Europe

Europe has a history of cannibalism.

Europe has the oldest fossil evidence of cannibalism. Archaeologists in 1991 found 100,000 year old Neanderthal and animal remains and stone tools in a cave in France. There were six individual skeletons. The Neanderthal remains had butcher marks. The animal remains had the same butcher marks. The archaeologists concluded the Neanderthal and animal corpses were stripped of flesh and marrow with stone tools. The flesh and marrow were eaten by the butchers.

Archaeologists in 1994 found 50,000 year old Neanderthal remains in a cave called El Sidrón in Spain. There were 12 individual skeletons: three men, three women, three adolescent, three children. Genetic tests showed they may have been related. The remains had butcher marks. There were stone tools nearby. The archaeologists concluded the same as those in France.

It is still debated why Neanderthals ate each other. The archaeologists in France gave survival, pathology, or religion as possible motives. The archaeologists in Spain gave crime and punishment: perhaps the family trespassed on hostile territory.

Cannibalism might explain the disappearance of the Neanderthals. Archaeologist Fernando Rozzi says that modern humans ate the Neanderthals. Rozzi found a jaw bone in 2009 with butcher markings and missing teeth. Rozzi says the jawbone was dressed the same way as an animal carcass in the Stone Age. The jaw bone was stripped of flesh with stone tools. Rozzi says the teeth were made into a necklace. The Neanderthals disappeared 30,000 years ago at the time modern humans appeared in Europe and Africa. Rozzi presents the jawbone as evidence that modern humans in Europe killed and ate Neanderthals and took their remains as trophies.

The crusaders were cannibals. Accounts of the siege of Ma'ara in 1098 tell of Christians eating Muslims.

Chronicler Radulp of Caen wrote in 1107:

Chronicler Fulcher of Chartres wrote:

The accounts give different motives. Some tell of "wicked banquets" by famine and without military approval. Others tell of military approval for psychological fear tactics.

Europeans were disturbed. Cannibalism did not fit the European self-image. Europeans depicted cultural enemies as cannibals and monsters. The depictions demonized those conquered in territorial expansions like the Crusades. Witches, Jews, savages, Orientals, pagans ate people; not Europeans.

Cannibalism nonetheless became prominent during the Renaissance. Renaissance scholar Marsillo Ficino recommended human blood as a catholicon and the elderly to suck blood from a healthy young person. The same belief was held by Roman physician Celsus 2000 years before. Celsus recommended his patients drink wounded gadiators' blood.

Spain and Europe used medicinal cannibalims. The Inquisition executed heretics from the 11th to 18th century. Executions were public events. Epileptics went to executions to pay for a bowl of "red." Europeans believed human blood cured siezures.

Apothecaries sold mummies. The Muslims dug mummies from Egyptian pyramids and shipped them to Europe with rumors that they cured illness. French King Francis I "always carried [mummified flesh] in his purse, fearing no accident, if he had but a little of that by him.” Francis Bacon wrote, "mummy has great force in staunching of blood.” The shipments stopped in the 14th century. But Euroeans still wanted mummies. Beggar and camel flesh made for counterfeits. Pharmacists began to cure dead bodies. Pharmacists cured dead bodies like a ham. Gourmands cured dead bodies in vats of honey and herbs.

English physician Robert James writes in the Pharmacopoeia Universalis (1741):

Fresh corpses became more popular.

Swiss-German Renaissance physician Paracelsus wrote:

German physician Johann Schoeder recommended

The Europeans believed strong and young flesh cured weak flesh. Europeans ate dead soldiers. Europeans ate virgins. The English particularly preferred female virgins for their menstrual blood. Europeans ate hanged men. Hanging snapped men's necks and severed the vasoconstrictive nerves and the men had erections. Erections are virile symbols in androcentric society. Europeans ate hanged men for their sexual powers.

Europeans believed skulls staunched bleeding and human fat cured rheumatism and arthritis and corpse paste cured contusions. Pope Innocent VIII drank boy's blood on his deathbed in 1492; he died. Preacher John Keogh recommended a "dram in the morning" of pulverized human heart "on an empty stomach" to cure dizziness. Keogh died in 1754. King Charles II bought the distilled human skull recipe for £6,000. Charles distilled human skulls in his own laboratory and used it on his death bed in 1685. Queen Mary used the same recipe on her death bed in 1689. Charles popularized the recipe. Europeans called it "King's Drops."

Some Protestants substituted human flesh for the Eucharist. Some monks cooked a marmalade from the blood of the dead: "stir it to a batter with a knife…pound it…through a sieve of finest silk."

The human parts the Europeans ate healed that part of the body. Blood heals blood diseases, brains heal head pains; rub fat on a gash, put usnea (skull moss) in nostrils for nosebleeds. It was logical.

Europeans believed that dead things kept their spirits. The spirit linked body and soul according

to European physiology. Blood carried a dead thing's spirit in potent form. Consuming a thing's corpse transferred its leftover vitality to the consumer.

Leonardo da Vinci said:

16th century engraving by Theodor de Bry depicts Spaniards eating executed thieves.

Moula-Guercy in France where archaeologists found 100,000 year old evidence of cannibalism.

El Sidrón in Spain where Archaeologist found 50,000 year old evidence of cannibalism

Some people said that, constrained by the lack of food, they boiled pagan adults in cooking-pots, impaled children on spits and devoured them grilled.

I shudder to tell that many of our people, harassed by the madness of excessive hunger, cut pieces from the buttocks of the Saracens already dead there, which they cooked, but when it was not yet roasted enough by the fire, they devoured it with savage mouth.

Depiction of Black Death in Europe (1347-1350). Europeans believed cannibalism cured illness.

Charles I's execution in 1649. Attendees collect his blood.

If doctors were aware of the power of [fresh corpses], no body would be left on the gibbet for more than three days.

the cadaver of a reddish man (because in such a man the blood is believed lighter and so the flesh is better), whole, fresh without blemish, of around twenty-four years of age, dead of a violent death (not of illness), exposed to the moon's rays for one day and night... [treated so that] it comes to resemble smoke-cured meat, without any stench.

We preserve our life with the death of others. In a dead thing insensate life remains which, when it is reunited with the stomachs of the living, regains sensitive and intellectual life.

Mummy resolves coagulated Blood, and is said to be effectual in purging the Head, against pungent Pains of the Spleen, a Cough, Inflation of the Body, Obstructions of the [Menstrual Cycle], and other uterine [Afflictions]: outwardly, it is of service in consolidating Wounds. The Skin is recommended in difficult Labors, and [hysterics], and for a Withering and Contractions of the Joints. The Fat strengthens, [diffuses], eases Pains, cures Contractions, mollifies the Hardness of [Scars], and fill up the Pitts left by Measles. The Bones dried, [diffuse], afringe, stop all sorts of Fluxes, and are therefore useful in a Catarrh, Flux of the [Menstrual Cycle], Dysentary, and Lientary, and mitigate Pains of the Joints. The Marrow is highly recommended for Contractions of the Limbs. The Cranium is found by Experience to be good for Diseases of the Head, and particularly for the Epilepsy for which Reasosn, it is an Ingredient in several anti-epileptic Compositions. The Os triquetrum, or Triangular Bone of the Temple, commended as a specific Remedy for the Epilepsy. The Heart also cures the same distemper.

Mummies pervade early modern European literature.

In John Donne's "Love's Alchemy:"

In Edmund Spencer's The Fairie Queen:

In William Shakespeare's Othello:

The latest instances of European cannibalism occured in the 19th and 20th centuries. An Englishman in 1847 recieved advice to feed a young woman's brains and molasses to his epileptic daughter. The belief that a "thieves candle" of human fat could paralyze people lasted until the 1880s. A German catalogue advertised mummies in the 20th century. A man in 1908 tried to get at a condemned man's blood after the condemned man was executed.

But the cases dwindled. The 17th century Enlightenment's notion of science and progress made Europeans eat people less. The human body acquired an unseemly quality. Europeans concerned themselves with hygiene and washed with soap or ate with utensils.

The blood transfusions, organ transplants, skin grafts of modern science recall the cannibal tradition in Western culture.

The black market trade in body parts suggests the tradition is not dead.

Hope not for mind in women; at their best

Sweetness and wit, they are but mummy, possess'd.

[Malegar's] body leane and meagre as a rake

And skin all withered like a dryad rook;

Therto as cold and drery as a snake,

That seemed to tremble evermore and quake;

All in a canvas thin he was bedight

And girded with a belt of twisted brake;

Upon his head he wore a Helmet light

Made of a dead man's skull, that seemd a ghastly sight.

The Wormes were hollowed, that did breed the Silkee,

And it was dyde in Mummey, which the Skillful

Conferu'd of Maiden's hearts.