[148] Reade, op. cit. p. 158.
[149] Powell, op. cit. p. 248.
The question whether early man was in the habit of eating human flesh may thus, I think, be resolved into the question whether his natural shrinking from it may be assumed to have been subdued by any of those factors which in certain circumstances have induced men to become habitual cannibals. For such an assumption I find no sufficient grounds. On the contrary, I maintain that it is made highly improbable by the fact that cannibalism is much less prevalent among the lowest savages than among races somewhat more advanced in culture.[150] In America, instead of being confined to savage peoples, it was practised “to a greater extent and with more horrible rites among the most civilised. Its religious inception,” Mr. Dorman adds, “was the cause of this.”[151] Humboldt observed long ago:—“The nations who hold it a point of honour to devour their prisoners are not always the rudest and most ferocious…. The Cabres, the Guipunavis, and the Caribees, have always been more powerful and more civilised than the other hordes of the Oroonoko; and yet the former are as much addicted to anthropophagy, as the last are repugnant to it.”[152] In Brazil, Martius found the cannibalism of the Central Tupis to form a strange contrast to their relatively high state of culture.[153] Cannibals like the Fijians and Maoris were on the verge of semi-civilisation, and the Bataks of Sumatra were already in early times so advanced as to frame an alphabet of their own, though after the Indian model. Among the African Niam-Niam and Monbuttu a great predilection for human flesh coexists with a remarkable degree of culture; whereas in the dwarf tribes of Central Africa, which are of a very low type, Mr. Burrows never heard of a single case of cannibalism.[154]
[150] See Peschel, Races of Man, p. 162 sq.; Schneider, Die Naturvölker, i. 186; Bergemann, op. cit. p. 53; Ratzel, op. cit. ii. 352; Sutherland, Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct, i. 372.
[151] Dorman, op. cit. p. 152.
[152] von Humboldt, op. cit. v. 424 sq.
[153] von Martius, op. cit. i. 199 sq.
[154] Burrows, Land of the Pigmies, p. 149.
It would be very instructive to follow the history of cannibalism among those peoples who are, or have lately been, addicted to it, if we were able to do so; but the subject is mostly obscure. The most common change which we have had an opportunity to notice is the decline and final disappearance of the practice under European influence; but we must not assume that every change has been in the direction towards extinction. Among the East African Wadoe and Wabembe cannibalism is, according to their own account, of modern origin.[155] Mr. Torday informs me that among some of the Congo natives it is spreading in the present day. In the Solomon Islands it has recently extended itself; it is asserted by the elder natives of Florida that man’s flesh was formerly never eaten except in sacrifice, and that human sacrifice is an innovation introduced from further west.[156] Erskine maintains that in Fiji cannibalism, though a very ancient custom, did not prevail in earlier times to the same extent as it did more recently;[157] and Mr. Fornander has arrived at the conclusion that among the Polynesians this practice was not an original heirloom brought with them from their primitive homes in the Far West, but was adopted subsequently by a few of the tribes under conditions and circumstances now unknown.[158] For various reasons, then, it is an illegitimate supposition to regard the cannibalism of modern savages as a survival from the first infancy of mankind, or, more generally, from a stage through which the whole human race has passed.
[155] Burton, Two Trips to Gorilla Land, i. 214.