Have you ever been curious about cannibalism? Well, I’ve got a Ted-Ed lesson to share with you today that dives into the complex history of cannibalism.
The video comes to us from biology professor Bill Schutt and maybe there’s a good chance that it might ruin your appetite. There’s something about people eating the flesh of other people that has captured the twisted imagination of some people.
15th century Europeans believed they had hit upon a miracle cure: a remedy for epilepsy, hemorrhage, bruising, nausea and virtually any other medical ailment. It was a brown powder known as “mumia,” and was made by grinding up mummified human flesh. But just how common is human cannibalism, and how do cultures partake in it? Bill Schutt explores the complex history of cannibalism.
First used by colonizers to dehumanize indigenous people, it has since been applied to anyone who eats human flesh. 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. …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.
Check out the video below and enjoy the history of cannibalism!