Cannibalism

And yet the very word “cannibal” is intimately connected with our collective history. It did not exist before Columbus’s voyages to the New World. What was then known as “anthropophagy” got its modern name through a transliteration of Caribs into the Spanish Canabilli or Cannibales. Columbus wrote the word—for the first time anywhere—in his journal on 3 November 1493: “These islands are inhabited by Canabilli, a wild, unconquered race which feeds on human flesh. I would be right to call them anthropophagi (man-eaters). They wage unceasing wars against gentle and timid Indians to supply flesh; this is their booty and is what they hunt. They ravage, despoil, and terrorize the Indians ruthlessly.” Before Columbus encountered the New World, the only word for man-eating men was Greek and had been in use at least as far back as Herodotus. Columbus was predisposed to find “anthropophagi” because he had read Sir John Mandeville’s book of alleged travels, and Mandeville had peppered his pages with imagined accounts of people-eating. It was all nonsense Mandeville had made up (or had stolen from writers like Herodotus and Marco Polo), but he also included a detailed proof of the roundness of the world, based on angular measurements of the stars’ positions using an astrolabe. He made clear the possibility of circumnavigation. Columbus must have found the book very reassuring.