Practice Of Cannibalism Research Articles

First Mention of Cannibalism in Salamandra Algira (Caudata, Salamandridae) Larvae in Algeria with Some Ecological Notes.

Animal cannibalism is a practice well known to scientists, it consists of partially or entirely eating a living individual of the same species by necessity or by instinct. Although originally thought to be abnormal behavior, it has now been recorded in over 1300 species across a diverse group of taxa, ranging from protists and invertebrates to humans. This type of behavior exists in amphibians in different forms and it is observed in 12 families of toads, 7 families of salamanders and 1 family of gymnophionas (Lissamphibians) and this phenomenon is known in natural populations of Salamandridae larvae. The only representative of this family and genus Salamandra in North Africa is Salamandra algira with five subspecies, of which only one is reported for Algeria (Salamandra algira algira) and cannibalism among Salamandra algira larvae has been described for Morocco at Jbel Tazzeka in the Middle Atlas where gigantism has also been observed in certain larvae whose size can vary from 25 to 74 mm. In this study we report for the first time the practice of cannibalism in Algeria in S.A. algira and we also observed gigantism in some larvae. Regarding salamanders, there is still a lot to do because their distribution and ecology are not well known.

Основные подходы к изучению среднепалеолитических костяных ретушеров

Research in recent years has demonstrated complex Neanderthal activity, comparable to that of anatomically modern humans, in the context of bone tool production, pigments, adhesive compositions and non-utilitarian activities. The most numerous and widespread bone tools in Eurasian and African Middle Paleolithic are retouchers, which have been investigated for more than a century. The paper discusses various research approaches to the study of bone retouchers and the scientific results obtained throughout the history of the study of these tools. Traditionally, retouchers have been perceived by researchers as informal, situationally applied tools for retouching, or shaping various stone tools. Nevertheless, the scientific results obtained in the study of retouchers demonstrate the possibilities of their interpretation as formal tools and often link them to possible ritual activities, including the practice of cannibalism.

NATURAL HISTORY OF THE BLACK IGUANA Ctenosaura similis (SQUAMATA: IGUANIDAE) IN ISLA CONTOY, QUINTANA ROO, MEXICO

The genera Iguanaand Ctenosaurabelong to the Iguanidae family, and populations of most species of these genera have decreased due to anthropogenic effects. The natural history of most species of this family is poorly known, including Ctenosaura similis. Therefore, this study documents some ecological aspects of the species, such as its feeding habits, and habitat and microhabitat use in a population on Isla Contoy in Quintana Roo, Mexico. The data showed that even though C. similisis distributed throughout the island, individuals more commonly use human construction (buildings) of Parque Nacional Isla Contoy (PNIC) and mangrove areas. Microhabitats most used by all age classes and sexes were rocks and trees. The diet of the species is omnivorous; however, the frequency of prey type consumed changes with the age of the individuals (hatchlings, juveniles, and adults), as well as with the season of the year. The practice of cannibalism by some individuals is also reported, as well as coprophagy and scavenging. This work provides general information on the life history of C. similis, complementing the scarce information that is currently available.

Oviposition, Life Cycle, and Longevity of the Leaf-Cutting Ant Acromyrmex rugosus rugosus.

Studies related to the demography of individual members from ant colonies have received little attention, although they are the basis to understanding the population dynamics of colonies. Thus, the objective of this work was to study the queen oviposition rate and the duration of the life cycle and longevity of Acromyrmex rugosus rugosus workers. To determine the oviposition rate, queens from three colonies were individually placed in plastic containers, and the eggs laid were quantified over a 96 h period. The development of the immature forms was observed every 24 h, with which the duration of each stage of development was determined. To verify the longevity of workers, the newly emerged adults were marked and daily observations were made. According to the results, there is variation in the development time of immature forms within the colony itself and between colonies. In addition, the number of eggs deposited was also inconstant in the three colonies, ranging from 5 to 119 eggs per day, while the longevity of workers varied from 3 to 7 months. Occasionally, it was found that the workers feed on the eggs produced by the queen; besides, there was a disappearance of larvae and pupae during the research, indicating a possibility of the practice of cannibalism in this species.

Among the Cannibals : A Review

Paul Raffaele has written a particularly absorbing book about his ethnographic studies to discover the last remaining participants in the enigmatic and disconcerting practice of cannibalism. His research takes him across the globe living with societies from New Guinea to Mexico.

Modeling trophic resource availability for the first human settlers of Europe: The case of Atapuerca TD6

Food resource availability strongly influences the survival opportunities of all organisms. The effect of animal food resource availability on the survival and dispersal of hominin populations is hotly debated. In this article, we present a mathematical model that provides estimations of the maximum and minimum available resources for secondary consumers in a palaeocommunity. This model provides insights into the intensity of competition and the available niche space for hominins in Europe during the early Galerian (1.2–0.8 Ma). Published data from the Atapuerca TD6 assemblage were used in combination with the model to investigate trophic dynamics and resource availability for a Homo antecessor population 800,000 years ago. The effect on our results of the possible presence at Atapuerca of some large carnivores not recorded in the fossil assemblage is also evaluated. Results indicate the existence of a rich ecosystem at Atapuerca at the end of the Early Pleistocene. Secondary production was abundant enough to maintain a hunter–gatherer population and a rich carnivore guild more diverse than that recorded in the TD6 assemblage. Based on these results, the practice of cannibalism by H. antecessor cannot be explained by a long-term scarcity of resources. High food availability at TD6 implies a low to moderate level of competition for resources between carnivores and humans. According to this interpretation, an empty niche for a highly carnivorous omnivore existed in Europe during the early Galerian, and it was successfully exploited by Homo.

Possible relationship of cranial traumatic injuries with violence in the south‐east Iberian Peninsula from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age

The main aim of this study was to analyze the presence and distribution of cranial trauma, as possible evidence of violence, in remains from the Neolithic to Bronze Age from the SE Iberian Peninsula. The sample contains skulls, crania, and cranial vaults belonging to 410 prehistoric individuals. We also studied 267 crania from medieval and modern times for comparative purposes. All lesions in the prehistoric crania are healed and none of them can be attributed to a specific weapon. In all studied populations, injuries were more frequent in adults than in subadults and also in males than in females, denoting a sexual division in the risk of suffering accidents or intentional violence. According to the archeological record, the development of societies in the SE Iberian Peninsula during these periods must have entailed an increase in conflict. However, a high frequency of cranial traumatic injuries was observed in the Neolithic series, theoretically a less conflictive time, and the lowest frequency was in crania from the 3rd millennium B.C. (Copper Age), which is characterized by the archeologists as a period of increasing violence. The relatively large size and the high rate of injuries in Neolithic crania and the practice of cannibalism are strongly suggestive of episodes of interpersonal or intergroup conflict. The number and distribution of injuries in Bronze Age is consistent with the increase in violence at that time described by most archeologists.

Shahzad Bashir. « Shah Isma‘il and the Qizilbash: Cannibalism in the religious history of early Safavid Iran ». History of Religions, Vol. 45/3, 2006, pp. 234-256.

In this article, Shahzad Bashir provides an insightful historiographical reexamination of the practice of cannibalism during the reign of the first Safavid ruler, Shāh Esmā‘īl (r. 1501-1524). The first section of this article reviews the major chronicles and how they chose to report the celebrated incidents of Qizilbāsh anthropophagy. Bashir is quick to identify that this alleged cannibalism was sporadic and rare, and certainly cannot stand as consistent proof of “ritualistic” religious behav...

The Geography of Cannibalism: Specificity in Sixteenth-Century New World Cartography and Literature

There has long been debate about the practice of cannibalism by Amerindians. Many scholars argue that Columbus, Vespucci and the other Europeans that came to the New World used the specter of cannibalism to justify the conquest, enslavement, and death of the indigenous populations. William Arens, in his book, TheMan-Eating Myth, goes further and asserts that the belief that cannibalism was a prevalent Amerindian practice represented the prejudice and racism of the Europeans encountering unknown peoples. Excluding incidents of survival cannibalism, Arens claims that are no credible first-hand accounts of cannibalism.1 I disagree with his assessment of the accounts. Delving into the extant maps, travel logs and literature, I have come to a different understanding of the accounts and, often, graphic imagery of savages roasting and gnawing on human limbs found on, and in, the early primary sources from the Columbian Encounter. Almost all references to cannibalism and the accompanying illustrations in sixteenth-century literature refer to areas of the New World from the Gulf and Mesoamerica to South America. During the first centennial of contact, journals, logs, letters and histories of the Columbian Encounter are replete with commentary about the practice of cannibalism. This literature is geographically specific. The cartography that accompanied the European exploration and mapping of this fourth part of the world is also geographically specific in its depictions of cannibalism. As stated earlier, the preponderance of journals and imagery on maps discussing or illustrating cannibalism respectively, were located in the Lower Antilles, Mesoamerica and South America (especially the northern Gulf region and the interior of Brazil the elbow or bulge). The indigenous people of North America were not literally or graphically depicted as cannibals. I assert that the lack of literary or graphic reference to the indigenous peoples of North America as cannibals is not an omission. It is instead an affirmation that Europeans encountered the practice of cannibalism in specific areas of the New World. The encounters in the Lower Antilles and Mesoamerica were chronicled in accounts by early and the cartography of the first decades of exploration contained labels indicating the presence of cannibals in the Lower Antilles. However, for over a century, the tales of encounters and the vast majority of cartographic depictions of cannibals were located in South America. From initial contact, Columbus began to fuse expectations, myths and reality in his description of the Amerindians. During his first voyage, Columbus interpreted hand signals and facial expressions as a description of a fierce rival tribe, caniba or carib.2 His log entry for 23 November 1492 contained a description of a rival tribe that Columbus extrapolated through the language barrier from the Taino, the gentle Arawak people of first contact. This description referred to another island where there were people on it who had one eye in their foreheads,

Terror, Terrorism, and Horror in Conrad's Heart of Darkness

The paper considers Heart of Darkness as an example of rhetorical counter-terrorism. Conrad's language partly relies of that of the Gothic discourse of horror, especially when horror manifests itself as an entity with teeth \-\- a zone of contact between the individual and the horror which can consume, absorb the individual. In Gothic horror fiction the sites where "terror" and "horror" reached their climax were frequently related to the practice of cannibalism. In Heart of Darkness, Conrad's Marlow points out that the so-called cannibals, identified as such by their fanged teeth, are neither terrifying nor horrifying. The real cannibal, in the figurative sense, is Kurtz, perpetrator and victim of the Belgian colonial terror, whose image, complete with a toothless but voracious mouth, is associated with human heads on posts surrounding his bungalow – a psychological substitute for the severed hands collected by the basketful by Belgian agents. By translating "hands" into "heads," by using the motifs from the well-known discourse of cannibalism to represent the Belgian terror tactic, Conrad provided his readers with an already valorized language, a semiotics for comprehending this particular horror, and a stimulus for a response to it.

From the War on Poverty to "the New Inequality": The Fight for a Living Wage

From the War on Poverty to "the New Inequality":The Fight for a Living Wage Nancy MacLean (bio) Welfare Warriors: The Welfare Rights Movement in the United States. By Premilla Nadasen. New York: Routledge, 2005. 310 pages. $90.00 (cloth). $24.95 (paper). Storming Caesar's Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty. By Annelise Orleck. Boston: Beacon Press, 2005. 368 pages. $29.95 (cloth). Poor Workers' Unions: Rebuilding Labor from Below. By Vanessa Tait. Cambridge: South End Press, 2005. 258 pages. $40.00 (cloth). $20.00 (paper). "Where do we go from here," Martin Luther King Jr. asked fellow Americans forty years ago this year, "chaos or community?" In 1967 the country stood at a crossroads. The civil rights movement had stirred millions to want to right the nation's deepest wrongs, yet, already, the forces of reaction were massing to block change. Americans could "choose the path of materialism," King acknowledged, with its "inseparable twin" of violence, and opt for a "wasteland" at home and "arrogant . . . policing" abroad. Or they could choose community: they could build a sane society that embraced the flourishing of all as its noblest goal, in the recognition of our inescapable connections. To King, the right choice was obvious: "The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization." Surely the United States, the most affluent and technologically accomplished society in human history, could see that "the time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct, and immediate abolition of poverty."1 His call never received a fair hearing. The ongoing debacle in Vietnam, the assassination of King himself the following year, the mounting power of a political right that turned fear of change to political advantage, and the pervasive cynicism that such developments engendered all but extinguished the hope for reconciliation that King had held aloft. [End Page 219] In the forty years since America chose chaos over community, it has amassed the highest levels of inequality in the developed world. For the first time on record, a person working full-time at the minimum wage cannot pay market-rate rent on a one-bedroom apartment anywhere in the United States. At the time of this writing, that wage amounts to $10,700 a year and buys less than at any time since 1955. At the top end of the scissors economy, Wal-Mart's CEO earns more than $3,500 an hour, and Exxon-Mobil's a whopping $13,700. The midcentury trend toward greater equity in resources and well-being produced by union power and New Deal policies has been all but reversed. A growing chorus of activists and social scientists is warning that inequality on this scale threatens not only its obvious victims, but also every element of social justice for which generations of progressive Americans have fought, from public education, to racial fairness and gender equity, to workers' rights and children's nutrition—and democratic governance itself. It may even harm productivity, some economists say, as betrayed American employees discover the folk wisdom of their old Soviet counterparts: "they pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work." A consensus is growing among those paying attention that economic justice is the most urgent issue of our time.2 Three timely new books offer important knowledge for the challenge ahead, as they extend into a new era the exciting revisionist work in labor history, African American history, and women's history that has lifted out of the shadows the class dimension of the long struggles for equality.3 All three authors examine the welfare rights activism that prompted King to speak out about poverty, and two carry the story beyond the defeat of that movement into subsequent struggles for a fairer economy, among them the community development corporations, living wage campaigns, and service worker organizing of recent years. Taken together, these three fine studies point to the dramatic reconstitution of class politics in the United States over the last thirty years, as the civil rights movement and feminism emboldened people long denied any chance at the American...

Genetic Studies in Relation to Kuru: An Overview

Kuru is a subacute neurodegenerative disease presenting with limb ataxia, dysarthria, and a shivering tremor. The disease progress to complete motor and mental incapacity and death within 6 to 24 months. Neuropathologically, a typical pattern of neuronal loss, astrocytic and microglial proliferation, characteristic "kuru-type" amyloid plaques, and PrP deposits in the cerebral cortex and cerebellum are observed. Kuru is the prototype of a group of human transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), or "prion" diseases, that include hereditary, sporadic and infectious forms. The latest member of this group, the variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), linked to transmission of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) to humans, shows features similar to kuru. Kuru has emerged at the beginning of the 1900s in a small indigenous population of New-Guinean Eastern Highlands, reached epidemic proportions in the mid-1950s and disappeared progressively in the latter half of the century to complete absence at the end of the 1990s. Early studies made infection, the first etiologic assumption, seem unlikely and led to a hypothesis that kuru might be a genetically determined or genetically mediated illness. After transmissibility of kuru had been discovered and all major epidemiologic phenomena adequately explained by the spread of an infectious agent with long incubation period through the practice of cannibalism, the pattern of occurrence still continued to suggest a role for genetic predisposition. Recent studies indicate that individuals homozygous for Methionine at a polymorphic position 129 of the prion protein were preferentially affected during the kuru epidemic. The carriers of the alternative 129Met/Val and 129Val/Val genotypes had a longer incubation period and thus developed disease at a later age and at a later stage of the epidemic. Observations made during the kuru epidemic are helpful in the understanding of the current vCJD outbreak, and vice versa clinical and experimental data accumulated in studies of other TSE disorders contribute to better understanding of the documented kuru phenomena.

Herodotus and the cannibals

Herodotus' 5th-century BC Histories provide us with one of the earliest written accounts for the practice of cannibalism. This paper examines the references concerning cannibalism contained in Herodotus, reviews the theories proposed to account for these references, and suggests a new explanation for this cultural motif.

Adaptation of a Ceratitis capitata population Diptera, Tephritidae to an animal protein‐based diet

AbstractA population of Ceratitis capitata (Wiedemann) (Diptera, Tephritidae) reared in the laboratory on a diet based on brewer's yeast (BY) was studied in terms of adaptation to another diet based on cow's meat flour (MF). After a population fed the MF diet was established, the two populations were compared in terms of nutritional values of the diets and sexual choice. The results indicate that there was adaptation of the population to the MF diet, probably by directional selection. Assortative mating between individuals of the two populations was also observed.It is suggested that the capacity of this species to adapt to a diet based on animal protein may be maintained by the occasional practice of cannibalism during periods of competition for food.

A simple model of cannibalism

A simple nonlinear discrete model is derived for the dynamics of a two-age class population consisting of juveniles and adults that includes cannibalism of juveniles by adults. The model is investigated analytically and numerically. It is shown how even this very simple model, by incorporating the negative and positive feedbacks due to cannibalism, can account for several important phenomena concerning the dynamics of cannibalistic populations that have been discussed and studied in the literature. These include the possibilities that the practice of cannibalism can (1) in certain circumstances be a form of self-regulation that promotes stable equilibration, while in other circumstances it can lead to population oscillations; (2) result in a viable population in circumstances when its absence would otherwise result in extinction; and (3) be the source of multiple stable equilibria and hysteresis effects.

Divine Hunger: Cannibalism as a Cultural System.

The practice of cannibalism is in certain cultures rejected as evil, while in others it plays a central part in the ritual order. Anthropologists have offered various explanations for the existence of cannibalism, none of which, Peggy Sanday claims, is adequate. In this book she presents a new approach to understanding the phenomenon. Through a detailed examination of ritual cannibalism in selected tribal societies, and a comparison of those cases with others in which the practice is absent, she shows that cannibalism is closely linked to people's orientation to the world, and that it serves as a concrete device for distinguishing the 'cultural self' from the 'natural other'. Combining perspectives drawn from the work of Ricoeur, Freud, Hegel, and Jung and from symbolic anthropology, Sanday argues that ritual cannibalism is intimately connected both with the constructs by which the origin and continuity of life are understood and assured from one generation to the next and with the way in which that understanding is used to control the vital forces considered necessary for the cannibalism in a culture derives from basic human attitudes toward life and death, combined with the realities of the material world. As well as making an original contribution to the understanding of the significant human practice, Sanday also develops a theoretical argument of wider relevance to anthropologists, sociologists, and other readers interested in the function and meaning of cannibalism.

The Art Market in Southern Oceania

combination of a Qantas excursion fare with a Polynesian Airlines Polypass allowing unlimited access to all their flights between Tahiti and Sydney for a month lured your roving reporter once more to the South Seas. Having previously described the art markets in Easter Island, French Polynesia, and the two Samoas (African Arts, vol. 13, no. 2, 1980, pp. 66-70), and having received some supportive response, I will now try to sketch the cultural situation of each island group we visited and to give some idea of whatever objets de vertu may be available there. As displayed in Adrienne Kaeppler's remarkable show and catalogue 'Artificial Curiosities': An Exposition of Native Manufactures Collected on the Three Pacific Voyages of Captain James at the Bishop Museum in 1978, Captain Cook in the 1770s and other early travelers in this vast empty ocean found objects of astonishing beauty and technical perfection. Polynesian traditional arts were very finely crafted, with tight abstract all-over surface patterns on relatively simple forms-paddles, bowls, panels, ritual tools of hard dark wood, and small sculpture in stone, ivory, and wood-a rich and somber style in keeping with these stern, hierarchical, and repressive societies of kings, priests, commoners, and slaves. Magellan came first in 1520, Quiros and Urdafieta soon after, Tasman in 1642, and Roggeveen in 1722, but not until the arrival of those two remarkable scholars, Captain James Cook and Captain William Bligh, did these islands become known to the Western world. Then came the whalers, the sandalwood traders, the blackbirders looking for slaves for Queensland, Fiji, and the Peruvian Guano Islands, and finally the missionaries. Never was the clash of cultures so total, so fraught with misunderstanding-the very opposite of the Spaniards who recognized in the Aztecs a culture so parallel to theirs as to suggest demonic involvement. To these somber aristocratic Polynesian cultures came ill-educated and imperceptive missionaries from the London Missionary Society, certain of the rightness of their narrow views and the superiority of their culture, and out to civilize Heathen forthwith. These brave but wrong-headed missionaries had one great defense for their cultural depredations: the universal practice of cannibalism among both Polynesians and Melanesians until about 130 years ago. Indeed, the unwary both local and foreign are still today occasionally assigned to the pot in Papua New Guinea. Contrary to the cartoons on the subject, the captives were routinely brained by clubs or rocks, eviscerated, and jointed before being baked in earth ovens known to us from modern Hawaiian tourist luaus. Both sexes and all ages were eaten, and heads and hands were often thrown away. Women were rarely allowed to eat human flesh, long pig-just one more case of sexism. missionaries also found support among the aristocrats, who soon realized the value of supernatural sanctions, not to mention foreign armaments, in holding and extending their power. Today the missionaries are gone, but their ugly and unChristlike view of human nature lives on, prohibiting dancing, most music, jewelry, and alcohol, and limiting the arts and the other good things of life in these innately poor islands. But in spite of social and supernatural sanctions, the drums do beat, the bodies sway, and the elders disappear into the shrubbery on their way home from church to imbibe the local jungle juice made from oranges, bananas, or coconut. Islanders soon learned to be adaptable, and indeed, the pervasive myth of the South Seas manifest from Melville's Typee through Dorothy Lamour films to Blue Lagoon is one of utopia, or as the Fiji tourist ads read, The World Way It Ought To Be. Generally the Polynesian argonauts, with their alleged easy virtue and paradoxically repressed and compulsively tight art styles, get a good press, while the mystical Melanesians, with their bloody mythology and dramatic art styles, get a universally bad press. Before we begin our tour of the islands, an addendum: even though Western Samoa was discussed in a previous report, it may be well here to mention the very fine large kava bowls called tanoa to be found at the Handicraft Corporation on the Beach Road in downtown Apia at $40-$60. ultimate salad bowl, made of very fine dark, hard-grained wood, each is hemispherical in shape and supported by sixteen or more small cylindrical legs around the circular flat rim. Kava, made from the ground and steeped root of the pepper plant, looks and tastes like tepid dishwater in which a styptic pencil has been dissolved. Even so, it has ritual significance, and one is honored to be offered it.

Flesh and Blood, a History of the Cannibal Complex

In Flesh and Blood, Reay Tannahill explores the age-old practice of cannibalism. the author-of previous studies on eating and sex, she takes us on a fascinating historical tour of this darkest of gastronomic compulsions -- including a section on the recent upsurge in cannibalism-themed horror fiction and a study of serial killer cannibals such as Jeffrey Dahmer.At the dawn of man, the consumption of human flesh and blood was a legitimate ritual practiced by ancient Babylonians and Aztecs alike. The recent media focus may have brought cannibalism into the public eye, but the practice has never wholly left society and still echoes in religious traditions such as the Christian Eucharist.Here is a book that is sure to feed into our current fascination with people who eat people.

Neurological diseases in the pacific including recent aetiological observations

A number of discrete foci of neurological disease have been discovered in the Pacific region. They include amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and parkinsonism-dementia in the Mariana Islands, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in the Kii peninsula of Japan and in certain parts of New Guinea, spastic diplegia associated with leprosy in New Caledonia, familial periodic paralysis on Tongariki, deafness and spasticity in children associated with goitre in New Guinea, and kuru in the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea. Genetic mechanisms may in part explain these isolated foci of disease. However, the genes responsible have not always arisen in isolation. In addition, exogenous factors are involved, particularly in kuru where a slow virus infection and the practice of cannibalism contribute to the aetiology. The search for a similar virus in the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis of Guam has so far proved negative. The finding of such disease foci is of importance to the study of the human biology of the Pacific region. Furthermore, aetiological discoveries in these diseases, especially kuru, have wide implications in human disease.

Le Roti et le Bouilli: Levi-Strauss' Theory of Cannibalism

In a recent article entitled “The Culinary Triangle,” Levi-Strauss contends that an analysis of cooking as a language will reveal certain structural oppositions in society. He predicts that the practice of cannibalism, which employs various modes of cooking, will also reveal such oppositions. An examination of Levi-Strauss' argument and a test of his predictions indicate that, owing to theoretical and methodological weaknesses, his ideas on how best to serve our fellow man will be of little use to either cannibals or anthropologists.