One way to support a hypothesis that the origin, spread, and persistence of the Western cannibalism taboo can be traced along a line leading back to the Ancient Greeks, would be to find a culture with an extensive historical record that existed for millennia without the significant influences of Homer, Herodotus, and the Western writers who followed them.
Among many of the cultures that definitely weren’t reading the Greek mythology (the Aztecs and Caribs come to mind), there is little if any proof as to their definitive stance on cannibalism. While there is a significant body of evidence regarding the Aztec practice of human sacrifice, which was clearly depicted in both carved inscriptions (glyphs) and bark paper books known as codices, there is no such consensus among historians that the Aztecs ever practiced cannibalism, especially on a large scale. And while a few Spaniards present in Mexico during the Aztec conquest provided written accounts of cannibalism, skeptics might question whether sources like “The Anonymous Conquistador” were reliable witnesses. Other tales of Aztec man-eating are similar to the secondhand reports of Carib cannibalism in that most of them were written by men who weren’t present in Mexico until a decade after the Aztec empire had been destroyed—if they were present at all. Since there is no conclusive evidence the cannibalism was practiced by either the Aztecs or Caribs, we need to look elsewhere for a group not influenced by the Ancient Greeks.
Rather than focusing on one of the smaller linguistic groups, like the Wari’ of Brazil or the soon-to-be-discussed Fore of New Guinea, to whom cannibalism was apparently not a taboo, I chose instead to examine a culture with a lengthy, exquisitely detailed, and well-studied history. That culture belongs to the Chinese, and while their enormous country may not have been completely isolated from Western influences, its leaders have been obsessive in maintaining what is apparently the world’s longest unbroken historical record. How, then, did the Chinese deal with cannibalism—historically and in modern times? Are Western-style taboos present and, if not, what, if anything, does that tell us about humans as a species?
There is a general agreement among recent scholars that China has a long history of cannibalism.31 The evidence comes from a range of Chinese classics and dynastic chronicles, as well as an impressive compendium of eyewitness accounts, the latter providing some unsparingly gruesome details about some of the most recent incidents.
In Cannibalism in China (1990), historian and Chinese cannibalism expert Key Ray Chong specified two forms of cannibalism: survival cannibalism, which might occur during a siege or famine; and learned cannibalism, which the author described as, “an institutionalized practice of consuming certain, but not all, parts of the human body.” He went on to describe learned cannibalism as being “publicly and culturally sanctioned,” making it synonymous with the term “cultural cannibalism.”
As we have already seen, survival cannibalism was not unique among the Chinese, but the practice is worth discussing for several reasons—not the least of which was the frequency with which it occurred in China, coupled with a succession of governments whose responses varied from turning a blind eye to something close to official sanction. Perhaps the saddest and most surprising case (and the one with the greatest death toll) actually occurred in the mid-20th century, when starvation and cannibalism were only two aspects of a national calamity of unprecedented scope. It was a tragedy about which, until recently, much has been hidden from most Chinese citizens—and the world.
First, though, Chong’s investigation provided three examples of siege-related cannibalism recorded in Chinese classical literature. The oldest took place during a war between the states of Ch’u and Sung in 594 BCE and occurred in the Sung capital city. It was also notable because it was apparently the first time that starving Chinese began exchanging one another’s children, so that they could be consumed by non-relatives—a practice made permissible by an imperial edict in 205 BCE. The other examples took place in 279 BCE in the besieged cities of Ch’u and Chi-mo, and in 259 BCE in the city of Chao. In the latter instance, soldiers defending a castle reportedly cannibalized servants and concubines, followed by children, women, and men “of low status.”