Guild Wars 2

Dustfinger.9510:

I know there’s a religious group in India that practices cannabalism in ceremony. i forget their name but they wait for bodies to be sent down river in funeral rights and eat small portions. But I don’;\t think they eat the brain either. Only meat.

Yes, I believe those are the ascetics of Shiva. Apparently they sometimes come and sit on a corpse, which is meant to be a great honour to the deceased and their family and people are supposed to leave him alone. They sometimes then eat the corpse for sustenance.

It is hardly a widespread practice however.

The charr culture would mean they would produce more children as the parents would just dump at the fahar. So they wouldn’t worry about looking after the child and they would have more.

Dustfinger.9510:

Dustfinger.9510:

I know there’s a religious group in India that practices cannabalism in ceremony. i forget their name but they wait for bodies to be sent down river in funeral rights and eat small portions. But I don’;\t think they eat the brain either. Only meat.

Yes, I believe those are the ascetics of Shiva. Apparently they sometimes come and sit on a corpse, which is meant to be a great honour to the deceased and their family and people are supposed to leave him alone. They sometimes then eat the corpse for sustenance.

It is hardly a widespread practice however.

That is just kittened up.

No, not widespread but an example of a cannabalistic culture that has survived. i also don’t think they eat too much of the corpse. Just small portions if i remember right.

Ah! Just found out the Karanakwa who were previously thought to be fierce cannibals may have been mistaken for neighboring Atakapa tribes since there are accounts of them looking down on other human eaters including their known cannibal neighbors and europeans who resorted to it while starving. So interestingly, here we have neighboring cultures, one who did eat humans and one who probably didn’t.

Dustfinger.9510:

marnick.4305:

Cannibalism in humans isn’t practiced mostly because evolutionary we’re very much at risk for prion disease. Culture doesn’t have much to do with that, it’s just that cannibalistic tribes tend to go extinct.

There’s only 5 known prion infections and they all need one particular protein in the host. Species which don’t use this protein are immune to prion disease. In those species, selection against cannibalism doesn’t happen and likewise in a sentient species without this protein, cannibalism wouldn’t be the same problem.
If the Charr cranial matter is of a different kind of proteins, then prion disease isn’t nearly as much a problem. There’s plenty of carnivores practicing cannibalism in the world with Alligators being the most well known.

Personally, I’m of the opinion that they would probably have little problem eating intelligent beings becasue they refer to humans as “meat” in the last game. But animals practicing cannabalism doesn’t speak to the moral ramifications that was refered to. Even eating human meat in extreme survival situations has been a strong taboo in many cultures. The algonquins have the story of the wendigo to disuade themsleves from resorting to it, prefering to suicide or resigning to starvation.

Cultural ramifications virtually always follow evolutionary imperatives and if fact are usually social constructs around instincts. If cannibalism leads to disease, both culture and evolutionary wiring will prevent you from harming yourself. If cannibalism doesn’t lead to disease, culture will have no opinion on it. Cannibalism in Charr is culturally possible if and only if they are immune to prion disease.

Interesting. While it’s certinly possible and even likely that that the taboo of cannibalism evolved do to an instinct to survive the algonquins preference of suicide and staravation seems to conflict with the need to survvie.

Then we have instances like the Karanakwa and Atakapa tribes where neighboring cultures with identical immunities differ in their stance on cannibalism. Some tribes actively practiced aggressive cannibalism and thrived while another also thrived with the taboo of cannibalism being shunned. This would suggest that it isn’t all dependant on evolutionary wiring. Embolism brings up a good point. Do we know if cannibalism will definatly kill off a culture since we have examples of cannibles that thrive for thousands of years?

Don’t know much about Charr but we have to differentiate 2 things
1) Cannibalism as a food resource
2) Cannibalism as a religious practise

In case of most Cannibalism cultures in world Cannibalism is used as a religious practise, rather then main or secondary food source. Eating corpse have a meaning of paying respect for the dead, passing virtues of dead to others in tribe or gaining strength/wisdom from them. Generally there were whole ritual surrounding it.

The cases where Cannibalism was used as food resource are usually limited to one-time situations, and were not recurrent practise. Remember that humans are tribe species(and so are the Charr) and not lone predators. If you view cannibalism not in perspective of single person who is hungry but take a view of whole tribe/population it’s extremely inefficient as it’s lower population and it mean less offspring etc and so it lower they likeness of tribe/species survival with huge possibility of spreading disease. Eating people that die from other reasons is vary dangerous, since they were usually diseased, and the only way to get stable supply of not diseased meat is hunting/breeding. It can be a food resource in dire situations, when there is no other food resource, but is not option in other cases.

Please also note that although they were ceases of great hunger when many people die, there were not a case of food shortage so severe and long that would endanger existence of whole human population in region.

One thing I’m wondering, how long do humans live in Tyria? Because apparently a lot is measured relative to humans.
Seeing as how humans of Tyria aren’t particularly technologically advanced and by extension their medical knowledge is probably limited. Granted they might borrow the expertise of the other races but I don’t think a human would survive even the most routine Charr medical treatment…

If wikipedia is trustworthy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy) then I don’t image humans would live much past 60 (which would be their maximum not their average) so that means Asura reach only about 70 and Char probably around 50. Of course most of these relative measures were based on what developers said and they were probably speaking of modern day human life expectancy (which unless you’re white and in a first world country like Canada or Australia is still horrible).

Of course tyrian humans do have magic, but it’s not day to day, “can’t walk down a corridor without bumping into magic” ala Hogwards style of magic so I’m not sure to what extent magic is used for medical purposes or if the common man on the street has access to these sort of services.

Honestly! has nobody realised that in the last 25 years Sylvari have caught up to, and surpassed many of Tyia’s oldest races? if they keep going at this rate they could easily declare war on the rest of us! Though, the Pale Tree seems to care about each individual Sylvari, and it is unlikely she would endanger their species.

Well, I have a feeling that the only reason that the Pale Tree has created as many sylvari is because of how many are going to be lost in the war against the dragons. When expecting large amounts of casualties it is best to over-estimate than under. After this she can drop her production rate to something more acceptable. Plus they haven’t surpassed any of the oldest races. Humans have settlements throughout Kryta, not to mention the unavailable Cantha and Elona. And the Charr have societies located in the Blood Legion Homelands and “east of the blazeridge mountains”.

For all we know human healing magic could be superior to modern medicine. The lack of certain lifestyle factors could also help increase life expectancy.

Also note that the maximum age someone could live to (as far as this could be determined) is relatively similar across human history, it’s the chances that people will live to see that age that varies. Also bear in mind that life expectancy at birth is heavily skewed due to infant mortality rates experiencing a much steeper decline with time than adult mortality rates.