They Called Us Savages: The Cannibalism at the Heart of European Medicine — Teacher Resources

They Called Us Savages — Part 1

The Cannibalism at the Heart of European Medicine — Teacher Resources

While Europeans were calling Africans savages — their kings were drinking powdered human skulls mixed with chocolate.

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Quiz — They Called Us Savages — Part 1

PART A — MULTIPLE CHOICE

1. Approximately how long did the widespread practice of corpse medicine persist in Europe?

C) Over two hundred years — from the 1400s through the 1700s.

Students should be able to state the full duration — over two hundred years — and understand what that timeframe means. This was not a brief historical episode or a crisis-driven temporary measure. Corpse medicine persisted across multiple generations of European physicians, pharmacists, and patients, through the full height of the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the early Enlightenment. Students who answer A, B, or D are significantly understating the duration or misidentifying the cause of the practice.

2. What was Mumia?

B) A pharmaceutical preparation made from ground Egyptian mummies, sold in European apothecary shops.

Students should be able to identify Mumia precisely — not just as a mummy product, but as a licensed pharmaceutical preparation sold in licensed European apothecary shops across England, France, Germany, and Italy. The word derives from the Arabic mummiya, meaning bitumen. The presence of Mumia on the shelves of licensed European pharmacies demonstrates that this was mainstream medicine, not a fringe practice. Students who answer A, C, or D are misidentifying what Mumia was or confusing it with other elements of the lesson.

3. Why did European merchants begin producing fake mummies in the 1500s?

B) Because Egypt banned the export of mummies and demand in Europe was too high to stop.

Students should understand the cause-and-effect relationship documented in the lesson. Egypt banned the export of mummies in the 1500s in response to the scale of European demand. European merchants, rather than accepting the ban, responded by producing counterfeits — taking fresh corpses, drying them, coating them in resin, and selling them as ancient Egyptian royalty. The ban did not stop demand; it created a black market. Students who answer A, C, or D are misidentifying the motivation for the fake mummy trade.

4. According to the lesson, which groups of Europeans participated in corpse medicine?

C) Royalty, priests, and scientists — the full spectrum of European elites.

Students should be able to identify all three groups named in the lesson and understand the implication: corpse medicine was not a practice of the poor, the desperate, or the uneducated. It was a feature of European elite culture. The King of England consumed it. Clergy participated. Licensed scientists prescribed and consumed it. This matters because the same elites who practiced corpse medicine were simultaneously constructing the ideological framework of European civilization and African savagery. Students who answer A, B, or D are understating the social breadth of the practice.

5. What did one dealer in Alexandria confess about the fake mummy trade?

B) That he could produce forty fake mummies in a single batch.

Students should be able to state the specific number — forty — and understand what it reveals. A single dealer, in a single operation, could produce forty counterfeit mummies per batch. This is not a small-scale artisan trade. It is an industrial operation driven by insatiable European demand. The bodies used were executed criminals, plague victims, and enslaved people — including enslaved Africans — coated in resin and sold as ancient pharaohs. Students who answer A, C, or D are misidentifying or contradicting the documented testimony.

6. What were fake mummies made from according to the lesson?

C) Fresh corpses — executed criminals, plague victims, and enslaved people — dried and coated in resin.

Students should be able to identify all three categories of bodies used in the fake mummy trade: executed criminals, plague victims, and enslaved people. The inclusion of enslaved people in this list is significant — it means that African people were targeted not only as the original source of genuine mummies but also as raw material for the counterfeit trade. Students who answer A, B, or D are misidentifying what fake mummies were made from or significantly understating what the lesson documents.

7. What is the central contradiction documented in this lesson?

B) European elites called African peoples savage while simultaneously consuming human flesh, blood, and bone as medicine.

Students should be able to articulate the central argument of the lesson in precise terms. The contradiction is not merely that Europeans were hypocrites — it is that the specific behavior they attributed to Africans as evidence of savagery was being practiced by European elites as licensed medicine at the same historical moment. The label of savage was not a description of African behavior. It was a political tool deployed to construct hierarchy — by people who were themselves consuming human bodies. Students who answer A, C, or D are identifying real historical injustices but not the central contradiction documented in this lesson.

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PART B — SHORT ANSWER KEY POINTS

Question 8. The lesson documents that European royalty, clergy, and scientists consumed human flesh, blood, and bone as medicine from the 1400s through the 1700s — while simultaneously applying the label 'savage' to African peoples. Using at least two specific details from the lesson, explain what this contradiction reveals about how the 'savage' label functioned in early modern European culture.

A strong answer should include:

• At least two specific details: European royalty drank powdered human skull mixed with chocolate; the King of England consumed a preparation called The King's Drops made from human skull dissolved in alcohol; licensed physicians prescribed human fat, human blood, and human bone marrow; these same elites were sending missionaries to Africa to 'civilize' its people
• What the contradiction reveals about the savage label: the label was not a description of actual behavior — it was a political and ideological tool. If consuming human remains was savage, then European elites were the savages. The label's application to Africans while European elites practiced the same behavior reveals that it was never about behavior at all
• The function of the label: the savage label was a legal and philosophical instrument used to construct racial hierarchy and justify the extraction of African labor and African bodies — including the literal bodies ground into medicine
• Strong answers will connect: the consumption of African mummies as medicine to the broader dehumanization of African people that made the slave trade possible — both required European society to treat African bodies as resources rather than as people

Question 9. After Egypt banned the export of mummies in the 1500s, European merchants produced counterfeit mummies from the bodies of executed criminals, plague victims, and enslaved people. Using at least two specific details from the lesson, explain what this response to the ban reveals about the nature and scale of European demand for African bodies.

A strong answer should include:

• At least two specific details: one dealer in Alexandria confessed he could produce forty fake mummies in a single batch; the bodies used included enslaved people — meaning African people were targeted both as the original source of genuine mummies and as raw material for counterfeits; European merchants dried corpses, coated them in resin, and sold them as ancient Egyptian royalty
• What the response to the ban reveals: European demand for African bodies was not casual or incidental — it was so entrenched and so large that a government ban did not stop it. It simply redirected it toward a counterfeit market
• The scale of demand: forty fake mummies per batch, produced by a single dealer, suggests an industrial-scale operation responding to mainstream pharmaceutical demand
• Strong answers will connect: the fake mummy trade to the broader pattern of European extraction of African bodies — first as mummies for medicine, then as enslaved people for labor. Both practices treated African bodies as commodities to be extracted, processed, and consumed by European markets

Question 10. This history is documented in peer-reviewed academic texts and is not disputed by serious historians — yet it is almost entirely absent from history curricula in the United States, United Kingdom, and Europe. Using at least two specific details from the lesson, explain why you think this documented history has been excluded from mainstream education — and what its inclusion would change about how we understand the colonial period.

A strong answer should include:

• At least two specific details: Richard Sugg's book Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires (Routledge, 2011) is a peer-reviewed academic study that documents European corpse medicine in full — yet it does not appear in school curricula; the same period during which European elites consumed human remains as medicine was the period during which they constructed the philosophical and legal framework justifying African enslavement
• Why it has been excluded: the educational systems of the United States, United Kingdom, and Europe were built by and for the same civilizational tradition whose darkest practices this history documents. Teaching it would require teaching that the architects of colonialism were themselves practitioners of the behavior they used to justify enslaving African people
• What its inclusion would change: it would fundamentally destabilize the narrative of European civilization as the standard against which all other cultures are measured — and require students to evaluate the colonial period not as the spread of civilization but as the expansion of a system that consumed African bodies both literally and figuratively
• Strong answers will connect: the erasure of European corpse medicine from curricula to the broader pattern documented throughout the Hotep Creations series — the same selective historical memory that erased Yanga, the Agojie, the Kuba Kingdom, and Sarah Baartman also erased this

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