Cannibalism and Its Complexity of Form
Anthropologists distinguish between endocannibalism, eating a member of one's own social group, and exocannibalism, eating a member of some other group, frequently an enemy. Endocannibalism is most often associated with funerals or other mortuary rites and with themes of sacrifice, familial devotion, reincarnation, and regeneration, as well as group welfare, reproduction, and continuity. Exocannibalism commonly signifies domination, revenge, or destruction of enemies. The distinction between exo- and endocannibalism has limited value in describing the complex forms in which people have ingested human body substances.
The symbolism of the sacrifice and consumption of human offerings pervades religious thought in European and Middle Eastern traditions; this symbolism is explored by Walter Burkert in Homo Necans (1983). Cannibalism is a common theme in mythology and folk tales (see Lévi-Strauss, 1969) and, as a practice, it has been reported in Europe, Polynesia, Melanesia, North and South America, and Africa (see Tannahill, 1975; Sanday, 1986; Gordon-Grube, 1988). The occurrences have no simple correlation with patterns of subsistence, ecology, food supply, or other cultural conditions.
In popular imagination and in psychoanalytic analyses such as that of Eli Sagan (1974), cannibalism has commonly been seen as characteristic of primitive communities and magical thought rather than civilization and religion.
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