Dust To Dust

by Patrick Appel

A sublime bit from a London Review of Books article on An Intellectual History of Cannibalism by Catalin Avramescu:

Man and other animals feed on the substance of their predecessors, because human bodies turn to dust and are scattered over the earth and into the air. Thus they are assimilated and become ‘legumes’. There is not a single man who has not ingested a tiny piece of our forefathers: ‘This is why it is said that we are all anthropophagi. Nothing is more reasonable after a battle: not only do we kill our brothers, but after two or three years we shall eat them, after they have put down roots on the battlefield.

The rest of the review, particularly the lede, is much more gruesome.

(Hat tip: Sunil)