Using new case data from South American, Australian, and Papua New Guinean societies, the authors explore how cultural ideas for humanity are reflected in seemingly universal understandings of our potential for anthropophagy. Whether or not a society actually practices cannibalism, these conceptions are often articulated at the level of folklore and myth, where flesh-eating is imbued with symbolic meanings centered on ideas about regeneration after death, the equivalence between human flesh and food, and the morality of social exchange in and between groups. Thus, cannibalism emerges at...