Though the Fuegians can cook, they
prefer their meat raw; when they catch a fish they kill it by biting it behind
the gills, and then consume it from head to tail without further ritual."
The uncertainty of the food supply made these nature peoples almost lit-
erally omnivorous: shellfish, sea urchins, frogs, toads, snails, mice, rats,
spiders, earthworms, scorpions, moths, centipedes, locusts, caterpillars, liz-
ards, snakes, boas, dogs, horses, roots, lice, insects, larvae, the eggs of rep-
tiles and birds—there is not one of these but was somewhere a delicacy, or
even a piece de resistance, to primitive men." Some tribes are expert hunt-
ers of ants; others dry insects in the sun and then store them for a feast;
others pick the lice out of one another's hair, and eat them with relish;
if a great number of lice can be gathered to make a petite marmite, they
are devoured with shouts of joy, as enemies of the human race." The
menu of the lower hunting tribes hardly differs from that of the higher
apes."

The discovery of fire limited this indiscriminate voracity, and cooperated
with agriculture to free man from the chase. Cooking broke down the
cellulose and starch of a thousand plants indigestible in their raw state,
and man turned more and more to cereals and vegetables as his chief reli-
ance. At the same time cooking, by softening tough foods, reduced the
need of chewing, and began that decay of the teeth which is one of the
insignia of civilization.

To all the varied articles of diet that we have enumerated, man added
the greatest delicacy of all—his fellowman. Cannilbalism was at one
time practically universal; it has been found in nearly all primitive tribes,
and among such later peoples as the Irish, the Iberians, the Picts, and the
eleventh-century Danes." Among many tribes human flesh was a staple
of trade, and funerals were unknown. In the Upper Congo living men,
women and children were bought and sold frankly as articles of food;"
on the island of New Britain human meat was sold in shops as butcher's
meat is sold among ourselves; and in some of the Solomon Islands human
victims, preferably women, were fattened for a feast like pigs." The
Fuegians ranked women above dogs because, they said, "dogs taste of
otter." In Tahiti an old Polynesian chief explained his diet to Pierre Loti:

"The white man, when well roasted, tastes like a ripe banana." The Fiji-
ans, however, complained that the flesh of the whites was too salty and
tough, and that a European sailor was hardly fit to eat; a Polynesian tasted
better."

Will Durant, History of Civilization, Vol1

Don't go deleting or locking this thread now, this is INTERESTING!

lol @ whiteman tastes like bananas !

somehow that seems very fitting

...Jodi, the banana eating buddhist

coco,

This was interesting to read, but I don't know how much actual anthropological method Mr. Durant and his wife employed in their historiographics, I'm sorry to say. It reads very much like an account from one of those chauvinist colonial English explorers, you know, the pretty pigmies, not higher than my daughter's pony, and possessed of the simplest curiosity, passed my rifle around jocularily like a toy, until it suddenly went off and one of the older ones found his toe to have been thus amputated--oh, what a howling ensued![yuk-yuk-yuk], that kind of thing.

you are totally right, now that i read it again with that in mind. v interesting!

i couldn't read the rest of it

sorry