Cannibalism in pre-Columbian America

While there is universal agreement that some Mesoamerican people practiced human sacrifice, there is a lack of scholarly consensus as to whether cannibalism in pre-Columbian America was widespread. At one extreme anthropologist Marvin Harris, author of Cannibals and Kings, has suggested that the flesh of the victims was a part of an aristocratic diet as a reward, since the Aztec diet was lacking in proteins. According to Harris, the Aztec economy would not support feeding them as slaves and the columns of prisoners were "marching meat". At the other extreme, William Arens doubts whether there was ever any systematic cannibalism.

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Aztec cannibalism

The Mexica are perhaps the most widely studied of the ancient Mesoamerican people. While most pre-Columbian historians believe that there was ritual cannibalism related to human sacrifices, they do not support Harris' thesis that human flesh was ever a significant portion of the Aztec diet. Noted scholar Michael D. Coe states that while "it is incontrovertible that some of these victims ended up by being eaten ritually […], the practice was more like a form of communion than a cannibal feast".

There is some documentation of Aztec cannibalism, mainly accounts from the date of the conquest:

Bernal Díaz's account

Bernal Díaz’s The Conquest of New Spain contains several instances of cannibalism among the people the conquistadors encountered during their warring expedition to Tenochtitlan.

eating human meat, just like we take cows from the butcher’s shops, and they have in all towns thick wooden jail-houses, like cages, and in them they put many Indian men, women and boys to fatten, and being fattened they sacrificed and ate them.[3]

Díaz's testimony is corroborated by other Spanish historians who wrote about the conquest. In History of Tlaxcala, Diego Muñoz Camargo states that:

Thus there were public butcher's shops of human flesh, as if it were of cow or sheep.[4]

Controversy

Accounts of the Aztec Empire as a "Cannibal Kingdom", Marvin Harris's expression, have been commonplace from Bernal Díaz to Harris, William H. Prescott and Michael Harner. Harner has accused his colleagues, especially those in Mexico, of downplaying the evidence of Aztec cannibalism. Ortiz de Montellano[5] presents evidence that the Aztec diet was balanced and that the dietary contribution of cannibalism would not have been very effective as a reward. According to skeptics such as James Q. Jacobs, questions remain about whether such evidence exists to the extent that Harner and others claim, and about the veracity of ethnohistorical accounts authors alleging cannibalism considered evidentiary.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Díaz del Castillo [c.1568](1992, p.150).
  2. ^ Díaz del Castillo [c.1568](1992, p.176).
  3. ^ Díaz del Castillo [c.1568](1992, p.579). In the original Spanish: "[...] comer carne humana, así como nosotros traemos vaca de las carnicerías, y tenían en todos los pueblos cárceles de madera gruesa hechas a manera de casas, como jaulas, y en ellas metían a engordar muchas indias e indios y muchachos, y estando gordos los sacrificaban y comían."
  4. ^ Excerpt translated from Muñoz Camargo [c.1585](1947, p.153). In the original Spanish: "Ansí había carnicerías públicas de carne humana, como si fueran de vaca y carnero como en día de hoy las hay […]".
  5. ^ Ortiz de Montellano, B.R. "Aztec Cannibalism: An Ecological Necessity," Science, 200, 611-617.1978

References