There were two kinds of "cannibalism" in ancient China. The first situation is that people are forced to eat the same food in order to survive because of serious social famine caused by natural disasters or wars. For example, in Bai Juyi's poem, "At the age of twenty, there was a drought in the south of the Yangtze River, and people in Quzhou ate people." Even during the Jingkang Rebellion at the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, people had to eat human flesh to survive, and human flesh would be publicly sold in collections, and the price of human flesh was cheaper than pork.
This situation is cruel, so there is a "delicious" situation; The second situation is cruel cannibalism. For example, people listen to left witchcraft and eat human flesh to cure diseases, and take revenge out of hatred. There are also people who simply like to eat human flesh. For example, Zhu Can at the end of Sui Dynasty often caught folk children steaming meat to eat, and even there was an official matter of replacing rations with human flesh. For example, during the Sixteen Kingdoms period, the former Qin led the army and called the killed enemy soldiers "cooked food" as troops. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, due to the severe famine, the phenomenon of folk cannibalism increased sharply. For example, The Five Elements of Ming History (Volume 30) says in the sixth place: "In the first year of Chongzhen, Shaanxi was starved, and Yan and Gong ganged up as thieves.
In two years, Shanxi and Shaanxi were hungry. In five years, Huai and Yang starved and died.
In six years, there was a great famine in Shaanxi and Shanxi. Huai, Yang Hungry, a couple jumped over a tree and threw themselves into the river.
Yancheng instructor Wang Mingzuo hanged himself in the official residence. In seven years, the capital was hungry, and Gong Ting, an imperial envoy, drew a picture of the hungry.
Taiyuan is hungry, and people eat people. In nine years, Nanyang was hungry and cold, and a mother cooked her daughter.
Jiangxi is hungry, too In the past ten years, Zhejiang was hungry and cold, and father, son and brother, husband and wife ate each other.
In twelve years, there were famines in Guinea, Shandong, Shanxi, Shaanxi and Jiangxi. Hungry people in Henan, people eat for the sky, especially in Lushi, Song and Yiyang counties.
"But this cannibalism was not the most extreme in the Ming Dynasty. The most extreme thing is to dig the rotting body out of the grave and eat it. At that time, people had no choice but to do so in order to survive. The sixth chapter of the Five Elements of Ming History (Volume 35) describes the famine in Chongzhen in the thirteenth year: "Northern Hebei, Shandong, Henan, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Zhejiang and Sanwu are all hungry.
From Huaibei to Jinan, all the bark was eaten, all of them were eaten. "The' rot' here refers to being buried underground, while' rot' refers to carrion; Rotten corpses must be eaten secretly. It can be seen that the famine at that time had reached a very serious level, and the people did not care so much about their own survival. This time, such a horrible page in China's history was staged.
In fact, eating rotting corpses is not only a necessity for ancient China people, but also because their understanding of corpses is completely different from that of modern people. The ancients thought that the corpse was a special kind of substance, especially those that did not rot for a long time. They had a strong curiosity and thought that such a corpse might have some medicinal and nourishing value.
The book "Different Gardens" written by Liu, a Song Dynasty man in the Southern Dynasties, records a story like this: "During the Yuanjia period, Hu Jia's daughter opened the tomb of the King of Yi, while Qingzhou people opened the tomb and got a gold hook, which was left in the stone. There may be no evidence for this, but Fang Jing's body is still intact in Yixi. Zombie human flesh is comparable to medicinal materials, and the sergeant divides it. "
This is a typical reflection of the idea of treating corpses as medicine. This idea was also very popular in the Ming Dynasty, so it was recorded in Li Shizhen's "Compendium of Materia Medica" that human hair, urine, stool, milk, fetal cells, teeth and skull can all be used as medicine, which has become the secret recipe for treating certain diseases, such as "overhead", "salty, astringent and flat", and can be "filled with essence and refreshed".
This idea that human parts can be used as prescriptions has induced the excavation of corpses to some extent.
2. Did ancient grave robbers really eat corpses? In the history of China, official history or romance novels all recorded "cannibalism", and Liu Bei was "entertained" by human flesh in The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. There were two kinds of "cannibalism" in ancient China. The first situation is that people are forced to eat the same food in order to survive because of serious social famine caused by natural disasters or wars. For example, in Bai Juyi's poem, "At the age of twenty, there was a drought in the south of the Yangtze River, and people in Quzhou ate people." Even during the Jingkang Rebellion at the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, people had to eat human flesh to survive, and human flesh would be publicly sold in collections, and the price of human flesh was cheaper than pork. This situation is cruel, so there is a "delicious" situation; The second situation is cruel cannibalism. For example, people listen to left witchcraft and eat human flesh to cure diseases, and take revenge out of hatred. There are also people who simply like to eat human flesh. For example, Zhu Can at the end of Sui Dynasty often caught folk children steaming meat to eat, and even there was an official thing that human flesh replaced rations. For example, during the Sixteen Kingdoms period, the former Qin led the army and called the killed enemy soldiers "cooked food" as troops.
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, due to the severe famine, the phenomenon of folk cannibalism increased sharply. For example, The Five Elements of Ming History (Volume 30) says in the sixth place: "In the first year of Chongzhen, Shaanxi was starved, and Yan and Gong ganged up as thieves. In two years, Shanxi and Shaanxi were hungry. In five years, Huai and Yang starved and died. In six years, there was a great famine in Shaanxi and Shanxi. Huai, Yang Hungry, a couple jumped over a tree and threw themselves into the river. Yancheng instructor Wang Mingzuo hanged himself in the official residence. In seven years, the capital was hungry, and Gong Ting, an imperial envoy, drew a picture of the hungry. Taiyuan is hungry, and people eat people. In nine years, Nanyang was hungry and cold, and a mother cooked her daughter. Jiangxi is hungry, too In the past ten years, Zhejiang was hungry and cold, and father, son and brother, husband and wife ate each other. In twelve years, there were famines in Guinea, Shandong, Shanxi, Shaanxi and Jiangxi. Henan is hungry and people eat each other, especially in Lushi, Song and Yiyang counties. " However, eating human flesh in the Ming Dynasty was not the most extreme. The most extreme thing is to dig out the rotting body from the grave and eat it. At that time, the people had no choice but to do so. The sixth chapter of the Five Elements of Ming History (Volume 35) describes the famine in Chongzhen in the thirteenth year: "Northern Hebei, Shandong, Henan, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Zhejiang and Sanwu are all hungry. From Huaibei to Jinnan, the bark is exhausted and eaten. " "Rotten" here refers to being buried underground, while "rotten" refers to carrion; Rotten corpses must be eaten secretly. It can be seen that the famine at that time had reached a very serious level, and the people did not care so much about their own survival. This time, such a horrible page in China's history was staged.
In fact, eating rotting corpses is not only a necessity for ancient China people, but also because their understanding of corpses is completely different from that of modern people. The ancients thought that the corpse was a special kind of substance, especially those that did not rot for a long time. They had a strong curiosity and thought that such a corpse might have some medicinal and nourishing value. The book "Different Gardens" written by Liu, a Song Dynasty man in the Southern Dynasties, records a story like this: "During the Yuanjia period, Hu Jia's daughter opened the tomb of the King of Yi, while Qingzhou people opened the tomb and got a gold hook, which was left in the stone. There may be no evidence for this, but Fang Jing's body is still intact in Yixi. Zombie human flesh is comparable to medicinal materials, and the sergeant divides it. " This is a typical reflection of the idea of treating corpses as medicine. This concept was also very popular in the Ming Dynasty, so it was recorded in Li Shizhen's "Compendium of Materia Medica" that human hair, urine, stool, milk, fetal cells, teeth, skull, etc. can be used as medicine, which has become the secret recipe for treating certain diseases, such as "the top of the head" and "salty and astringent", which can "replenish essence and refresh". This concept that human parts can be used as medicine to a certain extent.
3. Has there been any cannibalism in history? Historically, cannibals also divided the taste of human flesh into three or six categories.
In the first year of Jingkang in the Northern Song Dynasty (A.D. 1 126), nomadic people invaded the south and wars broke out everywhere. The officers and men and the people had no food to eat, so they salted the dead and dried them into dried meat to eat. Fan Wen, a native of Dengzhou, organized the rebels to resist gold. After the defeat, they sailed across the sea to Lin 'an, and the team still ate dried human flesh after entering the city.
They call this kind of man's dried meat "a sheep with two legs", among which the old and thin man is called "idle fire" (meaning that this kind of human flesh is old and needs more fire), the young woman is called "don't envy the sheep" (meaning that this kind of person is more delicious than mutton), and the child is called "rotten bone" (meaning that the child's meat is tender and cooked with bones). At the end of the Yuan Dynasty, there was chaos in the world, and the loyal officials stationed in Huai You were short of food, and they also arrested people for food.
They think that children's meat is superior, followed by women's meat, and then men's. They call human flesh "thinking about meat", which means it's delicious enough to make people miss it.