22 Ancient Cultures That Were Way More Messed-Up Than You Realize

‘The ancient Celtic and Germanic people would ritually sacrifice people in three different ways’
22 Ancient Cultures That Were Way More Messed-Up Than You Realize

We like to look at human history as a series of showdowns of right versus wrong. To make that convenient, some civilizations have been labeled barbarians, savages and absolute downright dirty dogs with a taste for torture. Pretty much any story that starts with “The Viking ships creaked their way ashore, horns piercing the air” isn’t going to end with “and they brought snacks,” for example.

In reality, the only thing messier than history is the humans who created it. We’re awful little animals, with brains that plot and scheme and enjoy seeing our enemies fall. Even the civilizations that we stand in front of the statues of, ooh-ing and ahh-ing at their great accomplishments, were probably up to plenty of less-than-humane activity they chose not to paint. 

Thankfully (though not for your confidence in our species), Redditors are here to share some civilizations that were a whole lot more brutal than they’re portrayed today.

2y ago Feudal China was super into burying people alive. Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor responsible for the unification of China, upon his death, had 70,000 concubines, servants, and workers forcibly interred alongside him. The Terracotta Army was constructed only because murdering all the soldiers as well wasn't an option.
The Assyrian dominion, stretching from Egypt to modern-day Iraq, controlled richly diverse cultures. To quash any uprising in these conquered areas, Assyrian leaders utilized extreme violence. Their horrific campaigns were celebrated in stone reliefs festooning the palace walls. They created tablets containing every single punishment the Assyrian army carried out. They cut off the limbs, gouged out the eyes, and then left those poor victims to roam around. Those poor people serve as a living reminder of the Assyrians' cruelty. The Assyrians were proud of the mass executions. The victim's skin was hung on the city wall. The brutality of
woutomatic . 2y ago If one travelled to ancient Rome some 5000 crucified rotting corpses would guide you the way.
2y ago The Incas, I'm peruvian and the national myth here is that the Inca empire was paradise on earth until the evil spaniards showed up. The Inca empire raped and kill its way through South America. The conquered only had two choices: be assimilated into the empire or be razed to the ground, gengis khan style.
Viktorfalth . 2y ago Sparta. People in general remember them as just being these badass super soldiers, but don't know how Spartan society was built on draconic slavery and institutional pedophilia.
APeacefulWarrior 2y ago Edited 2y ago The Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt were ten generations of absolutely fucked, bookended by two actually good leaders. (Ptolemy and Cleopatra.) Their family history would make for a fun trashy soap opera, full of backstabbing, famicide, and a truly appalling amount of incest, as they spent 200 years running Egypt into the ground. Too bad it was all real.
yoshamus 2y ago Not necessarily ancient but the Iroquois, they had many rituals of torture for prisoners of war including ripping out fingernails/cutting off fingers, followed by forcing them to run the gauntlet and then if they survived they would be scalped and burned alive. The real correct answer tho is that every group of human beings was by our current moral standards absolutely brutal, nothing the Iroquois did here was unique or particularly worse than many other groups, I just haven't seen anyone mention them in this thread yet so I figured I would.
rheetkd 2y ago A lot of pacific cultures practiced cannabalism. Some still do in Papua New Guinea. But Mãori here in New Zealand did in some tribes as well. So the worst insult you can use in the Mãori language pokokohua means to boil your head. Harking back to when people were boiled and eaten.
Eldistan1 2y ago Edited 2y ago Ten million Africans died under the reign of King Leopold the second of Belgium. Absolute horrific brutality. Не belongs in the same category as Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot. Sorry, not very ancient, but his name doesn't come up in these discussions enough.
throwaway384938338 2y ago It's not particularly ancient and the actions aren't as fucked up as many of what is listed here, but I find absolutely insane that East India company, a private company, ended up accidentally colonising India. The idea that a company that exported tea would end up with a standing army is some real sci if dystopian shit.
iskandar- a 2y ago Edited 2y ago Samurai and feudal Japan. People like to imagine the Samurai as some kind of noble order built around the belief that honor and service were to be held above all. Samurai didn't give half a sideways fuck about the common peasant they were a blue blood aristocracy that used their power and training to perpetuate a totalitarian regime that would make the house of Windsor blush.
asu3dvl 2y ago Aztecs were pretty messed up, but Babylonia? They left behind whole walls of sculpture depicting how many hundreds of thousands they killed for sport. I'm pretty sure it was worse when Neanderthals walked amongst us but no written record.
teldarra 2y ago The ancient Phoenicians/Carthaginians had a child killing cult. They thought that their gods needed children to be appeased. Other Canaanite/Semitic peoples dropped this practice, depicted in the Tanakh (Bible's Old Testament) through the story of God sending a goat when Abraham was about to sacrifice his son. Although ancient Jews' annual ritualistic slaughter of thousands of animals is nothing to scoff at, murdering kids is obviously far worse. Even the Phoenicians' peers, contemporary cultures/civilizations of the period, thought it to be a barbarous practice.
StuffEmersonSays 2y ago Ancient Greece. A lot of people imagine clean villas, people with white togas talking about arts and philosophy all day. The truth is that most people were dirt poor, being born disabled (or being born a girl) could be a death sentence, and pedophilia was rampant among the rich, also a lot of their economy was based on slavery.
Arzilthelmp 2y ago Funnily enough, the Persian Empire was actually way better than it was portrayed. It was extremely open to different religions and were very advanced in civil liberty. When you really look at it, the Greeks were kinda the baddies in the wars between these empires. Even Alexander basically said that after conquering Persia. But because we get a lot of our information about the classic period by Greek and Roman writers, Persia was seen as a barbaric tyrannical state.
JACKMAN_97 e 2y ago We like to think before the slave trade this parts of Africa were all peaceful and great but really they were already enslaving each other and many larger kingdoms like the Zulu and Dohomie were oppressing the smaller one
transemacabre 2y ago The Hawaiians practiced a LOT of infanticide. Unwanted or sickly babies would be chucked off a cliff straight into the ocean. They were also big fans of incest. Lots of sister- fucking going in the Hawaiian islands. Which actually might account for some of those deformed babies.
waterloograd 2y ago A lot of people view the First Nations in North America as peaceful environmentalists before white people showed up. In reality, they were the same as any continent with many different nations. There was genocide, slavery, torture, canablistic rituals, and everything else that goes wrong when people don't like each other. They would also kill entire herds of animals, and over hunt and harvest from the land. If they had more advanced technology they would have done everything white people did. Once white people did show up, they instantly saw the technological advantages and began trading for
F Velsca 2y ago All of em. I made it a goal to read 500 books on history and......It was all rape, slavery, murder and subjugation. Some eye openers were: A World Lit Only By Fire The Gulag Archipelago Ordinary Men Guns, Germs, and Steel The Vigilantes of Montana Empire of the Summer Moon Any anything on the bronze age. Also, if fiction is your thing... Blood Meridian while fictional was so well researched most the heinous acts written were based on things that happened in American history.
2y ago © Edited 2y ago The habsburg dynasty in Spain used to breed with their own family to keep the bloodline pure, it ended with reign of charles II who was so inbred that he had black testicles and several developmental disorders, he was unable to have any kids which led to the end of the habsburgs in Spain.
RoRo25 2y ago TIL from another post that Koreans had the longest unbroken chain of slavery of any society in history. Spanning 1,500 years.
No_Secret8533 2y ago Edited 2y ago What I always thought horrific was the Imperial Chinese practice of 'nine degrees'. As in Nine Degrees of Relation. Say that someone seriously offends the Emperor. The Emperor then orders that not just that person, but everyone related to that person, within nine degrees of relationship, is to be executed. Grandparents, parents, siblings, spouse, children, cousins, more cousins. Concubines and their children. Babies in the cradle, old people who were bedridden, all their household servants, probably their in-laws too.

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