LITMIR.BIZ

      Figure 1.1 “Dog-headed cannibals on a Caribbean island.” Hand-colored woodcut. In Lorenz Fries, Uslegung der Mercarthen oder Cartha Marina (Strasbourg, 1525). This image of the Americas closely resembles Marco Polo’s description of cynocephali in Southeast Asia. (Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.)

      There are fewer references to monsters, monstrous humans, and other supernatural marvels in the Travels than one might expect. Polo is skeptical about some accounts, reporting that the Pygmies supposedly brought back from India are in fact elaborate frauds created from monkeys. However, he readily accepts more dubious creatures, such as unicorns. He describes people who have tails “as thick as [a] dog[’s]” but are not covered in hair, as he expected.41 The most well known of the creatures that Polo encountered are the dog-headed men who supposedly inhabit the Andaman Islands.42 He describes them as idolaters who live like beasts, but more remarkably “all the men of this island have heads like dogs, and teeth and eyes like dogs; for I assure you that the whole aspect of their faces is that of big mastiffs. They are a very cruel race: whenever they can get hold of a man who is not one of their kind, they devour him.”43 Not only are the residents of the Andaman Islands cynocephalic, but they are also man-eaters. The question of whether or not they are fully human is important, for cannibalism implies the consumption of the same species; a dog that eats a human being is not a cannibal but simply a man-eater. If we are to accept that humans come in a variety of physical forms, including with the heads of other animals, then the Andaman Islanders are guilty of consuming their own species. However, if we discount the possibility of diverse humans forms, then the Cynocephali are a different species altogether and so cannot be the recipient of moral condemnation for their act.

      The dubious fourteenth-century travel narrative of Sir John Mandeville also describes the “evil customs” of lands to the east. It is likely that Mandeville never actually existed but was a character created by an unknown individual. Yet his travelogue was enormously popular and appealed to the desires of some literate Europeans who wished to retake Jerusalem and continue the Crusades. Far more copies of his narrative survive than Polo’s; it remained a best seller well into the sixteenth century and was especially popular in England. The work itself drew from the writings of other travelers, Crusader histories, general chronicles, and encyclopedic works. Mandeville describes women who transform into dragons, give birth to snakes, or reside in women-only lands. He also writes about people in Africa with feet so large that they can be used like parasols, and giants, Cyclopes, and centaurs in Asia who are the offspring of human women and demons.44 Following the patterns of the sources he drew from, the author of Mandeville’s travels indicates that the farther one travels from Europe, the more marvels one will encounter but also the more riches and natural resources the lands will possess. It seems that the lands occupied by the most monstrous beings were often the richest.

      Similar to Polo’s work, much of Mandeville’s Travels is devoted to reporting the gendered and sexual customs of the people he encounters. He describes widespread polygyny but also women who dress indecently or like men, and even one island where a class of men are charged with deflowering all brides on the night of their wedding to other men. In the land of the legendary Christian prince of India, Prester John, Mandeville finds uncommon virtue among vice, noting that Prester John has multiple wives but has sex with them only four times a year for procreative purposes.45

      Unlike the true tales of Crusader cannibalism, Mandeville reserves his accusations of anthropophagy for non-Europeans only. His portrayal of the practices of the people of the Isle of Lamary presage many of the descriptors that European writers would later employ to depict American cannibals. The people of Lamary are described as unabashedly naked, promiscuous, and communalist. However, it was their practice of cannibalism that most astonished Mandeville: “In that country there is a cursed custom, for they eat more gladly men’s flesh than any other flesh. . . . Thither go merchants and bring with them children to sell to them of the country, and they buy them. And if they be fat they eat them anon. And if they be lean they feed them till they be fat and then they eat them. And they say, that it is the best and sweetest of all the world.” Not only are the people of Lamary cannibals, but they also trade in the flesh of children. Curiously, however, he explains that they do not wear clothes because Adam and Eve were naked, suggesting that the people of Lamary have some primitive understanding of Christianity. Beyond Lamary, and in fact beyond the entrance to Hell, another group of cannibals reportedly live ready to capture any unfortunate passersby. In addition to enjoying the flesh of men more “than any other flesh,” these people were supposedly twenty-eight to thirty feet tall. Mandeville also tells a tale about a group of priests in the lands beyond Prester John’s country who disarticulate the corpses of people and feed most of the remains to birds. The head is reserved for the son of the dead man, who takes it home and serves it to his friends and family during a great feast. He then uses his dead father’s skull as a drinking vessel.46 This story, along with many of Mandeville’s other tales of cannibals, come almost word for word from the less well-known fourteenth-century travelogue of Friar Odoric of Pordenone.47 The dog-headed cannibals are also mentioned in Odoric’s writings.48

      Discursive Precedents for the New World

      It may seem logical to dismiss cannibalism as an element of the past, something that we have moved beyond, but this ignores the contribution of cannibalism in constructing modern identity. Cannibalism is an inseparable feature of racism, colonialism, and sexism. The trope of cannibalism was employed by European writers as an important justification for the subjugation of peoples. It was the discursive presence of cannibalism, which was consistently linked to understandings of gender and sexuality, that indicated savagery long before race, as we understand it in the modern context, became fully developed.

      When Portuguese caravels began exploring the African coast in the first half of the fifteenth century, they were in possession of technological advances that allowed them to travel farther and faster and to navigate more efficiently. These explorations and conquests, particularly in the Canary Islands, set the stage for the conquest of the Americas. The Spanish and the Portuguese first tested their imperial machines on Atlantic islands, subjugating people and establishing mercantilist ventures that would lead to unprecedented royal profits and a new thirst for expansion. Columbus did not decide in isolation to venture west to discover a new route to Asia; he was born into a rapidly changing world dominated by Italian merchants with a burgeoning desire to possess and consume the world’s resources. He was not simply curious about what lay to the west; he wanted to find riches and respectability there. He was driven by competing desires for gold, for glory, and for God. As we all are, Columbus was a product of his time. Born into a world on the cusp of modernity, he inherited intellectual legacies about the wonders of the far reaches of the globe from the medieval world, just as he possessed the mercantilist, empirical desires of early modern empires.

      Medieval tales of cannibalism reveal a fascination with the unknown and a profound wonder at the diversity of the world. Cannibals were almost always portrayed as outsiders; whether they lived within the boundaries of “civilization” or somewhere far from European influence, they were Other. Travel writings demonstrate that the connections evident

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