Are there really cannibals in the history of China?

Cannibals, cannibals, do exist. For a long time, stories and hearsay in the language have been proved to be facts, and the evidence comes from what the crew saw and heard when Columbus crossed the Pacific Ocean for the second time. The doctor on board mentioned some Arawak prisoners in his family letters and described a story of cannibalism on an island, which is now Guadeloupe.

Some women among the local residents used to be prisoners of islanders. We asked them what kind of islanders they were, and they replied, "Caribbean." When they heard that we hated this evil cannibalism, they were very happy ... They told us that the cruelty of the Caribbean to them was unbelievable. Caribs eat their own children and only raise children born to their own women. All the living male prisoners were taken back and eaten, and those enemies who were killed in the battle were eaten after the battle. They claim that human flesh is so delicious that nothing in the world can compare with it; These are all true, because we found human bones in the house, and we ate all the edible parts, leaving only the parts that were too hard to eat. In one of the houses, we found a man's neck stewed in a pot ... When the Caribbean caught prisoners of war, the boy's reproductive organs were removed to make them fatter, but they wanted to eat a lot, so they killed the boy and ate him because they thought the meat of women and children was not delicious. When we went there, three mutilated boys ran away with us. three

On Columbus's last trip, Cariba in Arawak was mistaken for Caniba, so cannibals and Caribbean originated from the same word.

Since then, there are many similar descriptions. When European expeditions began to spread, reports about cannibals increased greatly. Odysseus met cannibals, or every new discovery recorded by Herodotus, Aristotle, Chopper and Pliny increased the credibility of cannibalism theory. In the Renaissance "human exploration" movement, there are also records of cannibals. In the earliest version of the trip to Visby, the scene of cannibals eating human flesh was also demonstrated with woodcuts. There was once a sympathetic observer who gained first-hand information about cannibalism through his efforts. The Aztecs bought slaves from the market and fattened them up. "This will make the meat of slaves more delicious." Another valley in Mecca is the "enemy buried by human flesh". It is said that the Tupinamba in South America will eat all the enemies. 6 Hans? In Staddon's best-selling novel, he was captured by cannibals around 1550, and the plot of the novel became suffocating and creepy because the feast and sacrificial ceremony of cannibals were postponed repeatedly. His description of the cannibalism ceremony left a deep impression on people. The victim must endure the ridicule of women and light a bonfire himself, and he will be cooked on the fire. People hit him on the head and his brains splashed on the ground. Then the woman.

Peel off his skin completely, make his body very white, and put a piece of wood against his anus, so there will be no loss. Then a man ... cut off his arms and knees. Four women took the cut parts away, ran around the hut and held a party ... The internal organs were preserved by women, who cooked them and made a thick soup called "Minge" for them and their children to drink. They eat the meat in their intestines and heads. The brain, tongue and other edible parts were given to the children. When all this was done, they went home with the meat they got ... I was there and I saw everything with my own eyes. seven

At the end of this century, Theodore? De? In his popular American travel novels, Bray vividly depicts the scenes of cannibals coaxing and roasting people's limbs, and women drinking human blood and eating internal organs. In the17th century, there were not many similar records, because people were very afraid of it, and no new cannibals and cannibalism customs were found. However, in the18th century, as more people met cannibals, Europeans became interested in it again, and philosophers tried to show the nobility of slavery. Europeans imagine that in Ethiopia, a highly civilized Christian country, there are still butchers who specialize in selling human flesh. /kloc-During the North American Indian War in the 0/8th century, a Massachusetts militia was horrified to find that their opponent was bombing the enemy "at the most frightening speed". When ambitious explorers explored the South China Sea, they found more examples of people eating people. In many stories of18th century, cannibals in Melanesia were recorded. They seem to be the most practical tribe: they eat all the captured enemies without wasting anything and grind their bones into needle-stitched canvas. When Captain Cook first met the Maori, they taught him how to take out human bones. His description was questioned in Europe at the cost of killing more people. The record of cannibalism in Fiji is similar to that of European missionaries in1early 9th century. However, due to its huge scale, it has developed into a routine ceremony, which deviates from any cultural significance. "This is not just a terrible revenge," as the Methodist Church asserted in 1836, "but a pure love for human flesh."

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The latest evidence shows that our ancestors were probably cannibals, and cannibalism was widespread in early human society.

Andrew Maevis, a computer expert in the town of rothenburg in central Germany, is a kind and quiet gentleman in the eyes of his neighbors, but in fact, he is a zee-oui. In 2000, he killed and partially ate a man named Juergen B. Meiwes, and filmed the whole process of killing and eating people.

Meiwes's case once again aroused people's shock and curiosity about cannibalism. From hannibal lecter, the "cannibal psychologist" played by Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs, to the cannibal story of 1846 in the 1940s (pioneers in the western United States had to live on the corpses of their companions in hunger and cold), the stories of cannibals were all so sensational. The most allegorical story happened in 1972. The plane of Uruguay Rugby Federation team crashed in a remote area of the Andes, and the players were forced to eat the bodies of their teammates.

In ancient times, people were forced to devour each other in order to survive, which seems to be understood by later generations; Now some people are born bloodthirsty and love to eat human flesh, which is generally attributed to the pathological crime of lunatics. But the latest evidence shows that our ancestors were probably cannibals, and each of us still has traces left by our ancestors.

The bodies of the victims are all over the world.

Although many archaeologists and anthropologists have found that cannibalism did exist in ancient times, most scientists are convinced that cannibalism is only an uncommon feature of prehistoric human society.

However, in recent years, more and more evidence shows that the phenomenon of ancient cannibalism is far more common than we thought. 195 1 year, Edward Gifford, an anthropologist at the University of California, Berkeley, concluded after studying prehistoric Fiji culture: "Apart from fish, people are the vertebrates most often used as human food." People finally focus on two kinds of evidence: one is cannibalism literature discovered by anthropologists and explorers; The second is the evidence of slaughter found in archaeological sites, namely human remains.

British anthropologist Timothy Taylor said that in ancient times, people were addicted to human flesh, sometimes not because of hunger. Some people eat human flesh to show off their cruelty. Some people believe that eating human flesh can cure some diseases, and some people vent their revenge by eating enemy meat with hatred. Taylor also pointed out that we can find archaeological evidence. "Just as we can find that animals are human food from chopped animal bones, we can also find chopped human bones."

The remains left in this way can be found all over the world. For example, Tim White, a paleoanthropologist at the University of California, Berkeley, once unearthed three human skull fossils10.6 million years ago in Ethiopia, which is the oldest Homo sapiens fossil. There are obvious cutting marks on each skull, indicating that it was slaughtered. White also found a 600,000-year-old human skull with the same scar. He said that this is very convincing evidence of cannibalism left by Neanderthals found in France.

The same evidence also appeared in a place called Houck K at the archaeological site in Anasasi, Arizona, USA. As early as the early 1990s, this place has been confirmed to have buried a large number of human remains in the middle of12nd century. These bones have both cutting marks and worn shapes, indicating that they have been cooked for a long time; More importantly, some parts of these vertebrae are selectively missing, which researchers believe is because they have been knocked out. White said: "When you look at prehistoric cultural archives through these phenomena, you will find a lot of evidence that cannibalism has occurred in France, Britain, Mexico and North America."

direct proofs

In recent years, people have found some new evidence. One evidence is that 850 years ago, at least seven people were slaughtered, cooked and eaten in an abandoned Indian village in southwest Colorado today. This shows that before Columbus discovered America, Native Americans had already killed and eaten people.

Thousands of human bones and bone fragments were found in this settlement called "cowboy bath" These human bones are scattered on the floor or piled up in the side room. Further examination revealed that there were incisions in these bones and human blood was found on two stone cutting tools. The researchers also found a cooking pot nearby, and in the ashes of the fire, the researchers also found a pile of human excrement deposits, that is, fecal fossils.

The research team led by Richard Mara, a pathologist at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Denver, USA, suspected that this was the remains of cannibals. They then carried out biochemical experiments on cooking pots and fecal fossils, looking for traces of human myoglobin, a protein only found in skeletal muscle and myocardial cells, which is responsible for storing and transporting oxygen.

The results show that there is human myoglobin in this pot.

The researchers then analyzed the fecal fossils. Under the microscope, these fecal fossils lack starch grains, but have myoglobin, which means that these people have not eaten any plant food for 36 hours, and they may have eaten human flesh.

Scientists have done 39 modern people's control group tests, including some blood samples in stool; And 20 fecal fossil samples from other archaeological sites. As a result, myoglobin was not found in the control group. Because this kind of protein only exists in skeletal muscle and myocardium, once the stool samples show positive results, it means that the Native Americans ate human flesh at that time. This is direct evidence of cannibalism.

Traces of cannibalism have been left on us.

However, all the above evidence together can only show that cannibalism is "many", but it cannot prove that it is a "universal" phenomenon. But now, genetic and biological research has convinced many scientists that eating human flesh was once very common and may even be widely accepted by society at that time. It is chilling that some disease-resistant genes carried by each of us may be inherited from our ancestors who ate human flesh.

In 2003, the Collinge Science Group, led by Simon Meade, published a paper in Science magazine, reporting their research results on a brain disease called Kuru disease, which is prevalent among Frei people in the remote highlands of Papua New Guinea.

Kuru disease is a prion disease, much like mad cow disease and creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which is generally believed to be caused by local people eating human corpses. Frey people have a tradition of eating people since ancient times. It was not until the mid-1950s, when the Australian authorities in charge of Papua New Guinea issued a ban, that Frei people stopped cannibalism. It is said that women and children are more susceptible to kuru disease because they are the main force in the feast of human flesh.

Kolinger's team studied the genetic effects of the disease in Frey population. They found that about three-quarters of Frei women over the age of 50 are genetically resistant to prions, and this ability can only be produced if their ancestors have eaten people for generations.

The really surprising discovery came later: when Kolinger analyzed DNA samples from different races around the world, he found that Frey was not an isolated case, and prion-resistant genes existed in all races. In other words, all people in the world are inherently resistant to prion diseases.

How do we form this resistance? Researchers believe that the most reasonable explanation may be the only explanation for our ancestors' cannibalism, which was widespread in early human society.

Despite more new evidence, it is still hard to believe that our ancestors often ate human flesh. Many people just find it hard to accept this statement. In fact, accepting that our ancestors ate people is no more chilling than believing that cannibalism may be common today. Meiwes told the police after his arrest: "Today, there are about 800 cannibals in Germany." (