Nutritional value of the human body Archaeologist James Cole investigated the nutritional value of the human body and found it to be similar to that of animals of similar size. He notes that, according to ethnographic and archaeological records, nearly all edible parts of humans were sometimes eaten – not only
skeletal muscle tissue ("flesh" or "meat" in a narrow sense), but also "
lungs,
liver,
brain,
heart,
nervous tissue,
bone marrow,
genitalia and
skin", as well as
kidneys. For a typical adult man, the combined nutritional value of all these edible parts is about 126,000
kilocalories (kcal). The nutritional value of women and younger individuals is lower because of their lower body weight – for example, around 86% of a male adult for an adult woman and 30% for a boy aged around 5 or 6. As the daily energy need of an adult man is about 2,400 kilocalories, a dead male body could thus have fed a group of 25 men for a bit more than two days, provided they ate nothing but the human flesh alone – longer if it was part of a mixed diet. The nutritional value of the human body is thus not insubstantial, though Cole notes that for prehistoric hunters, large
megafauna such as
mammoths,
rhinoceros, and
bison would have been an even better deal as long as they were available and could be caught, because of their much higher body weight.
Hearts and livers Cases of people eating human
livers and
hearts, especially of enemies, have been reported from across the world. After the
Battle of Uhud (625),
Hind bint Utba ate (or at least attempted to) the liver of
Hamza ibn Abd al-Muttalib, an uncle of
Muhammad. At that time, the liver was considered "the seat of life". French Catholics ate livers and hearts of
Huguenots at the
St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572, in some cases also offering them for sale. supposedly ate
hearts and
livers of teenagers to cure his illness In China,
medical cannibalism was practised over centuries. People voluntarily cut their own body parts, including parts of their livers, and boiled them to cure ailing relatives. Children were sometimes killed because eating their boiled hearts was considered a good way of extending one's life.
Emperor Wuzong of Tang supposedly ordered provincial officials to send him "the hearts and livers of fifteen-year-old boys and girls" when he had become seriously ill, hoping in vain that this folk "medicine" would cure him. Later, private individuals sometimes followed his example, paying soldiers who kidnapped preteen children for their kitchen. When "human flesh and organs were sold openly at the marketplace" during the
Taiping Rebellion in 1850–1864, human hearts became a popular dish, according to some who afterwards freely admitted having consumed them. According to a missionary's report from the brutal suppression of the
Dungan Revolt of 1895–1896 in northwestern China, "thousands of men, women and children were ruthlessly massacred by the imperial soldiers" and "many a meal of human hearts and livers was partaken of by soldiers", supposedly out of a belief that this would give them "the courage their enemies had displayed". In World War II, Japanese soldiers ate the livers of killed Americans in the
Chichijima incident. Many Japanese soldiers who died during the occupation of
Jolo Island in the
Philippines had their livers eaten by local
Moro fighters, according to Japanese soldier Fujioka Akiyoshi. During the
Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), hundreds of incidents of cannibalism occurred, mostly motivated by hatred against supposed "class enemies", but sometimes also by health concerns. In a case recorded by the local authorities, a school teacher in
Mengshan County "heard that consuming a 'beauty's heart' could cure disease". He then chose a 13- or 14-year-old student of his and publicly denounced her as a member of the enemy faction, which was enough to get her killed by an angry mob. After the others had left, he "cut open the girl's chest ..., dug out her heart, and took it home to enjoy". In a further case that took place in
Wuxuan County, likewise in the
Guangxi region, three brothers were beaten to death as supposed enemies; afterwards their livers were cut out, baked, and consumed "as medicine". According to the Chinese writer
Zheng Yi, who researched these events, "the consumption of human liver was mentioned at least fifty or sixty times" in just a small number of archival documents. He talked with a man who had eaten human liver and told him that "barbecued liver is delicious". During a massacre of the
Madurese minority in the
Indonesian part of
Borneo in 1999, reporter Richard Lloyd Parry met a young cannibal who had just participated in a "human barbecue" and told him without hesitation: "It tastes just like chicken. Especially the liver – just the same as chicken." In 2013, during the
Syrian civil war, Syrian rebel Abu Sakkar was filmed eating parts of the lung or liver of a government soldier while declaring that "We will eat your hearts and your livers you soldiers of
Bashar the dog".
Breasts, palms, and soles Various accounts from around the world mention women's
breasts as a favourite body part. Also frequently mentioned are the
palms of the hands and sometimes the
soles of the feet, regardless of the victim's gender.
Jerome, in his treatise
Against Jovinianus, claimed that the British
Attacotti were cannibals who regarded the
buttocks of men and the breasts of women as delicacies. During the
Mongol invasion of Europe in the 13th century and their subsequent rule over China during the
Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), some
Mongol fighters practised cannibalism and both European and Chinese observers record a preference for women's breasts, which were considered "delicacies" and, if there were many corpses, sometimes the only part of a female body that was eaten (of men, only the
thighs were said to be eaten in such circumstances). After meeting a group of cannibals in West Africa in the 14th century, the Moroccan explorer
Ibn Battuta recorded that, according to their preferences, "the tastiest part of women's flesh is the palms and the breast." Centuries later, the anthropologist wrote that, in southern
Nigeria, "the parts in greatest favour are the palms of the hands, the fingers and toes, and, of a woman, the breast." Regarding the north of the country, his colleague
Charles Kingsley Meek added: "Among all the cannibal tribes the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet were considered the tit-bits of the body." Among the Apambia, a cannibalistic clan of the
Azande people in Central Africa, palms and soles were considered the best parts of the human body, while their favourite dish was prepared with "fat from a woman's breast", according to the missionary and ethnographer F. Gero. Similar preferences are on record throughout
Melanesia. According to the anthropologists
Bernard Deacon and
Camilla Wedgwood, women were "specially fattened for eating" in
Vanuatu, "the breasts being the great delicacy". A missionary confirmed that "a body of a female usually formed the principal part of the repast" at feasts for chiefs and warriors. The ethnologist writes: "Apart from the breasts of women and the genitals of men, palms of hands and soles of feet were the most coveted morsels." He knew a chief on
Ambae, one of the islands of Vanuatu, who, "according to fairly reliably sources", dined on a young girl's breasts every few days. When visiting the
Solomon Islands in the 1980s, anthropologist Michael Krieger met a former cannibal who told him that women's breasts had been considered the best part of the human body because they were so fatty, with fat being a rare and sought delicacy. They were also considered among the best parts in
Fiji,
New Guinea, and the
Bismarck Archipelago.
Modes of preparation Based on theoretical considerations, the
structuralist anthropologist
Claude Lévi-Strauss suggested that human flesh was most typically
boiled, with
roasting also used to prepare the bodies of enemies and other outsiders in
exocannibalism, but rarely in funerary
endocannibalism (when eating deceased relatives). But an analysis of 60 sufficiently detailed and credible descriptions of institutionalized cannibalism by anthropologist Paul Shankman failed to confirm this hypothesis. Shankman found that roasting and boiling together accounted for only about half of the cases, with roasting being slightly more common. In contrast to Lévi-Strauss's predictions, boiling was more often used in exocannibalism, while roasting was about equally common for both. in
New Caledonia, Melanesia Shankman observed that various other "ways of preparing people" were repeatedly employed as well; in one third of all cases, two or more modes were used together (e.g. some bodies or body parts were boiled or baked, while others were roasted). Human flesh was
baked in steam on preheated rocks or in
earth ovens (a technique widely used in the Pacific),
smoked (which allowed to preserve it for later consumption), or eaten raw. While these modes were used in both exo- and endocannibalism, another method that was only used in the latter and only in the Americas was to burn the bones or bodies of deceased relatives and then to consume the bone ash. After analysing numerous accounts from China, Key Ray Chong similarly concludes that "a variety of methods for cooking human flesh" were used in this country. Most popular were "
broiling, roasting, boiling and steaming", followed by "
pickling in salt, wine, sauce and the like". Human flesh was also often "cooked into
soup" or
stewed in cauldrons. Eating human flesh raw was the "least popular" method, but a few cases are on record too. Chong notes that human flesh was typically cooked in the same way as "ordinary foodstuffs for daily consumption" – no principal distinction from the treatment of animal meat is detectable, and nearly any mode of preparation used for animals could also be used for people.
Whole-body roasting and baking Though human corpses, like those of animals, were usually cut into pieces for further processing, reports of people being roasted or baked whole are on record throughout the world. At the
archaeological site of Herxheim, Germany, more than a thousand people were killed and eaten about 7000 years ago, and the evidence indicates that many of them were
spit-roasted whole over open fires. During severe famines in
China and
Egypt during the 12th and early 13th centuries, there was a black-market trade in corpses of little children that were roasted or boiled whole. In China, human-flesh sellers advertised such corpses as good for being boiled or steamed whole, "including their bones", and praised their particular tenderness. In
Cairo, Egypt, the Arab physician
Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi repeatedly saw "little children, roasted or boiled", offered for sale in baskets on street corners during a heavy famine that started in 1200 CE. Older children and possibly adults were sometimes prepared in the same way. Once he saw "a child nearing the age of puberty, who had been found roasted"; two young people confessed to having killed and cooked the child. Another time, remains were found of a person who had apparently been roasted and served whole, the legs tied like those of "a sheep trussed for cooking". Only the skeleton was found, still undivided and in the trussed position, but "with all the flesh stripped off for food". In some cases children were roasted and offered for sale by their own parents; other victims were street children, who had become very numerous and were often kidnapped and cooked by people looking for food or extra income. The victims were so numerous that sometimes "two or three children, even more, would be found in a single cooking pot." Al-Latif notes that, while initially people were shocked by such acts, they "eventually ... grew accustomed, and some conceived such a taste for these detestable meats that they made them their ordinary provender ... The horror people had felt at first vanished entirely". cannibalism from the
Chronica Majora|thumb|left|upright=1.15 After the end of the Mongol-led
Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), a Chinese writer criticized in his recollections of the period that some
Mongol soldiers ate human flesh because of its taste rather than (as had also occurred in other times) merely in cases of necessity. He added that they enjoyed torturing their victims (often children or women, whose flesh was preferred over that of men) by roasting them alive, in "large jars whose outside touched the fire [or] on an iron grate". Other victims were placed "inside a double bag ... which was put into a large pot" and so boiled alive. While not mentioning live roasting or boiling, European authors also complained about cannibalism and cruelty during the
Mongol invasion of Europe, and a drawing in the
Chronica Majora (compiled by
Matthew Paris) shows Mongol fighters spit-roasting a human victim. , who accompanied
Christopher Columbus during his
second voyage, afterwards stated "that he saw there with his own eyes several Indians skewered on spits being roasted over burning coals as a treat for the gluttonous."
Jean de Léry, who lived for several months among the
Tupinambá in Brazil, writes that several of his companions reported "that they had seen not only a number of men and women cut in pieces and grilled on the
boucans, but also little unweaned children roasted whole" after a successful attack on an enemy village. According to German ethnologist
Leo Frobenius, children captured by
Songye slave raiders in the Central African
Kasaï region that were too young to be sold with a profit were instead "skewered on long spears like rats and roasted over a quickly kindled large fire" for consumption by the raiders. In the
Solomon Islands in the 1870s, a British captain saw a "dead body, dressed and cooked whole" offered for sale in a canoe. A settler treated the scene as "an every-day occurrence" and told him "that he had seen as many as twenty bodies lying on the beach, dressed and cooked". Decades later, a missionary reported that whole bodies were still offered "up and down the coast in canoes for sale" after battles, since human flesh was eaten "for pleasure". In Fiji, whole human bodies cooked in earth ovens were served in carefully pre-arranged postures, according to anthropologist
Lorimer Fison and several other sources: in 1869 Within this archipelago, it was especially the
Gau Islanders who "were famous for cooking bodies whole". In
New Caledonia, a missionary named Ta'unga from the
Cook Islands repeatedly saw how whole human bodies were cooked in
earth ovens: "They tie the hands together and bundle them up together with the intestines. The legs are bent up and bound with hibiscus bark. When it is completed they lay the body out flat on its back in the earth oven, then when it is baked ready they cut it up and eat it." Ta'unga commented: "One curious thing is that when a man is alive he has a human appearance, but after he is baked he looks more like a dog, as the lips are shriveled back and his teeth are bared." Among the
Māori in
New Zealand, children captured in war campaigns were sometimes spit-roasted whole (after slitting open their bellies to remove the intestines), as various sources report. Enslaved children, including teenagers, could meet the same fate, and whole babies were sometimes served at the tables of chiefs. In the
Marquesas Islands, captives (preferably women) killed for consumption "were spitted on long poles that entered between their legs and emerged from their mouths" and then roasted whole. Similar customs had a long history: In
Nuku Hiva, the largest of these islands, archaeologists found the partially consumed "remains of a young child" that had been roasted whole in an oven during the 14th century or earlier. While a stereotype of cannibalism depicts the boiling of whole persons – often
missionaries – in giant pots, this does not reflect reality. Human flesh was sometimes boiled in (normal-sized) pots, but whole human bodies rarely were. == Medical aspects ==