Today as I was searching for something on the web, my attention caught on an article posted in "How Stuffs Work" ... it is on How Cannibalism Works.
The first thing that comes into our mind whenever we hear the word Cannibalism is eating human flesh. The dictionary explains it as "The practice of eating the flesh of your own kind".
Just for the sake of curiosity I read the first page of the article. It is so fascinating that it has been there from pre-historic days and someway or the other people have been following it - some by means of rituals and others are forced to do so for living.
The article talks about two kind of cannibalism (aka anthropophagy in science):
- Customary anthropophagy - where people practise this out of their interest.
- Survival anthropophagy - where people have no other option but to adapt, for survival.
It is so amazing to know how at different situations people have turned into Survival Anthropophagy just for survival. It reminds me of a movie which I saw sometime back where people survived a plane crash on the high top of mountain and could survive 70 days by forcing themselves to eat people who died in the crash. And also about another documentary in Discovery Channel where they were showing how to survive in extreme situations like if you are deserted in a sea or island.
It was interesting reading to know about lot more facts and history associated with this. If interested please visit : http://history.howstuffworks.com/historians/cannibalism.htm
Anyway, to make it short, what I feel that all these facts proves clearly that we human have a strong presence of animal characteristics within ourselves and we can go to any extent for the sake of self survival. In turn, it also proves Darwin's theory on existing of species - hence leading to the truth that "Man is the most intelligent species in this World".
