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I think you're mixing sacrifice with eating/consuming. In most cases of human sacrifice, it was done for religious reasons, and the meat wan't eaten (or if it

by gyaniv 8y ago

I think you're mixing sacrifice with eating/consuming. In most cases of human sacrifice, it was done for religious reasons, and the meat wan't eaten (or if it was then in small quantities, like eating the hearts as you mentioned). even back then, the consumption of human body parts wasn't considered healthy or nourishing, it was done only to appease the gods/give us their favor/make us stronger/etc. I think that thoughts and stories of eating people, and especially kids that is pretty common in many societies and myths, comes as a warning or as something to fear, both because human sacrifice was common enough at a certain point, but also because it helped to easily scar people (whether the parents or the children themselves). I think that one of the problems with eating dead humans, even recently dead people, is that those are even worst "parts" then the livings parts. What I mean is the even in the conventional meat eating industry they usually don't eat meat from animals that died naturally (and i'm assuming you're not talking about mass murder), and the reason for that is that the animal (or in our case, the human), died for a certain reason, more likely then not, from health reasons, so the chance of the meat containing disease, sickness, or even just being super weak is a lot higher then when they take a supposedly healthy animal, kill it, and harvest it.

jelliclesfarm 8y ago
You are right. It’s about two different subjects. Here it is an extension of a side discussion. My original question was a thought experiment that..if I had a choice, I would have likely reworded (Altho I don’t know how..) Let me try again. If we look at what is ‘food’..1. for plants, they are able to synthesize their own food from sunlight. 2. Insects like bees and ants etc use this plant synthesized food like honey or the fruit etc. 3. some plants are also carnivorous. 4. Some insects cannibalise like praying mantis. 5. Re birds, they rely on plants 6. Some birds like vultures scavenge. 7. Some birds like raptors are predators. 8. Mammals are carnivores. Some look for fresh kill. 9. I think some do eat dead animals after their natural death or even rotting flesh. 10. Fish eat krill and all that goodness. 11. Big fish eat small fish. 13. Dead fish get eaten too. I think all of them do and can cannibalise when they need food. But as the highest order organism, we rely on raising and slaughtering animals and birds for food. Nothing else in nature does that..it’s just bizarre. But again, I digress. The point is we now know exactly what nutrients we need to live. Not what foods we need to live because they are multi variate. We add back vitamins and proteins and trace minerals etc to highly processed foods. 1. Why not make a broth or a gel to which we add all that we require anyways? It’s the closest we can come to synthesizing our own food. 2. Why not reuse flesh of our own? Not killing..no black market meat etc. Just freeze freshly deceased people..test them and recycle the meat just as we use the organs. We certainly do reuse organs. 3. Speaking of organs, some of them are regenerative. Blood regenerates. Plasma regenerates. Healthy organs regenerate. We can grow organs in a Petri dish to transplants with cells..we can grow ‘muscles’ in vats. We can clone mammals. These are all possible technologies now. Ok. Expensive likely, but forget about costs for a moment. I want to think of possibilities. So why isn’t it possible to synthesize food from our own bodies? I feel like I should stay away from the word ‘cannibalism’ because it does have a history and the thought experiment strays into the morality of what is verboten and immoral. Synethesizing our own food...even possibly from our own or genetic kin’s deceased bodies. Yay or Nay?
jelliclesfarm 8y ago
Re religious sacrifices, they were certainly eaten. Again and again, there is prohibition of sacrifices and the very Isaac story was a religious edict that permitted substitution of goat/sheep(?) to human child. Indian lores of dacoits and thugeee seeking infants was likely because they were to be consumed before they got sick or had infections. Babies get a slew of infections as to develop immunity. A ‘blemishless’ baby was important. In India, we pierce babies ears when they are mewling infants. It makes them imperfect sacrifices. In some rural parts, they dab the baby’s face with charcoal paste and it’s supposed to ward off the ‘evil eye’. But now that I think about it, it likely served to make a child look pockmarked or just ‘not perfect’ and hence less risk of being kidnapped for cooking. In more organized religions with a priest(pre Colombian), the priest always ‘tasted’ the prized organs(heart for instance ..of a warrior because he was brave) and distributed the rest of the body. If you see how African tribes hunt and eat..they have one hunting trip and they eat well and the rest of the time, they just subsist on fish or foraged greens and root vegetables. Meat was never eaten in quantities like we do now. It was unheard of...so for any tribe or community, it’s a lot of food. Likely an addition with ceremonial significance to their kill. This isn’t about the original query re humans eating other dead humans (and if I can reword it: “self synthesizing human food from humans”)...but wrt the side discussion re children and human sacrifice and cannibalism.

by gyaniv 8y ago

jelliclesfarm 8y ago

You are right. It’s about two different subjects. Here it is an extension of a side discussion. My original question was a thought experiment that..if I had a choice, I would have likely reworded (Altho I don’t know how..) Let me try again. If we look at what is ‘food’..1. for plants, they are able to synthesize their own food from sunlight. 2. Insects like bees and ants etc use this plant synthesized food like honey or the fruit etc. 3. some plants are also carnivorous. 4. Some insects cannibalise like praying mantis. 5. Re birds, they rely on plants 6. Some birds like vultures scavenge. 7. Some birds like raptors are predators. 8. Mammals are carnivores. Some look for fresh kill. 9. I think some do eat dead animals after their natural death or even rotting flesh. 10. Fish eat krill and all that goodness. 11. Big fish eat small fish. 13. Dead fish get eaten too. I think all of them do and can cannibalise when they need food. But as the highest order organism, we rely on raising and slaughtering animals and birds for food. Nothing else in nature does that..it’s just bizarre. But again, I digress. The point is we now know exactly what nutrients we need to live. Not what foods we need to live because they are multi variate. We add back vitamins and proteins and trace minerals etc to highly processed foods. 1. Why not make a broth or a gel to which we add all that we require anyways? It’s the closest we can come to synthesizing our own food. 2. Why not reuse flesh of our own? Not killing..no black market meat etc. Just freeze freshly deceased people..test them and recycle the meat just as we use the organs. We certainly do reuse organs. 3. Speaking of organs, some of them are regenerative. Blood regenerates. Plasma regenerates. Healthy organs regenerate. We can grow organs in a Petri dish to transplants with cells..we can grow ‘muscles’ in vats. We can clone mammals. These are all possible technologies now. Ok. Expensive likely, but forget about costs for a moment. I want to think of possibilities. So why isn’t it possible to synthesize food from our own bodies? I feel like I should stay away from the word ‘cannibalism’ because it does have a history and the thought experiment strays into the morality of what is verboten and immoral. Synethesizing our own food...even possibly from our own or genetic kin’s deceased bodies. Yay or Nay?

jelliclesfarm 8y ago

Re religious sacrifices, they were certainly eaten. Again and again, there is prohibition of sacrifices and the very Isaac story was a religious edict that permitted substitution of goat/sheep(?) to human child. Indian lores of dacoits and thugeee seeking infants was likely because they were to be consumed before they got sick or had infections. Babies get a slew of infections as to develop immunity. A ‘blemishless’ baby was important. In India, we pierce babies ears when they are mewling infants. It makes them imperfect sacrifices. In some rural parts, they dab the baby’s face with charcoal paste and it’s supposed to ward off the ‘evil eye’. But now that I think about it, it likely served to make a child look pockmarked or just ‘not perfect’ and hence less risk of being kidnapped for cooking. In more organized religions with a priest(pre Colombian), the priest always ‘tasted’ the prized organs(heart for instance ..of a warrior because he was brave) and distributed the rest of the body. If you see how African tribes hunt and eat..they have one hunting trip and they eat well and the rest of the time, they just subsist on fish or foraged greens and root vegetables. Meat was never eaten in quantities like we do now. It was unheard of...so for any tribe or community, it’s a lot of food. Likely an addition with ceremonial significance to their kill. This isn’t about the original query re humans eating other dead humans (and if I can reword it: “self synthesizing human food from humans”)...but wrt the side discussion re children and human sacrifice and cannibalism.