For some cannibals, a human dinner is a personal rite performed in solitude, maybe accompanied by lighting a few candles and listening to smooth jazz. But for others, a brainbecue or a groin-and-cheese burrito is a vehicle for social bonding, religiosity, or commemoration. In the case of the South Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea, which practiced ritual cannibalism until recent decades, eating items like mothers and fathers provided a valuable source of protein but also led to deaths in epidemic proportions.
A scarcity of foods with protein is the purported reason for the advent of cannibalism among the Fore, a subgroup of about 8,000 people in the highlands of New Guinea. Traditional crops like sweet potatoes were low in protein and the selection of edible animals like mice and frogs was unappetizing.
The adopted practice, then, consisted of the following: after the death of a tribesperson, women would dismember the corpse by detaching the arms and feet, removing muscle from the limbs, extracting the brain, and cutting open the chest to pry out the internal organs. For those who suffered a quick death, the layer of fat resembled pork (a tragic hindrance for aspiring Jewish and Muslim cannibals). The meat would often be combined with salt, ginger, or leafy vegetables and then steamed until perfection. Men received the “good parts” like muscles and fatty organs while women received parts of lesser quality, like brains. Although it served to combat protein deficiency, the practice held a magical significance for the participants. Ingesting a strong man’s body could endow one with strength. Eating a loved one could serve as a spiritual connection between the deceased and the living.
Kuru, a fatal brain disease, was discovered among the Fore in the early 1900s. Known to the tribe as “laughing sickness” because of the outbursts of laughter that accompany trembling, depression, and mental slowing in its second stage, kuru is categorized as a spongiform encephalopathy, causing the brain to become ridden with holes. The disease became widespread in the 1960s and took 1,100 lives in a ten-year period. Women constituted the vast majority of the victims since they feasted heavily on brains, thereby directly ingesting the source of the disease.
Various opinions abounded as to the cause of the disease. The tribe viewed kuru as a curse-induced mental affliction rather than a physical ailment. At one point, believing kuru to be a genetic defect, the Australian colonial rulers attempted to confine the Fore tribe to prevent the genes from spreading. Scientists who began to study the disease also misconceived kuru as genetic since it was common among family members, but the rampant and fatal nature of the disease led them to rule out any genetic factor. Upon its classification as a prion disease (others include scrapie and mad cow disease), in which an infectious protein causes the brain to degenerate, scientists discerned the exact nature of kuru and its link with cannibalism. When the practice of ritual cannibalism finally ceased, the fatal disease basically vanished from the population.
Whether ritual cannibalism served as a means of protein for the Fore or as a harrowing pathway toward death, it offered something for everyone. As one cannibal touchingly noted, “I will now always have part of my mother inside me.”
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