British traveller William Marsden astonished the 'civilised' world in 1783 when he returned to London with an account of a cannibalistic kingdom in the interior of Sumatra which, nevertheless, had a highly developed culture and a system of writing. The Bataks have been a subject of fascination ever since. The practice of ritual cannibalism, involving eating the flesh of a slain enemy or a person found guilty of a serious breach of tradition law, survived among the Toba Bataks until 1816. (Lonely Planet).