🚀 go-pugleaf

michelle r. tribe wrote:
> 
> Steve Barnard (steve@megafauna.com) wrote:
> 
> > These prions are disease organisms that can hardly be said to be alive.
> > They aren't even as advanced as viruses, not by a long shot.  They also
> > cause "scabies" in sheep and are known to cause a brain disease in
> > cannabilistic human societies.
> 
> Science has  has never, ever proven a cannabilistic human society to have
> existed.  There are theories and sketchy evidence, but nothing to prove it
> "beyond a shadow of a doubt."
> 
> ---
> Michelle R. Tribe
> http://chat.carleton.ca/~mrtribe
> 
> "There are times when you have
> to choose between being human
> and having good taste."
>               --Bertolt Brecht

For the life of me I don't know what this topic has to do with most of 
the cross-posted newsgroups, but no one is complaining yet, so here 
goes.

I don't have access to primary anthopological sources, so I can't give 
any authoritative cites for contemporary cannibalism (yet).  I can, 
however, cite a primary source for an important and well-known 
historical case: the Aztec civilization encountered by the Spanish 
Conquistadors.

Bernardino de Sahagun, whom Marvin Harris calls "the most fundamental 
and scrupulously honest source on Aztec religion, writes in the Genreal 
History of the Things of New Spain:

"After having torn their hearts from them and poured the blood into a 
gourd vessel, which the master of the slain man himself received, they 
started the body rolling down the pyramid steps.  It came to rest upon a 
small square below.  There some old men, whom they called Quaquacuitlan, 
laid hold of it and carried it to their tribal temple, where they 
dismembered it and divided it up in order to eat it."

Another primary source, Diego Duran, writes:

"Once the heart had been wrenched out it was offered to the sun and 
blood sprinkled toward the solar diety.  Initiating the descent of the 
sun in the west the corpse was toppled down the steps of the pyramid.  
After the sacrifice the warriors celebrated a great feast with much 
dancing, ceremonial, and cannibaism."

Now you might suppose that the Spanish were so eager to say the worst of 
the Aztecs that they made up the cannibalism stuff.  However, the Aztecs 
practiced ritual human sacrifice on such a massive scale -- a fact that 
is undisputed -- that the Spanish hardly had any reason to color their 
stories. 

	Steve Barnard