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Cannibalism, apart from instances of famine, has rarely been motivated by hunger. More often, it carries significant cultural or symbolic meaning, ranging from the medicine-makers of Europe to indigenous tribes of the New World and even infamous figures like Armin Meiwes. Surprisingly, many of the peoples that Europeans encountered in the Americas after 1492 did not practice cannibalism.
Spanish soldiers were instructed—initially by Queen Isabella of Spain and later by the Pope—to either enslave or subdue the cannibals of the Americas or any infidels resisting conversion. While tribal cannibalism certainly occurred, the cannibalistic horrors found in the so-called 'civilized world' were, at times, just as terrifying.
10. The True Cannibals Were the Europeans
It’s a fact. From the Middle Ages to the late Victorian period, Europeans consumed nearly every part of the human body as a form of medicine. For most people in the era of Shakespeare or Charles II, the real question wasn’t ‘Should you eat human flesh for medicinal purposes?’ but ‘Which person should you eat for medicine?’ It began with Egyptian mummies, and the trade in human remains started in the fifteenth century. When supplies of Egyptian mummies dwindled in the seventeenth century and Egyptian authorities cracked down on tomb robbing, certain merchants in North Africa resorted to baking lepers, beggars, or even camels into ‘counterfeit mummies’ to meet ongoing demand.
By this time, scientific practices favored fresh flesh. A 1609 recipe instructed to ‘select the body of a red man, whole, unblemished, about twenty-four years old, having been hanged, broken on a wheel, or stabbed through, and exposed to the open air for a day and night during fair weather.’ The flesh should be chopped into small pieces, sprinkled with powdered myrrh and aloes, and soaked in wine. It should then be ‘left to dry in the air’ until it becomes ‘like smoked flesh’ and ‘odorless.’
Among those consuming or using various forms of corpse medicine were Emperor Francis I, Queen Elizabeth I’s physician John Banister, King Charles II, chemist Robert Boyle, physician and pioneering neuroscientist Thomas Willis, as well as many aristocratic ladies and gentlemen. For the impoverished, fresh blood was the solution: it was supposedly consumed during beheadings in Austria, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden (though some wonder if this is merely myth or exaggeration). This practice is thought to have occurred from around 1500 to 1866, especially among those with epilepsy. In Britain, people were surreptitiously acquiring skulls for medicinal purposes well into the Victorian era.
9. The Tragedy of Famine Cannibalism
This was a grim reality in Europe until at least the 18th century. Following the Reformation, the primary cause was the large-scale slaughter that occurred during numerous wars. In 1590, with Paris under siege by Henri of Navarre, an emergency famine committee sanctioned the production of bread made from bones collected from the charnel house of the Holy Innocents Cemetery. It was available by mid-August, though those who consumed it reportedly perished.
In late 1636, in the village of Steinhaus, Germany, a woman supposedly lured a twelve-year-old girl and a five-year-old boy into her home, killed them both, and ate them with her neighbor. In Heidelberg around the same time, men were said to have ‘dug up corpses from graves and…eaten them,’ while a woman was found dead with a roasted man’s head by her side and a man’s rib in her mouth. Piero Camporesi recounts how, during the conflict in Picardy, the Jesuit G.S. Menochio witnessed several people driven to madness by hunger, ‘eating their own arms and hands before dying in despair.’
8. The French Explorer Who Likely Preferred the Company of Cannibals
In the 1550s, the French explorer Jean de Léry spent time with the Tupinamba cannibals in Brazil. However, when he returned to France, he likely longed for the brutal yet familiar life among the cannibals. Beginning on August 24, 1572, the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in Paris resulted in the deaths of possibly 5,000 Protestants, murdered by Catholics. Soon after, Léry witnessed a French Protestant being executed by Catholics in Auxerre. Not only was the man ritually killed, but his heart was ‘ripped out, chopped into pieces, auctioned, cooked on a grill, and eaten with much delight.’ Though it's plausible that Léry exaggerated this last detail to defend his point, given the extent to which people will go to justify their beliefs.
But that wasn’t all. In 1573, Léry found himself in war-torn Sancerre, where the city endured a devastating siege and severe famine. Frank Lestringant recounts how, in one famished family, a small girl died. Soon after, the grandmother convinced the parents to consume their child. The grandmother was later sentenced to death. Having witnessed cannibalism in Brazil, Léry was confronted with the butchered body of the dead girl. At that moment, his body involuntarily reacted, and he vomited at the horrific sight.
7. Warring Christians Were Reportedly Consuming Each Other
In December 1572, during the Spanish sack of the Dutch city of Naarden in Holland, around a hundred citizens trying to flee into the snow-covered fields were captured by Spanish soldiers, stripped naked, and left to freeze to death. During this ordeal, the invading soldiers, ‘becoming increasingly deranged as the gruesome actions continued,’ were said to have ‘slashed the veins of some victims and drank their blood as if it were wine.’
In his remarkably progressive essay 'On Cannibals,' the brilliant French philosopher Michel de Montaigne argued that consuming a living person was far more barbaric than eating the flesh of the dead. He pointed out that during that time, humans had read about and witnessed people being roasted alive, ‘bitten and gnawed by dogs and pigs,’ all while the victim was fully conscious. What made this even more horrifying was that such acts weren’t committed by bitter enemies, but by neighbors and fellow citizens—often justified under the guise of piety and religion.
In April 1655, Catholic troops massacred Protestants in the Piedmontese valleys. A high-ranking French soldier, Monsieur du Petit Bourg, later revealed the shocking acts of the soldiers, including consuming boiled human brains, deceiving their comrades into eating ‘tripe’ that was actually the breasts and genitals of one of the Protestant victims, and roasting a young girl alive on a pike. When Daniel Cardon of Roccappiata was killed, the soldiers eagerly fried and devoured his brains. They also removed his heart, intending to fry it as well, but were interrupted when ‘some of the poor people’s troops…came upon them.’
6. Much of the So-Called 'Savage Cannibalism' of the Americas Was Entirely Voluntary
Many of the Christian accounts of 'savage cannibalism,' often filled with gruesome imagery, focused on violent forms of man-eating—known as exo-cannibalism. However, a significant portion of tribal cannibalism was peaceful and consensual. One such example is funerary cannibalism (or endo-cannibalism), where a tribe would consume their deceased as an act of mourning. These practices were deeply ceremonial, religious, and performed with solemnity.
This is vividly demonstrated in the accounts of Brazilian Wari’ cannibalism, as described by anthropologist Beth Conklin. Wari’ funeral cannibalism continued into the 1960s before being suppressed by Christian missionaries. The consumption of the dead was part of a highly ritualistic and somber ceremony: the corpse would be painted with red annatto, and the cooking firewood would be adorned with vulture and macaw feathers. Mourners would sing, and the deceased's house would be burned in a symbolic act of mourning.
In this case, the act was far beyond mere hunger. When a tribal elder passed away, the extended mourning period meant that by the time the body was consumed, the flesh would likely have already started to rot. Despite this, mourners would force themselves to eat this decayed flesh, sometimes even vomiting, but they did so as a sign of reverence for the deceased’s spirit. Interestingly, the Wari’ were horrified by the Christian burial tradition, viewing the act of burying a body in cold, damp earth as both disrespectful and polluting.
5. Like the Mafia or Academics, Savage Cannibals Only Killed Their Own
When it came to exo-cannibalism, this violent man-eating was carried out against rival tribes, fueling a heightened animosity and aggression. Through the observations of the daring French explorer André Thevet, we learn how deeply ritualistic and sacred this form of cannibalism was. The Tupinamba tribe would gather everyone together for a feast of the captured enemy. After the victim was beaten to death and roasted, each tribe member would partake in the meal, leaving nothing but a cleanly picked skeleton hours later. But the fascinating part was that this captive had lived with the tribe for an entire year, even having a house, a wife, and children. The child, like the father, would also be consumed. This ritual was about “incorporation,” where the captive was absorbed into the victors’ tribe both symbolically and literally.
In addition, Peggy Reeves Sanday highlighted the intricate social and religious nature of Tupinamba rituals. The aggressive participants in the ritual could be seen at one point ‘howling with fury,’ their eyes burning with rage, but then, in a surprising twist, Jesuits observing the scene noted how the torturers’ faces displayed ‘gentleness and humanity’ toward their victim. The ceremony itself was highly controlled and drawn out, with the victim being revived intermittently to ensure that death didn’t come too soon.
Though enduring pain and fatigue beyond the limits of human endurance, the victim would cooperate throughout the ordeal. This was not only because of his shared religious beliefs with his torturers but also because of the extraordinary courage he needed to display. Aware that he was being observed by the sun god after his dawn tortures, the victim's bravery was considered a crucial part of the ritual.
4. Chinese Cannibalism (I): How much do you love your mother-in-law?
Remarkably, China had examples of both consensual and violent cannibalism that persisted until quite recently. Daniel Korn, Mark Radice, and Charlie Hawes explain that for centuries, filial piety practices called ko ku and ko kan involved a daughter-in-law providing cannibalistic care to her elderly, sick in-laws. In the case of ko ku, the donor would carefully slice a piece from their upper arm or thigh and add it to soup, which miraculously healed the recipient.
Ko kan, however, was far more extreme. The donor would open their abdomen, carefully locate their liver, and remove a portion to feed the ailing in-law. Thanks to the liver’s impressive regenerative abilities, the donor might have been able to survive the procedure. The recipient was never informed that they were eating anything other than regular food.
3. Cannibal Myths
As we've seen, one of the greatest distortions of the past 500 years has been the portrayal of “savage cannibals” by those who, in Europe, were engaging in cannibalism on an industrial scale. This tendency to vilify indigenous peoples prompted historian William Arens to argue that no tribe had ever practiced cannibalism—a view that, while well-meaning, has since been largely debunked.
What is also intriguing is how cannibalism became a kind of vortex, pulling in other shocking behaviors and phenomena. In 1688, we hear about the Chirihuana, a Peruvian group who not only consumed their enemies but supposedly “went naked and promiscuously engaged in sexual relations without regard to sisters, daughters, or mothers.” However, the Chirihuana held just as much disdain for the Spanish viceroy, Francisco de Toledo. When he was forced to flee the region, being carried in a litter by Spaniards and Indians, the Chirihuana jeered and shouted curses, saying, ‘throw down that old woman from her basket, that we may eat her alive.’
Even more chilling is the story (told by Francis Bacon and others) that during the French siege of Naples in 1494, some “wicked merchants” preserved human flesh (from those recently slain in Barbary) in barrels and sold it as tuna.
2. And the Prize for the Nastiest Cannibals in the World Goes to…
Here are two strong contenders. The French author César Rochefort, writing in the seventeenth century, claimed that the people of the ‘Country of Antis’ in South America were more savage than tigers. When consuming a ‘person of quality,’
These ruthless people would strip their victim and bind him naked to a post, where they would slash and cut his body. Instead of immediately dismembering him, they would remove flesh from the fattier parts, such as the calves, thighs, buttocks, and arms. Once this was done, everyone—men, women, and children—would smear themselves with the blood of the unfortunate soul. Without waiting for the flesh to roast or boil, they would consume it ravenously, swallowing it without chewing. Thus, the victim watched in horror as he was devoured alive and became food for his enemies’ bellies.
Even in this brutal practice, there was a certain level of honor involved—only individuals of high status were subjected to the most horrific treatment, and they were given respect by the Antis as long as they remained silent throughout their suffering.
In the race for the most notorious cannibals, the Solomon Islands might claim the top spot. Earle Labor vividly recounts the time Jack London and his wife, Charmian, spent there in the summer of 1908. A little over a century ago, some Solomon Islanders were still engaged in cannibalism, viewing humans not through a religious or ritualistic lens, but as food. One recipe for ‘long pig,’ as Labor describes, involved ‘breaking the bones and crushing the joints of victims… then staking them, still alive, up to their necks in running water, often for days, until they were tender enough to cook.’
1. Chinese Cannibalism (II): How much do you hate your class enemies?
As for exo-cannibalism? Hawes explains that during the violent Cultural Revolution in China in the late 1960s, the hatred for class enemies reached a shocking level of intensity in a remarkably short time. One chilling example occurred at a school in Wuxuan Province, where students turned on their teachers. The Head of the Chinese Department, Wu Shufang, was labeled a class enemy and beaten to death. Another teacher was forced to cut out Shufang’s liver, which was then cooked over an open fire in the schoolyard. Before long, the smell of students cooking their teachers filled the yard.
In another horrific episode, a young man, the son of a former landlord, was tortured and attacked. Barely alive, he was bound to a telegraph pole and dragged to the river. There, his stomach was cut open and his liver removed. The liver was still so hot that they had to pour river water into the cavity to cool it. Once again, the liver of the landlord’s son became a ‘revolutionary feast’ for the villagers. It’s estimated that around 10,000 people took part in these acts of cannibalism, consuming up to 100 victims. These internal secrets, fiercely kept for years, were disclosed by Zheng Yi, a former Red Guard member, now living in permanent exile as a result.
