The Benefits of Cannibalism

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CNN.com's John Sutter says cannibalism is not as deviant and marginal as we'd like to believe. But it can help focus our attention, he says: "It can drive us to go look in the mirror and wonder who that is looking back at us" The episode also explores whether humans are hardwired against eating members of their own species; if so, why? We'll talk more about nature versus nurture next time.

We look into the evidence from primatology and archaeology to find the roots of human cannibalism in nature or nurture. Along the way we find shadows our own dual nature between sexy hippy bonobos and hawkish war chimps; learn how homo sapiens slept with their food, visit a stone age cave of nightmares in Britain; and join the debate over what seems to have been a short-lived fad for eating humans among the Ancestral Pueblo.

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