十五世纪的欧洲人相信他们偶然发现了一种神奇药粉，可以治疗癫痫、出血、挫伤、呕吐，几乎包治百病。这是一种棕色粉末 “mumia”，由干人肉磨碎制成。所以，人类相食现象有多常见呢？文化和食人的关系如何？比尔·舒特探索了漫长而复杂的食人历史。
中英文对照字幕文章源自：力哥爱英语（ienglish521.com）力哥爱英语-https://ienglish521.com/2686.html
15th century Europeans believed they had hit upon a miracle cure: a remedy for epilepsy, hemorrhage, bruising, nausea, and virtually any other medical ailment. This brown powder could be mixed into drinks, made into salves or eaten straight up. It was known as mumia and made by grinding up mummified human flesh. 文章源自：力哥爱英语（ienglish521.com）力哥爱英语-https://ienglish521.com/2686.html
15世纪的欧洲人相信他们偶然发现了一种神奇解药，能治疗癫痫、出血、挫伤、呕吐，几乎包治百病。这种棕色粉末可掺进饮料里、做成药膏、或者直接口服。它被称作“mumia”，由人肉干磨碎制成。文章源自：力哥爱英语（ienglish521.com）力哥爱英语-https://ienglish521.com/2686.html
The word "cannibal" dates from the time of Christopher Columbus; in fact, Columbus may even have coined it himself. After coming ashore on the island of Guadaloupe, Columbus' initial reports back to the Queen of Spain described the indigenous people as friendly and peaceful— though he did mention rumors of a group called the Caribs, who made violent raids and then cooked and ate their prisoners. In response, Queen Isabella granted permission to capture and enslave anyone who ate human flesh. When the island failed to produce the gold Columbus was looking for, he began to label anyone who resisted his plundering and kidnapping as a Caribe. Somewhere along the way, the word "Carib" became "Canibe" and then "Cannibal." First used by colonizers to dehumanize indigenous people, it has since been applied to anyone who eats human flesh. 文章源自：力哥爱英语（ienglish521.com）力哥爱英语-https://ienglish521.com/2686.html
“食人族”一词起源于哥伦布时代，实际上，这个词可能是哥伦布创造的。在登陆瓜达鲁佩岛后，哥伦布在给西班牙女王的首次报告中，描绘了当地土著人的友善与和平，但他也提到了加勒比族的传言，据说他们会暴力袭击并煮食俘虏。作为回应，伊莎贝拉女王颁布了允许抓捕和奴役食人者的命令。当岛上的黄金被掠夺得所剩无几后，他开始将抵抗者归为加勒比人，久而久之，“加勒比人（Carib）”变成了“Canibe”，最后演变为“食人族（Cannibal）”。这个词一开始被殖民者用来对原住民去人性化，之后成为对所有食人者的统称。文章源自：力哥爱英语（ienglish521.com）力哥爱英语-https://ienglish521.com/2686.html
So the term comes from an account that wasn't based on hard evidence, but cannibalism does have a real and much more complex history. It has taken diverse forms— sometimes, as with mumia, it doesn't involved recognizable parts of the human body. The reasons for cannibalistic practices have varied, too. Across cultures and time periods, there's evidence of survival cannibalism, when people living through a famine, siege or ill-fated expedition had to either eat the bodies of the dead or starve to death themselves. But it's also been quite common for cultures to normalize some form of eating human flesh under ordinary circumstances. Because of false accounts like Columbus's, it's difficult to say exactly how common cultural cannibalism has been— but there are still some examples of accepted cannibalistic practices from within the cultures practicing them. 文章源自：力哥爱英语（ienglish521.com）力哥爱英语-https://ienglish521.com/2686.html
虽然词语的由来缺乏有力证据，但人类相食确实有着漫长而复杂的历史。食人有多种形式，比如像mumia的粉末，这种形式无法辨别出所用的人体部位。食人的理由也多种多样。历史上许多时期都有过为了生存的食人记载，当遭受饥荒、受到封锁或者远征途中遭遇不幸时，人们只能选择吃死人或是成为死人。但在很多文化中，食人在日常生活中也不足为奇。由于类似哥伦布的错误记载，我们很难透彻了解食人在文化中有多常见，但可以知道的是，有些文化接受食人行为。文章源自：力哥爱英语（ienglish521.com）力哥爱英语-https://ienglish521.com/2686.html
Take the medicinal cannibalism in Europe during Columbus's time. Starting in the 15th century, the demand for mumia increased. At first, stolen mummies from Egypt supplied the mumia craze, but soon the demand was too great to be sustained on Egyptian mummies alone, and opportunists stole bodies from European cemeteries to turn into mumia. Use of mumia continued for hundreds of years. It was listed in the Merck index, a popular medical encyclopedia, into the 20th century. And ground up mummies were far from the only remedy made from human flesh that was common throughout Europe. Blood, in either liquid or powdered form, was used to treat epilepsy, while human liver, gall stones, oil distilled from human brains, and pulverized hearts were popular medical concoctions. 文章源自：力哥爱英语（ienglish521.com）力哥爱英语-https://ienglish521.com/2686.html
比如中世纪的医用食人法。在15世纪，mumia供不应求，一开始，商人从埃及偷盗木乃伊，但不久后，木乃伊无法应对需求的激增，投机者便从欧洲的墓园偷盗尸体制成药粉。mumia疗法持续了几百年，它被列在著名医药百科全书《默克索引》中，进入了二十世纪。欧洲常见的人肉制品远不止磨碎的木乃伊：液体和粉状的人血都曾被用来治疗癫痫，肝脏、胆结石、人脑提炼的油、以及磨碎的心脏都是很受欢迎的药方。文章源自：力哥爱英语（ienglish521.com）力哥爱英语-https://ienglish521.com/2686.html
In China, the written record of socially accepted cannibalism goes back almost 2,000 years. One particularly common form of cannibalism appears to have been filial cannibalism, where adult sons and daughters would offer a piece of their own flesh to their parents. This was typically offered as a last-ditch attempt to cure a sick parent, and wasn't fatal to their offspring— it usually involved flesh from the thigh or, less often, a finger. 文章源自：力哥爱英语（ienglish521.com）力哥爱英语-https://ienglish521.com/2686.html
在中国，文字记载的食人现象要追溯到2000年前，最具代表性的是父母食用子女的肉。成年的子女会献出身上一部分肉给父母吃。这通常作为治疗病危父母的最后手段，但对于子女并不是致命的，这些肉来自于大腿，也有较少的情况下来自手指。文章源自：力哥爱英语（ienglish521.com）力哥爱英语-https://ienglish521.com/2686.html
Cannibalistic funerary rites are another form of culturally sanctioned cannibalism. Perhaps the best-known example came from the Fore people of New Guinea. Through the mid-20th century, members of the community would, if possible, make their funerary preferences known in advance, sometimes requesting that family members gather to consume the body after death. Tragically, though these rituals honored the deceased, they also spread a deadly disease known as kuru through the community. 文章源自：力哥爱英语（ienglish521.com）力哥爱英语-https://ienglish521.com/2686.html
食人葬礼仪式是另一种被文化认同的食人形式。或许最著名的例子是新几内亚的法雷人：20世纪中期，很多法雷人会尽可能提前公布自己的葬礼偏好，有时会请求家庭成员们在自己死后一同吃掉尸体。不幸的是，虽然这些仪式表达了对死者的敬意，但也传播了一种致命的疾病：库鲁病。文章源自：力哥爱英语（ienglish521.com）力哥爱英语-https://ienglish521.com/2686.html
Between the fictionalized stories, verifiable practices, and big gaps that still exist in our knowledge, there's no one history of cannibalism. But we do know that people have been eating each other, volunteering themselves to be eaten, and accusing others of eating people for millennia. 文章源自：力哥爱英语（ienglish521.com）力哥爱英语-https://ienglish521.com/2686.html
在虚构故事、可证实的做法、和我们贫瘠的知识中，食人的历史尚未有统一的说法。但我们知道，人类同类相食，自愿被吃，以及指控他人吃人已有数千年之久。文章源自：力哥爱英语（ienglish521.com）力哥爱英语-https://ienglish521.com/2686.html
