The Taste Of Cannibalism

Speech title: The Taste of Cannibalism

Specific purpose: To inform my audience about the historical reasoning behind cannibalism and the reasons why it might still occur present day.

Central Ideal/Thesis statement: People do strange things as a result of their beliefs and they do even stranger things to stay alive in desperate situations.

Introduction:

One of the most horrific words in the English language is of course cannibalism. It's earned this recognition in large part do to the gruesome imagery that it has the power to evoke. This is a term that has only come to be associated with such an emotional response in recent centuries. As hard as it is to believe there was in fact a time in our past when cannibalism was an ordinary fact of life. I found this extremely interesting and as a result choose to do some further research on the topic. This research has lead me to some interesting facts and in the following speech today I hope to share what I've learnt. I will try to enlighten you about the various aspects of cannibalism and it's place in history. This education will also include the evolution of the different forms or kinds of cannibalism into the present day versions that we have come to know. This education will also include the reasoning behind cannibalism, both present and past. These reasons will include everything from survival to religion.

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Body of speech:

I. The first known account of cannibalism was witnessed by Christopher Columbus when he made his trip to the West Indies, according to William Arens' book The Man-eating Myth: Antropology and Antropophagy.

A. Columbus saw the Carib West Indies tribe practice ritualistic cannibalism.

B. The explorers mispronounced their name, "canibs"

C. The Spanish

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II. Thanks to modern science we now know that cannibalism once wasn't the strong taboo that it is today.

A. Recent genetic studies reveled that almost all humans have genes designed to provide immunity to certain diseases that can only be transferred from eating human brains. According to Andy Coghlan in his article "Cannibalism Ð''rife among prehistoric humans' one such group of people was the Fore.

B. Scientists have studied several tribes that have as recently as a few hundred years ago practiced cannibalism and some that are rumored to still practice it today.

( Transition: Now that we have seen proof that cannibalism was a integral part of the daily lives of most ancient people we canÐ'.....)

III. The practice of cannibalism has historically been linked to a number of reasons and as a result several categories or types of cannibalism are now recognized.

A. The most common reason would be religion and ceremony.

1. It was believed to show reverence for the dead or used to capture a desired attribute of the deceased.

2. Pious desire for the soul of the dead to be reborn in the consumer.

3. It's called endocannibalism when you consume the flesh of friends and relatives.

4. It's called exocannibalism when you eat strangers like the Aztecs.

5. Today the modern criminal version of this type is associated with Satanic ritual

6. This is called Ritualistic cannibalism.

B. The second reason would be that there was limited food.

1. This form is rare and is more of a sub-motivation of the other forms of cannibalism.

2. They also claim to like the taste of human flesh.

3. This is called Epicurean cannibalism.

C. The other major reason would be for survival.

1. The only generally acceptable form of cannibalism.

2. When humans eat the flesh of other humans in an attempt to stay alive in adverse and desperate situations.

3. One example is the Donner Party.

4. The