Human nutrition is a cultural datum with the same relevance at least as the merely and simply alimentary datum. Giving particular attention to the relationship between cultural datum and alimentary/"natural" datum, this article considers a very uncommon food, the man. The man becomes, in a highly ritualistic structure, food for another man, who his turn lives in the prospect, highly significant for his culture, to become himself food for other man one day. Due to the fact that Anthropology recognizes the importance of the cultural datum related to human nutrition, it becomes an essential prospect of analysis. On the other hand, alimentary paradigms themselves will be the outline of the critical study about the characteristic of comprehension/digestion of the cultural difference by Anthropology. Furthermore, putting ritual ("holy") anthropophagy at the centre of our work, we are obliged to adopt the historical-religious methodology of study point of view. The usefulness of this prospect of analysis is completely contained in the adjective "ritual", that is related to this specific form of anthropophagy. Consequently we have to clarify these terms/concepts - to which the historical-religious school dedicated big attention -, many times assumed without criticism, giving a appreciable contribution to contemporary historical and anthropological studies. Therefore this text intends to analyse anthropophagy in the New World during the XVI and XVII centuries, related to an anthropological prospect of study and examined through a methodology of research, i. e. History of Religions. As far as this debate concerns, we refer to the "Italian School of History of Religions", recognizable in the pioneering work of Raffaele Pettazzoni and profitably carried on by Brelich, De Martino, Lanternari, Sabbattucci, Massenzio.
Tupi Cultures; Anthropophagy; History of Religions; sacrifice; rituality; logic of mith; ritualistic exchange