page_title: The Man-Eating Myth
section_title: Synopsis
hierarchical_section_title: The Man-Eating Myth / Synopsis
caption_attribution_description: English: Hans Staden woodcut of Brazilian natives from his work "Hans Staden: The True History of his Captivity" Original Text Accompanying: Tupinamba portrayed in cannibalistic feast observed by Staden (orig.1557).
context_page_description: The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophagy is an influential anthropological study of socially sanctioned cultural cannibalism across the world, which casts a critical perspective on the existence of such practices. It was authored by the American anthropologist William Arens of Stony Brook University, New York, and first published by Oxford University Press in 1979.
  Arens' primary hypothesis is that despite claims made by western explorers and anthropologists since the 15th century, there is no firm, substantiable evidence for the socially accepted practice of cannibalism anywhere in the world, at any time in history. Dismissing claims of cultural cannibalism made against the Carib and Aztec peoples by invading Spanish colonialists, he tackles 19th and 20th century claims regarding socially acceptable cannibalism in Sub-Saharan Africa and New Guinea. Turning to prehistory, he critiques archaeological claims to have discovered evidence for such practices in Europe and North America. In the second half of the work, Arens puts forward his argument that an erroneous belief in "others" who commit socially sanctioned cannibalism is a global phenomenon.
context_section_description: In chapter one, "The Nature of Anthropology and Anthropophagy", Arens discusses the study of anthropophagy, or cannibalism, within the anthropological discipline. Noting that anthropologists have widely taken it for granted that there are societies who socially sanction cannibalism, he nevertheless states that there is no "adequate documentation" for such practices anywhere in the world. In the second part of the chapter, he explores several first-hand accounts of cannibalism and highlights their implausible and inaccurate nature. Beginning with the German Hans Staden's claims to have encountered socially sanctioned cannibalism among the Tupinambá people of South America in the 1550s, Arens illustrates a number of logical contradictions in Staden's account, and highlights the dubious nature of the text. The anthropologist then moved on to the 19th-century accounts of widespread socially approved cannibalism among the Polynesian people of Rarotonga in the Cook Islands provided by Ta'unga, a Polynesian native who had been converted to Christianity and wrote for the London Missionary Society; Arens again highlights a number of inconsistencies and logical impossibilities in Ta'unga's claims.
  The second chapter, entitled "The Classic Man-Eaters", explores the accounts of cannibalism produced by European colonialists and travellers in the Americas during the Early Modern era. It begins by documenting the Spanish interaction with the Carib people of the Lesser Antilles, first begun by Christopher Columbus and his men in the 1490s. Columbus noted that the Caribs had been described as cannibals by the neighbouring Arawak people of the West Indies, but was initially sceptical about such claims himself. Arens highlights that it was only later, when Columbus began to oversee largescale colonization and pacification of Carib lands, that he began to assert that they were cannibals, in order to legitimize his cause. Arens then proceeds to note that the Spanish government only permitted the enslavement of cannibals in the Caribbean, leading European colonists to increasingly label the indigenous peoples as cannibalistic in order to increase their economic power. Following on from this, Arens goes on to critique the longstanding claims that the Aztec people of Mexico were cannibals; noting that while the early Spanish accounts of the Aztecs include first-hand descriptions of human sacrifice, he highlights that none of these Spanish observers actually witnessed cannibalism, despite the claims that were later made asserting the cannibalistic nature of Aztec religion. In contrast, Arens argues that the Aztecs found the idea of cannibalism – even in survival conditions – socially reprehensible, and believed that some of their neighbouring peoples were guilty of it.
  Chapter three, "The Contemporary Man-Eaters" explores the claims made for socially sanctioned cannibalism in the 20th century, with a particular focus on Sub-Saharan Africa and New Guinea. Regarding the former, Arens discusses E. E. Evans-Pritchard's work in disproving that the Azande people were cannibalistic, before arguing that the stories of socially accepted cannibalism in the "Dark Continent" were based largely on misunderstandings and the sensationalist claims of European travellers like Henry Morton Stanley, and that there was no reputable first-hand accounts of such a practice anywhere in Africa. Instead, he notes that many African societies found cannibalism to be a reprehensible anti-social activity that was associated with witchcraft, drawing comparisons with the Early Modern European witch hunt. Moving on to look at claims for cannibalism in New Guinea made by anthropologists like Margaret Mead and Ronald Berndt, he notes that none of them ever actually came across any evidence of the practice themselves, before going on to critique claims that cannibalism was the cause of the kuru outbreak among the New Guinean Fore people in the mid 20th century.
  In the fourth chapter, entitled "The Prehistoric World of Anthropophagy", Arens deals with archaeological arguments for s
caption: Original 1557 Hans Staden woodcut of the Tupinambá portrayed in a cannibalistic feast; Arens argued that the whole scenario was invented by Staden with no basis in reality.
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