New Guinean Cannibalistic Ritual

People in numerous New Guinean villages traditionally ate the corpses of the recently deceased to prevent worms from devouring their loved ones' remains. As a gesture of love and mourning, they removed the brain, mashed it with ferns, steamed it in bamboo tubes, and consumed them. They ate everything else except the gall bladders. This practice caused brain-wasting disorders such as Kuru to spread through generations. Because Kuru has such a lengthy incubation time, instances continued to be documented even after this practice was discontinued in 1960.

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