Cannibalism

Just a friendly warning that this topic may gross out some of you readers.

     Okay, I just started a new course and I have selected the topic "Cannibalism" for my final research project. You would not believe some of the things that I found on the internet about cannibalism. One of the main articles I found was on a German man named Armin Meiwes. Meiwes actually advertised on the internet for an individual to let him kille them and eat their body. A man named Brandes answered the add and in 2001, met up with Meiwes. Brandes consumed a large quantity of drugs and alcohol to dull out the pain of being stabbed to death. Meiwes cut off a certain part of Brandes' body (I won't say what part, it is really digusting) and tried to feed it to Brandes. Brandes was too weak from blood loss to eat his own body part, so Meiwes ended up trying to cook the part in a pan with salt, pepper, and garlic. Meiwes ended up tossing the body part after burning it. He then returned to Brandes who was still bleeding to death in a bath tub and read a Star Trek book to him for three hours. Tired of waiting for Brandes to die, he ended up stabbing him in the chest, killing him. Meiwes then took the dead body and hung it from a meat hook where he started to carve out large sections to store in his freezer. Meiwes would then eat the body over a course of ten months, even attempting to turn the bones into a type of cooking flour. After Meiwes was arrested, he was sentenced to only 8 1/2 years in a German prison because, get this, cannibalism was not considered illegal in Germany yet, and Brandes was a willing donor. After a couple of years, the prosecutors decided to have a re-trial to get more time added on to Meiwes's sentence. They were successful in getting Meiwes sentenced to life imprisonment this time around. Funny enough, Meiwes has since then become a vegetarian. After reading this article, I decided to learn more about this guy and it turns out that he claims that he had thoughts at the age of 8-12 of eating his classmates. People were trying to say that because Meiwes is a homosexual that he was just trying to find sexual gratification, but deep down inside, we all know that he was just a sick bastard to begin with. I know some people who are homosexual and I've never heard of them becoming cannibalistic to get some sick and twisted form of sexual gratification.

 (Armin Meiwes)

     Now, this Armin Meiwes guy, of course, was not the first to be arrested and sentenced for cannibalism. We've all heard of Jeffrey Dahmer, another homosexual who got a kick out of raping dead corpses and eating body parts. Again, people would say that it had to do with him being homosexual, but I still have to disagree. There have been several other cases of cannibalism where men would eat the body parts of young women they killed. In fact, some guy named Zhu Yu taped himself eating a dead baby and posted it on rotten.com. What the hell is that about? He are some other names for a few cannibals: Albert Fish, Nathaniel Bar-Jonah, Andrei Chikatilo, Karl Denke, Nikolai Dzhurmongaliev, Robin, Gecht, Ed Gein, and their are still several more. One of the oldest known cannibalistic families, yes family, was the Beane family of 15th Century Scotland. Shawney Beane and his wife, who lived in a sucluded mountain area would kill unsuspecting travelers and then eat them. Not only did they eat them, they fed the bodies to their 14 children. The couple also ended up having incestuous grandchildren because, yes, you guessed it, they were a bunch of inbred freaks.

 (Jeffrey Dahmer)

     I know that everyone has heard of the Donner Party. At least, I hope you have. The Donner Party was the most famous tragedy in the history of the western migration.  Almost ninety wagon train emigrants were unable to cross the Sierra Nevada before winter, and almost one-half starved to death.  Perhaps because they were ordinary people -- farmers, merchants, parents, children -- their story captures the imagination. After becoming snowbound in the Sierra Nevada in the winter of 1846–1847, some of the emigrants resorted to, guess what, cannibalism. Yes, that's right, cannibalism. Now, these unfortunate immigrants were not the first American settlers to fall victim to necessary cannibalism. The first settlers of Jamestown needed to resort to cannibalism to survive their first winter in America. I read in my history book about a man who had become so desperate for food that he killed his wife and ate her body. The others actually waited for their family members and friends to die before eating them. After all, isn't that the cordial thing to do? (hint the note of sarcasm here).

     I recently saw on the history channel that some of our WWII soldiers had to resort to cannibalism. Some unfortunate soldiers were deserted on a raft in the middle of then ocean with no food or water. As some of the injured soldiers were dying, they began to toss them overboard until one man decided that they shouldn't waste bodies. They decided to eat the dead bodies in means of surviving until they were found. Yes, they were found and survived the ordeal. It wasn't until years and years later that they shared their survival techniques with others.

     I know, people think that I am either weird or crazy for writing this post, but I am just, once more, sharing my opinion on a subject. I am, after all, writing about this subject for a research course and just thought that I'd share some of the information I found.

~yaya