Around 900,000 years ago in what is now Spain, Homo antecessor, an ancient relative of humans, practiced cannibalism likely out of practicality, according to a study published in June 2019 in the Journal of Human Evolution. Fellow hominins were moderately nutritious and easy to catch, making them an excellent prey option.
Our closer and more recent relatives, the Neanderthals, were also cannibals on occasion. Archaeologists have discovered evidence of Neanderthal cannibalism in a few different spots around the world, including a cave in El Sidrón, Spain, another cave at Moula-Guercy, France, and most recently at a cave in Belgium. Beyond cannibalism, it appears that Neaderthals also made tools out of their comrades' remains.
The Wari' people of Brazil practiced cannibalism of their war enemies and their own dead. Eating their enemies was their way of expressing hatred and anger. But the group also consumed the vast majority of their dead up until the 1960s. For them, it was their way of mourning, honoring and respecting the deceased members of their tribe. Beth A. Conklin, an anthropologist at Vanderbilt University, lived with the Wari' for more than a year and published her description of the Wari' tribe's history of cannibalism in the journal American Ethnologist in 1995.
Until the end of the 18th century, it was not uncommon for Europeans to seek the flesh of a dead human for medicinal consumption, Smithsonian reported. For example, Paracelsus, the 16th-century physician, believed blood was healthy to drink. Although drinking fresh blood was uncommon, people unable to afford apothecary products would stand by at executions and pay a small fee for a cup of fresh blood from the condemned.
Well, they didn't have refrigerators back then.
