The Papuan Korowai tribe lives in the dense jungle in the southeast of the Indonesian province of Papua on the island of New Guinea. Until the 1970s, they didn’t know there were other people besides them.
Korowai are often called ‘the last cannibals on earth’ because they still practice eating their own kind. And not because of hunger, but purely for ritual reasons.
The Korowai way of life, even after nearly 50 years of contact with advanced civilization, still remains almost primitive. They still hunt only with a bow and arrow and wear almost no clothing. And their habits are causing shock and bewilderment among the world community.
From time to time, curious enthusiasts venture to visit the Papuan tribes, who are not particularly hospitable to strangers, and some even manage to live among them for a while and observe their way of life.
Last year, one of those adventurers named Drew Binski lived among the Momuna tribe, neighbors of the Korowai. And they told him something interesting about the practice of Korowai cannibalism.
“I learned that the Korowai do not eat humans for pleasure or for their nutritional value,” he explained. “It’s just a form of punishment. If you steal anything, you will be burned at the stake and eaten.”
The Korowai also believe that people’s bodies can be possessed by an evil demon called Hakua, which ‘eats’ a person from the inside and turns him into a sorcerer.
The Korowai believe that mysterious deaths, such as illnesses, are due to Hakua or evil demons taking human form,” Drew explains. “It is said that the Hakua disguise themselves as friends or relatives in an attempt to gain the trust of the tribesmen so that they can kill them later.
“The Korowai tradition is to eat anyone they meet Hakua. This is done to protect the members of the tribe. For them it is part of a justice system based on revenge.”
It happens as follows: after a person’s unnatural death, a shaman or a tribe medicine man studies the body of the deceased and then, with the help of special rituals, finds the person whose body is possessed by the hakua demon.
It is believed that this possessed person must be killed to prevent further unnatural deaths in the tribe. The tribe collectively kills him and then eats his body.
In this case, the tribesmen do not kill the possessed person to punish him. Ritual murder is seen as an act of mercy, freeing the possessed person from the power of the inner demon.
“By consuming haqua, the tribe believes they are destroying an evil spirit and preventing it from causing further damage. The killing of Haqua is considered a solemn and necessary act, done for the protection and well-being of the community.”
The body is eaten almost completely, only hair, nails and genitals are not eaten. Children under the age of 13 are prohibited from eating the flesh of a possessed hakua as they are considered too weak and at risk of becoming possessed themselves.
It is not known whether the Korowai will face the unpleasant consequences of cannibalism, such as Kuru prion disease in another Papuan Fore tribe.
Kuru is caused by the buildup of infectious, misfolded proteins called prions in the nervous system. The disease is spread by cannibalism of infected tissue (i.e. when an individual eats the human tissue of an infected individual).