Zombies?

I am very confused with the way Zombies are presented in the media these days. They don't make any sense, on any level. With new films and a television series coming out this time of year, i think it is time to question our Zombie representations.

For example, how do Zombies become cannibals? Neither of the two base root representations of Zombies offers answers to this question. First, we have the cultural root of Zombie from the voodoo and santeria. The Zombie is a human being who has been given certain drugs to cause a near death trance. Then it is ordered to obey the wishes of its maker/master that may include the murder of other humans, but more likely simply carrying out the activities of a slave (growing out of the history of West Africans in the slave trade). After some time the Zombie is either released from the spell (the drugs have run their course), or is killed outright. Wade Davis, a Harvard ethnobotanist and researcher in entheogens, wrote one of the treatises on zombies in "The Serpent and the Rainbow."

Secondly, we have the cultural root of Zombie from cognitive science studies, and the study of consciousness. This root is predicated on the establishment of a base value level of a human being free of any conscious thought, whose sole relationship with the surrounding world is reaction to various stimuli through the sensory organs. The highly theoretical representation is offered as prima facia evidence for a base value that progresses from a null or zero state to one that reacts to stimuli to form conscious choice ("It is argued that the concept of a philosophical zombie, as it figures in arguments designed to refute functionalism or physicalism, contains inherent contradictions"). At no time, in any of the cognitive science literature, has this Zombie committed murder of any beings. One caveat may be that the implied killing of other species exists is predicated on studies surrounding eating and taste.

Thus, in neither the original religious representation nor the scientific-based one, does the Zombie attack, kill, eat, and regenerate new zombies. Zombies are neither cannibals, nor viral agents of marauding attacks and reproduction. So how did zombies become so commonly represented in the media as cannibal viral agents? Why don't zombies eat whatever they ate when they were alive? How many different ways do we have to invent to kill zombies?

The simplest answer would be that we needed an agent that would terrorize human consciousness. Humans preying on humans is a classic archetype born out by millenia of humans killing other humans. The oldest recorded human war was around 2700BC, and certainly long before that (several thousands of years) small groups of humans were killing other groups. So i suppose having a cannibal virus that makes those that are bitten replicate into a cannibal virus, suffering from a leprosy-like deterioration of the flesh, is just another vision of war. But do they have to stagger around until you hit them with something?