CANNIBALISM!
For centuries in the Fiji Islands, tribal chiefs would bring out their best utensils for special people, not to serve them, but to eat them. The tribal chiefs were cannibals, and the special people were the meal.
Fijians lived in the "Cannibal Islands" for thousands of years. Later, Capt. Bligh reported that he sighted sails of Fijian boats in the distance - possibly the single-hulled outrigger canoes that were the fastest known vessels of the era. Bligh had been warned of Fiji’s dangerous reefs and ferocious cannibals. Many ships had been lost, and many men had gone into lovo earth ovens before European settlers finally established a town at the site of Levuka in the 1820’s. Despite Fiji’s reputation for cannibalism, only one white person was killed and eaten in Fiji.
The cannibal fork, or iculanibokola, was used by attendants during ritual feasts to feed individuals considered too holy to touch food. The influence of Christianity ended cannibalism in Fiji by the close of the 19th century, but Western fascination with the grisly practice continued. Cannibalism no longer exists.
