[dufekin]

Cannibalism continues to this day in some parts of the Congo. Perpetually famished North Koreans sometimes eat their own dead for sustenance. And I believe that there remain some cannibals in very remote highlands on the island of New Guinea, but they may have converted in the past decade or so. Most cannibals today, insofar as I can tell, only eat the corpses of the deceased as an alternative to burial; they do not kill people for the purpose of eating them.

But the people mentioned in this article are almost certainly NOT cannibals. Cannibalism is fairly rare in part because consumption of infected flesh presents and easy conduit for the transfer of disease. A cannibalistic tribe in Indonesia was dying rapidly in the past century because of a rogue prion (Crutzefelt-Jacob disease?) transferred by consumption of infected flesh.

[derheimwill]

Cannibalism continues to this day in some parts of the Congo.

Thank you for the correction. I was only thinking of the south seas.