Flesh as Bread; Blood as Wine

There is no escaping man's origin -- a carnivorous and cannibalistic animal -- and disgustingly so. Dr. Marais, Dr. P. J. van B. Viljoen, and Dr. Uys Pienaar, "are emphatic that no other carnivore will devour a hyena's carcass. They assure us that, on the contrary, they have frequently encountered the mummified carcasses of hyenas in the veld; the carcasses often lie untouched by bird or beast where they have been shot or cast aside from traps. This revulsion against eating hyena flesh was not experienced by human beings such as the ancient Europeans. However nauseating hyena flesh may be to hyenas and to other carnivorous creatures, man, the greatest of all scavengers, whether presapient or sapient, could cope with the flesh of any and every competitor -- even if it happened to be his own flesh and blood."

A modern optimistic writer, while admitting that "cannibalism has been a common practice until recently" is emphatic that "eating your dead enemy or drinking his blood from his empty skull has been a mark of greatest admiration and wish to acquire his virtue. It was a spiritual acknowledgment from the first and in symbolic form survives even in Christian communion." I fear that there are and always have been very few creatures who would welcome this kind of "spiritual acknowledgment." But apart from this, it seems to me that we have to be careful not to confuse the logic of the events. It is not that the crimes of man are bound to have a mark of "spiritualist", but rather that even when man tried to do something "spiritual", he was bound to show the mark of his origin.

From:
Pages 114 and 115 of
The economic history of world population, by Carlo M. Cipolla