conquering thing like it's been depicted in the stereotypical "explorer with pith helmet in giant cauldron over a fire" image. It was more of a tender way to take a loved one's body into your own after death . Unfortunately, consuming the dead relative also meant that you consumed the prions, and you might develop the debilitating disease.
Mad cow disease, scrapie in sheep, and chronic wasting disease in north American deer are all prion disorders.
Mad cow disease was famously spread due to sick and dead cows being ground up and fed to healthy cows.
Prions are notoriously hard to destroy. They generally aren't rendered inert or safe by cooking or other processes so even cooked meat can spread the illness to healthy animals.
Chronic Wasting Disease is causing serious problems in the north American deer population as deer shed infectious prions as they feed, rest, or where they die. These prions are extremely hardy and can persist in then environment for months or years. Since natural predators are wiped out across most of the deer's range, and hunting practices are far from sufficient to cull the herd size, the disease is essentially spreading uncontrolled due to high population density bringing infected deer in contact with uninfected deer. The solution, of course, is to un-fence America and restore the wolf population but try to sell that in congress.
Yeah, seriously. Prion diseases are so scary to me, and the thought of Chronic Wasting Disease spreading throughout such a numerous animal as deer is completely terrifying. Wolf reintroduction is clearly the right choice, but I don't have much hope. It's wild the number of diseases that run rampant because humans upset the balance of the ecosystem. Just a couple months ago I was randomly reading about the extinct passengers pigeons that were so numerous that they used to blot out the sky. Turns out there's a theory that the reason why Lyme disease has become so rampant is because the massive population of pigeons used to compete with rodents for the same food, so now the rodent population is much larger than it used to be, and thus Lyme disease flourishes.
Kuru is a prion disease of human brain tissue. Prions are proteins that are incorrectly folded. They cause adjacent proteins to fold incorrectly, turning them in to new prions. The disease progresses slowly but eventually causes severe cognitive problems and death.
Kuru is endemic to the Fore people of Papua New Guinea. They have a funerary practice of eating the bodies of deceased community members. The practice has important religious and spiritual significance to them. Unfortunately, at some point in the past a member of the Fore spontaneously developed this prion disorder and their practice of funerary cannibalism provided a vector for it to spread in the community and become endemic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fore_people#Kuru_among_the_South_Fore
It's really very tragic. The very practice that people used to honor their deceased loved ones and protect the community from spiritual dangers turned out to be the vector for a deadly disease that almost wiped them out.
Edit: Apparently there are scholars that argue that dismemberment of the body was practiced during funerary rights, but cannibalism was not, and that the spread of Kuru might have occurred during a specific period of famine when cannibalism was practiced out of desperation.
Sort of maybe in some places yes. If I recall, there's some evidence beyond the anecdotal (i.e. mistranslations or one tribe just slagging off the tribe that lives just up the river) that some cultures practised ritual cannibalism as part of funeral rites. Like a lot of anthropology though, it suffers somewhat due to a lot of the research being done by people who had a very entrenched mindest and viewpoint not conducting particulalry rigorous science.
I can't remember any details because my classes were so long ago, but I think there are like one or two cases of cultures that actually hunt and eat people deliberately, and I'm almost certain that it was tied to warfare practices and largely intended as a form of terrorism aimed at their military enemies. And again, it's so rare that there are only a few cases, even if I'm remembering this right.