Editing Human cannibalism (section)

=== Whole-body roasting and baking ===

Though human corpses, like those of animals, were usually cut into pieces for further processing, reports of people being roasted or baked whole are on record throughout the world.
At the [[Herxheim (archaeological site)|archaeological site of Herxheim]], Germany, more than a thousand people were killed and eaten about 7000 years ago, and the evidence indicates that many of them were [[rotisserie|spit-roasted]] whole over open fires.{{sfn|Boulestin|Coupey|2015|pp=101, 115}}

During severe famines in [[China]] and [[Egypt]] during the 12th and early 13th centuries, there was a black-market trade in corpses of little children that were roasted or boiled whole.
In China, human-flesh sellers advertised such corpses as good for being boiled or steamed whole, "including their bones", and praised their particular tenderness.{{sfn|Chong|1990|p=137}}{{sfn|Siefkes|2022|p=260}}
In [[Cairo]], Egypt, the Arab physician [[Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi]] repeatedly saw "little children, roasted or boiled", offered for sale in baskets on street corners during a heavy famine that started in 1200 CE.{{sfn|Tannahill|1975|pp=47–51}}
Older children and possibly adults were sometimes prepared in the same way.
Once he saw "a child nearing the age of puberty, who had been found roasted"; two young people confessed to having killed and cooked the child.{{sfn|Tannahill|1975|p=50}}
Another time, remains were found of a person who had apparently been roasted and served whole, the legs tied like those of "a sheep trussed for cooking".
Only the skeleton was found, still undivided and in the trussed position, but "with all the flesh stripped off for food".{{sfn|Tannahill|1975|p=49}}

In some cases children were roasted and offered for sale by their own parents; other victims were street children, who had become very numerous and were often kidnapped and cooked by people looking for food or extra income.
The victims were so numerous that sometimes "two or three children, even more, would be found in a single cooking pot."{{sfn|Tannahill|1975|p=54}}
Al-Latif notes that, while initially people were shocked by such acts, they "eventually&nbsp;... grew accustomed, and some conceived such a taste for these detestable meats that they made them their ordinary provender&nbsp;... The horror people had felt at first vanished entirely".{{sfn|Tannahill|1975|p=49}}

[[File:Tartar cannibalism illumination Matthew Paris Chronica Majora.jpg|Depiction of [[Mongols|Mongol]] cannibalism from the ''[[Chronica Majora]]''|thumb|left|upright=1.15]]
After the end of the Mongol-led [[Yuan dynasty]] (1271–1368), a Chinese writer criticized in his recollections of the period that some [[Mongol]] soldiers ate human flesh because of its taste rather than (as had also occurred in other times) merely in cases of necessity. He added that they enjoyed torturing their victims (often children or women, whose flesh was preferred over that of men) by roasting them alive, in "large jars whose outside touched the fire [or] on an iron grate".
Other victims were placed "inside a double bag&nbsp;... which was put into a large pot" and so boiled alive.{{sfn|Siefkes|2022|p=270}}
While not mentioning live roasting or boiling, European authors also complained about cannibalism and cruelty during the [[Mongol invasion of Europe]], and a drawing in the ''[[Chronica Majora]]'' (compiled by [[Matthew Paris]]) shows Mongol fighters spit-roasting a human victim.{{sfn|Siefkes|2022|pp=270–271}}<ref>{{cite book |last= Andrea |first=Alfred J. |date=2020 |title=Medieval Record: Sources of Medieval History |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nznRDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA338  |publisher=Hackett |pages=338–339 |isbn=978-1-62466-870-8}}</ref>

{{interlanguage link|Pedro de Margarit|es}}, who accompanied [[Christopher Columbus]] during his [[Voyages of Christopher Columbus#Second voyage (1493–1496)|second voyage]], afterwards stated "that he saw there with his own eyes several Indians skewered on spits being roasted over burning coals as a treat for the gluttonous."<ref>{{cite book |editor1-last=Symcox |editor1-first=Geoffrey |editor2-last=Formisano |editor2-first=Luciano |title=Italian Reports on America, 1493–1522: Accounts by Contemporary Observers |date=2002 |publisher=Brepols |location=Turnhout |page=39}}</ref>
[[Jean de Léry]], who lived for several months among the [[Tupinambá people|Tupinambá]] in Brazil, writes that several of his companions reported "that they had seen not only a number of men and women cut in pieces and grilled on the ''[[buccan|boucans]]'', but also little unweaned children roasted whole" after a successful attack on an enemy village.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Léry |first1=Jean de |title=History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil, Otherwise Called America |date=1992 |publisher=University of California Press |location=Berkeley |page=130 |author-link1=Jean de Léry |title-link=History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil}}</ref>

According to German ethnologist [[Leo Frobenius]], children captured by [[Songye]] slave raiders in the Central African [[Kasaï region]] that were too young to be sold with a profit were instead "skewered on long spears like rats and roasted over a quickly kindled large fire" for consumption by the raiders.{{sfn|Siefkes|2022|pp=64}}

In the [[Solomon Islands]] in the 1870s, a British captain saw a "dead body, dressed and cooked whole" offered for sale in a canoe. A settler treated the scene as "an every-day occurrence" and told him "that he had seen as many as twenty bodies lying on the beach, dressed and cooked". Decades later, a missionary reported that whole bodies were still offered "up and down the coast in canoes for sale" after battles, since human flesh was eaten "for pleasure".{{sfn|Siefkes|2022|p=237}}

In Fiji, whole human bodies cooked in earth ovens were served in carefully pre-arranged postures, according to anthropologist [[Lorimer Fison]] and several other sources:

{{Blockquote|The limbs having been arranged in the posture which it is intended they shall assume, banana leaves are wrapped round them to prevent the flesh falling off in the possible event of over-baking.... A hole of sufficient size is then dug in the earth, and filled with dry wood, which is set on fire. When it is well kindled, a number of stones, about the size of a man's fist, are thrown into it; and when the firewood is burnt down to a mass of glowing embers, some of the heated stones are lifted nimbly by tongs made of bent withes, and thrust within the dead man's body.... Presently the mound swells and rises; little cracks appear, whence issue jets of steam diffusing a savoury odour; and in due time, of which the Fijians are excellent judges, the culinary process is complete. The earth is then cautiously removed, the body lifted out, its wrappings taken off, its face painted, a wig or a turban placed upon its head, and there we have a "trussed frog" [as such steamed corpses were called] in all its unspeakable hideousness, staring at us with wide open, prominent, lack-lustre eyes. There is no burning or roasting: the body is cooked in its own steam, and the features are so little disturbed by the process that the dead man can almost always be recognised by those who knew him when he was alive.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Fison |first1=Lorimer |title=Tales from Old Fiji |date=1904 |publisher=A. Moring |location=London |pages=164–65 |url=https://archive.org/details/talesfromoldfiji00fisouoft |author-link1=Lorimer Fison }}</ref>{{sfn|Siefkes|2022|pp=214–215}}}}

[[File:A Cannibal Feast in Fiji, 1869 (1898).jpg|thumb|upright=1.15|A re-enactment from {{circa|1895}} of a cannibal feast reported to have occurred in [[Fiji]] in 1869]]
Within this archipelago, it was especially the [[Gau Island]]ers who "were famous for cooking bodies whole".{{sfn|Sahlins|1983|p=81}}

In [[New Caledonia]], a missionary named Ta'unga from the [[Cook Islands]] repeatedly saw how whole human bodies were cooked in [[earth oven]]s: "They tie the hands together and bundle them up together with the intestines. The legs are bent up and bound with hibiscus bark. When it is completed they lay the body out flat on its back in the earth oven, then when it is baked ready they cut it up and eat it."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Crocombe |first1=Ron |last2=Crocombe |first2=Marjorie |title=The Works of Ta'unga |date=1968 |publisher=Australian National University Press |location=Canberra |page=90}}</ref> Ta'unga commented: "One curious thing is that when a man is alive he has a human appearance, but after he is baked he looks more like a dog, as the lips are shriveled back and his teeth are bared."{{sfn|Crocombe|Crocombe|1968|p=91}}

Among the [[Māori people|Māori]] in [[New Zealand]], children captured in war campaigns were sometimes spit-roasted whole (after slitting open their bellies to remove the intestines), as various sources report.{{sfn|Hogg|1958|p=185}}{{sfn|Moon|2008|p=142}}{{sfn|Siefkes|2022|p=24}} Enslaved children, including teenagers, could meet the same fate, and whole babies were sometimes served at the tables of chiefs.{{sfn|Siefkes|2022|pp=30–31}}

In the [[Marquesas Islands]], captives (preferably women) killed for consumption "were spitted on long poles that entered between their legs and emerged from their mouths" and then roasted whole.{{sfn|Rubinstein|2014|p=18}} Similar customs had a long history: In [[Nuku Hiva]], the largest of these islands, archaeologists found the partially consumed "remains of a young child" that had been roasted whole in an oven during the 14th century or earlier.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Suggs |first1=Robert |title=The Island Civilizations of Polynesia |date=1960 |publisher=New American Library |location=New York}}</ref>

While a stereotype of cannibalism depicts the boiling of whole persons – often [[missionary|missionaries]] – in giant pots, this does not reflect reality. Human flesh was sometimes boiled in (normal-sized) pots, but whole human bodies rarely were.{{snf|Constantine|2006|p=39}}