Cannibalism is part of the great cultural legacies of our species. In times past, for instance, we would eat our honoured dead to gain their wisdom. In medieval times, too, it was believed that memories were stored in the cerebrospinal fluid. Sadly, it seems that memory cannot be transferred biochemically — which is just as well, otherwise Stephen Hawking would have had to get his wheelchair equipped with BEN HUR-style spikes and a turbo option.

The Sacrament of one of our more popular cults is based upon the concept of transubstantiation: that the piece of bread that the priest pops in your mouth (and if you’re lucky that’s all he’ll pop in your mouth) transforms, within your gut, into the flesh of the son of God. This is magic cannibalism, as it is understood that the son of God manifests on Earth in human form. (I cannot deny that I’d be more interested if it somehow turned into God Meat. Religion has always been a disappointment to me.)

Over the centuries, these ideas have naturally mutated through the “Chinese Whispers” effect. There was a period, for instance, where communities in northern Italy decided that, if the Church essentially condoned Jesus meat in their belly, then human meat in general must be fair game. This led to a Papal edict banning cannibalism, due to the number of good Catholics in that region getting fat and sassy on a diet of anything in shoes.

Said edict was in fact only modified in recent years, following a planeload of Roman Catholics getting stranded somewhere foul and reduced to eating their dead to survive, and then realising that gnawing weakly on corpses would get them excommunicated. The redrafted law now states that chewing humans is acceptable when the only other option is death, because eschewing the chewing would be tantamount to suicide, and that’s a cardinal sin.

This obviously applies only to exceptional circumstances: eating your dad because Marks & Spencers was closed for the bank holiday is still an economy single to Hell.

(from a piece written for WIRED UK in May 2010)