5 Darkest & Most Disturbing Practices From Human History

today's video is brought to you by audible get a free audiobook download of your choice along with a 30 day free trial by signing up at audibletrial.com/preneurcast UM's and traditions that were at one time viewed as completely normal are in the present era deemed to be embarrassingly distasteful relics from a bygone and more primitive age however some of these long abandoned practices are so abhorrent to the modern mind that most people find it almost unbelievable though such ideas and traditions were ever seen is acceptable yet as the human perspective continually shifts who is to say what everyday practices we perform today might be considered unacceptable and even outright evil in the centuries yet to come as our own versions of what is moral are consigned to history here's a closer look at five of history's darkest and most disturbing traditions and practices number five corpse medicine the practice of consuming human corpses to improve health might sound like the custom of savage tribes living in a far-flung jungle on the other side of the world however across Europe as recently as just three hundred years ago everyone from the poorest in society all the way up to kings and queens were routinely ingesting remedies and elixirs that contained large quantities of human bone flesh blood and fat in an effort to cure their illnesses and ailments taking the old adage that you are what you eat to an extreme level yet while from a modern perspective it might be easy to judge and condemn such actions as barbaric and immoral in a time before the invention of modern medicines you too may have been willing to try anything when faced with a stark choice between life and death since the dawn of time mankind has not only had to battle against hunger the elements and one another for survival but also against injuries disease and physical ailments that conspire together to make what was already a difficult existence even more challenging in an effort to combat these health-related perils we have harnessed anything and everything at our disposal to evolve medicines and techniques that might improve human health and with it our quality of life however along the way this constant and frequently clumsy search for answers has led to experimentation with strange and often outright disturbing methods in an attempt to cure ourselves of all the my tell us while today a decomposing corpse is viewed by most as an object of horror that is likely to infect us with terrible diseases and parasites if we get too close for much of history the remains of the dead were viewed as therapeutic agents with powerful and almost magical properties early doctors and scholars of human anatomy formed the belief that a person's spirit stayed trapped inside the mortal body for a short period after their death and that it was possible for the living to benefit from this resource of great power one of the most popular theories was that like cured like so consuming a specific part of the corpse would remedy any issues he were having with that part of your body according to this belief ingesting skull but helped with a headache blood would cure blood diseases and fat could heal bruising and muscle pain no part of a corpse was considered to be off-limits this cannibalization of the dead for medicinal purposes stretches to at least as far back as the Romans where the blood of dead radiators was in high demand as a tonic which was thought to imbue the person who drank it with the vitality and strength of the Fallen warrior acting as something of an elixir of youth for the wealthy and well-connected amongst the Roman elite and there is evidence of similar practices occurring all over the world the sheer variety of human body parts utilized in these medicines is astounding and it seems as though nothing went to waste dried organ meats ground-up skulls and flayed skin were thought to cure everything from epilepsy to deafness the ingredients often mixed with alcohol to make them more palatable while human fat was viewed as a potent lotion which could be rubbed into the skin to treat bruising muscle pains and even gout ancient mummified bodies on earth from Egyptian tombs were especially prized the powdered remains of these millennia old corpses considered so potent that they were used as a catch-all treatment for any health issue a patient might be experiencing yet it was fresh blood that was considered to be the most effective medicine of all the blood was thought to be where vitality energy and the human spirit itself was stored and so the fresh of the blood was the better in fact it was widely believed that by drinking someone's blood you could not only gain their strength and vitality but also all the years they still had left to live effectively allowing you to steal a young person's remaining natural life and greedily absorb it for yourself making the blood of the young most prized of all while an elderly individuals blood was practically worthless as there was simply not enough years left in them to make a difference to the customer who consumed her blood unsurprisingly such ingredients came with a hefty price tag putting them out of reach of all but the most wealthy and powerful in society the poorer citizens were forced to explore alternative ways of obtaining the blood medicine a dilemma which resulted in the grisly spectacle of crowds of people rushing forward as the axe fell during public executions in the hope that they might be able to retrieve a cup of fresh blood from the condemned criminal who had just been beheaded as with anything in life the prospect of profit attracts the more unscrupulous members of society and a booming black market in body parts emerged to satisfy the massive consumer demand for corpse medicines with legally sourced bodies so difficult to obtain grave robbers flourished and there was a real danger that a recently buried loved one might be dug up the fresh corpse harvested and used for medicinal ingredients with Egyptian mummies so highly sought-after for the supposed magical properties the limited supplies available quickly diminished causing profit hungry traders to cash in on the craze by preparing their own fake mummies using the bodies of recently deceased criminals beggars and even lepers using the best mummification techniques at their disposal to fool European doctors many of whom had never seen a genuine mummy before and were therefore unable to tell the difference yet as our understanding of the inner workings of the human body gradually advanced the demand for useless and potentially dangerous corpse medicines plummeted and by the 18th century the industry had all but died out as every idea of eating the dead for health benefits seemed preposterous and downright barbaric to the masses how before the practice stubbornly remained with the last attempt at stealing blood from a public execution recorded as recently as 1908 although today traditional forms of corpse medicine have long since died out it could be argued that the practice lives on in modern medicine after all is there really that much difference between the blood transfusions and organ transplants taking place in hospitals all around us and the corpse medicine of years gone past even today the human body is a valuable commodity with multiple reports of a thriving black market in organs existing all over the world this trade in flesh a disturbing reminder of a not so distant past number for wife selling today as many as half of all marriages are expected to end in divorce however escaping one's marital vows was not always so straightforward with the strange and almost unbelievable sounding custom of wife setting widely accepted throughout England as a reasonable and effective way for a man to divorce his wife during a time when such a practice was so impractical and expensive that it was rendered unattainable for all but the most wealthy and well-connected in society in fact the outlandish tradition was so common that for centuries markets taverns and fairs across the country bore witness to the unusual scene of a man auctioning off his unwanted wife to the highest bidder in a transaction that while technically illegal was generally tolerated by authorities and the local community as a legitimate way to end an unsatisfactory marriage by a mutual and often not so mutual consent up until very recently a married woman was utterly subordinated to her husband the very act of marriage joining the two into one entity under a legal doctrine known as coverture a system which resulted in a woman's legal rights and obligations being completely absorbed by those of her husband rendering her ineligible to own a property in her own name enter into contracts signed documents or even obtained an education without her husband's permission and in the rare cases where the wife was permitted to undertake paid employment her wages would be handed Stroh over to the husband in fact entering into a marriage contract effectively erased the woman's previous identity in the eyes of the law a reality symbolized by her adoption of her new husband's family name and her release from individual legal liability for her own actions as it was now assumed that at all times she was acting under the orders of her husband who was now forced to accept legal responsibility for everything his wife did this union of two individuals into a single legal person effectively transformed the wife into little more than the property of her husband yet breaking free of such stifling bonds was equally difficult for husband and wife as prior to the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857 divorce was essentially illegal in England and while it was theoretically possible to obtain an exception from Britain's draconian divorce laws doing so required a private act of parliament which was a complex time-consuming and above all prohibitively expensive process that made divorce the sole domain of the wealthy and well-connected while commoners who were unable to afford a legal divorce could just abandon each other in the event of an unhappy marriage this option would leave them unable to remarry in the future and the separated wife would have to live with the constant danger that her estranged husband might one day return to seek compensation from any new lovers she might enter into a relationship with as in the eyes of the law she still belonged to him and he was thus entitled to demand restitution from any man who might be sharing her bed with such a risky and mutually unsatisfactory situation an alternate way of separating began to take hold across England with the wife already considered to be the property of her husband then surely she could be simply traded away to a willing buyer just like any other commodity such a convenient transaction would release the husband from his legal obligations to the woman passing responsibility for her and her actions over to the purchaser while at the same time being seen as a far more honorable method of separation than simply abandoning her which also carried with it the risk of prosecution exactly when this custom of simply selling your wife began his unknown however written accounts of the practice taking place in England exist as far back as 1302 with the tradition quickly spreading across the country as unhappy couples who had grown tired of each other but lacked the funds necessary to petition Parliament for a divorce used the strange custom as a way to publicly legitimize a separation in the eyes of the local community allowing both halves of the disgruntled couple to move on with their lives with their good names left untarnished come the day of the sale which was often announced in advance via newspaper advertisements the wife would be led by a rope loop it around her neck or waist to a busy public venue so that as many people as possible could witness the transaction the husband would then parade his wife in front of the onlookers whilst often enthusiastically extolling her virtues and selling points including her appetites and capabilities in the bedroom before auctioning her off to the highest bidder usually a man who had been unable to obtain a wife via conventional means or an agent acting on behalf of the wife's family who were trying to free her from a life of misery prices paid could vary greatly with some wives commanding the equivalent of an impressive twenty thousand dollars while others were exchanged for alcohol or simply given away for free with one wife even being traded away for a dog and while theoretically any man present could place a bid often the buyer had already been pre-arranged the entire spectacle little more than a front to cover for a cheating wife while at the same time saving the cuckolded husband from ridicule and humiliation with the bidding concluded the Viper touched to the wife would be handed from the ex-husband to the lucky buyer as a symbol that the transaction had been concluded amicably the business often sealed with the signing of a contract to try and make the whole practice appear as legally binding as possible thus releasing the previous husband from all liabilities concerning his now departed wife yet surprisingly the sale was more often than not endorsed by the wife often enthusiastically so and sometimes even outright demanded the weight of an unhappy marriage so unbearable that some wives would go as far as to use hidden stashes of cash or wealth from their blood relatives to complete their own sale liberating themselves from the unhappy predicament while enabling them to move on with their lives and find new partners yet it was also not uncommon for the woman to end up being bought by a man she had never even met although illegal the authorities rarely attempted to crack down on the practice of wife selling with very few prosecutions occurring over the centuries as a result of magistrates choosing to turn a blind eye to the custom rather than interfere in the affairs of the poor masses who were engaging in the practice however by the late 1800s social attitudes were rapidly changing with hostility towards the custom beginning to escalate amongst the general population and coupled with the introduction of the law in 1857 but may divorce more accessible for the common man the practice rapidly began to die out as it became both socially taboo and far likelier to land you in trouble with the law yet despite such progress the custom persisted until as recently as the early 20th century with one of the last reported cases involving the sale of a wife for one pound in the English city of Leeds in 1913 number three human war trophies nothing quite demonstrates your dominance over a vanquished enemy than drinking wine from a fallen foes polished skull this McCobb act proclaiming to those who might dare to cross you in the future but even after their defeat and death humiliation and servitude in the afterlife awaits them as punishment for daring to stand against you and so driven by this disturbing and gruesome desire to utterly smite adversaries for as long as man has been engaging in warfare he has also been making trophies of his defeated enemies desecrated corpses carving up the ruined remains to create gruesome keepsakes and mementos of victory that prove his battlefield prowess beyond doubt while at the same time intimidating and discouraging potential future rivals the entire practice a grisly symbol of the cruelty of war one especially unsettling example of this practice occurred over 4 hundred years ago as a recently unified Japan began to look outwards for new avenues of expansion after years of internal conflict the new and ambitious Japanese leader realizing that if his country was to avoid falling back into endless Civil War a military potential and martial aggression would have to be harnessed and focused upon new enemies across the sea thus providing an outlet for the legions of otherwise dangerously idle samurai whose sole profession was to make war the unfortunate targets of this naked aggression were the neighboring Koreans and Chinese and in 1592 a six year long invasion commenced that despite ending in stalemate would result in as many as 1 million Koreans losing their lives and birth instances of theft and brutality whose legacy still lingers to this day for it was not only captured plunder that was being shipped back to Japan in the Japanese city of Kyoto a discrete small stone memorial atop a grassy mound of Earth provides a glimpse into this brutal and disturbing past as buried beneath it lay the severed noses of 38,000 Koreans who perished at the hands of the Japanese invaders this macabre war memorial shining a light on to a grisly wartime trade in human trophies for centuries Japanese samurai had taken the decapitated heads of their slain enemies as trophies to prove that the deeds on the battlefield matched the boastful stories and during times of war the practice was actively encouraged by military commanders who would offer renumeration including cache land and promotions based on the number of severed heads a samurai captured in battle the grisly trophies presented at special collection stations where they would be meticulously verified counted and recorded before being offered up to the general in command and proudly displayed in public squares as a symbol of victory and glory is no surprise that such a deeply entrenched tradition would manifest itself on the battlefields of Korea and when the invasion began the Japanese leadership issued strict and unambiguous orders to the samurai on the ground kill everyone they encountered indiscriminately and without mercy regardless of age gender or social status and send the severed heads back to Japan as proof of their deeds nobody was to be spared the soldiers on the ground carried out the orders with a grim efficiency however as the body count began to mount the transport ships carrying the mountains of preserved severed heads back to Japan quickly became overloaded and it was decided that taking such large trophies was simply impractical given the sheer numbers of Korean soldiers and civilians being butchered to ease this logistical burden it was decided that just the noses of the slain would suffice as proof of a kill the smaller lighter and easier to preserve human trophies being collected in lieu of the more traditional severed head the grisly cargo of human appendages being sent back to Japan serving as a record of the numbers of enemy killed and a potent demonstration of an individual samurais battlefield prowess yet with vast monetary rewards and personal glory at stake the motivation to obtain these nose trophies from less honorable sources or strong amongst many within the Japanese rank and file I saw an easy way to increase their reported kill tally without placing their own lives in mortal danger after all the nose of a warrior in his prime and the nose of an elderly farmer looked much the same when severed from the face Japanese chroniclers of the conflict reported that an alarming number of soldiers resorted to mutilating any Korean they came across in their insatiable hunger for ever more noses to send home as proof of their valor with common peasants women and even children seen as legitimate targets for trophy collection and many of the reported 200-thousand Korean noses shipped back across the Sea of Japan are believed to have belonged to civilians many of whom were allowed to live after they had been mutilated leading to noseless people becoming a disturbing any common sight across Korea in the years after the war ended the masses of severed noses were carefully preserved and sent back to Japan where many of them ended up interred in McCobb and bizarre war memorial refer to as nose Mountains with one of the most well known the mimizuku in Kyoto also known as the tomb for the noses and the final resting place of an estimated 38,000 noses taken from Korean victims during the invasion built as a supposed demonstration of Japanese mercy and compassion these nose shrines were attended by monks who were under orders to pray for the souls of the Koreans that noses belong to however it's likely that they were primarily built as a gruesome demonstration of Japanese military power and a stern warning to others of the fate that awaited any nations or individuals who might dare to resist in future yet such practices were not confined to the Japanese and the collecting of human war trophies has been a feature of cultures across the globe throughout all eras of human history with the Warriors of tribes nations and empires alike hunting the heads of their enemies taking their scalps fashioning necklaces from their ears or teeth and even using their skulls as wine glasses the primary belief and motivations behind the tradition being to demonstrate dominance over the vanquished prove their prowess and manhood in the eyes of their kin enslave the dead in the afterlife and even to absorb a foes very soul thus greatly increasing the victors power and potency all while dehumanizing the enemy in the process making the act of killing itself less of a moral conundrum the Aztecs along with other Mesoamerican groups routinely prized human skin flayed from the bodies of their enemies while the heads of captured warriors would be displayed upon giant skull racks after being removed from their owner during mass sacrifices with just one of the five skull racks in the Aztec capital reported to have housed an incredible sixty thousand skulls heads were also highly desired by the Maori tribes of New Zealand however they were considered to be far more than mere trophies of war often being utilized as something akin to a trading currency when a battle ended the heads of the Fallen enemy were preserved through a complex procedure involving the removal of the brain and eye the steaming or boiling of the severed head before a final stage in which it was smoked over an open fire and then treated with shark oil known as moko mokkai the heads would be put on display and subjected to bouts of mockery by the victors and would play a key role in diplomatic negotiations as tribes were highly motivated to see the heads of their fallen warriors returned yet most unusually the preserved heads also served as a form of cash the arrival of Europeans in the early 19th century introduced firearms into the mix and with warring tribes desperate to gain the upper hand over their rivals acquiring these precious weapons became of utmost importance fascinated by the heads and the intricate tattoos many of them had edged onto their faces European sailors and traders began accepting the trophies as cash payment for weaponry since they fetched high prices back in Europe and America when solders artworks exotic museum specimens and other worldly curiosities to be presented for the entertainment of guests at lavish dinner parties desperate to acquire weaponry to keep up in this new arms race the trade in heads ramped up dramatically and intertribal raiding peeked - unseen heights as each faction sought to acquire more and more heads for trading with the Europeans in turn resulting in a bizarre black market for counterfeit heads as lowly slaves and criminals were decapitated in place of genuine warriors their heads tattooed with meaningless patterns instead of the traditional motifs minor but highly significant differences that easily fooled the Westerners yet the practice of collecting human trophies is not just a tradition from deep in our past and even as late as the 20th century the onset of what or to assured in multiple cases of human body parts being claimed as trophies by soldiers on both sides of the conflict with an incredible 60% of dead Japanese soldiers recovered in the Mariana Islands lacking their heads in fact the practice became so widespread that well-publicized reports exist of US soldiers sending human trophies back home to friends and family as gifts with one photograph published in Life Magazine in 1944 featuring a young woman posing with a skull sent to her by her boyfriend in the US Navy and even President Roosevelt was said to have been gifted a letter opener made out of the forearm of a dead Japanese soldier further reports of the taking of trophy skulls during the Vietnam War and even incidents of soldiers posing with enemy corpses in Afghanistan in recent years suggests that our fascination with making our fallen enemies into personal trophies shows no sign of ending anytime soon before we continue just a quick announcement to let you know that audible is offering my channel viewers a completely free audiobook download along with a free 30-day trial to give you the opportunity to check out their service if you use my signup link in the description box below audiobooks are perfect for when you're traveling working out at the gym relaxing in bed or simply don't feel like reading and I find the voice actors can often bring an extra layer of depth to the story with the television show coming to an end I've recently downloaded the game of Thrones audiobooks to listen to on my daily commute and using my link you too can download the first audio book in the series or any other audiobook of your choice completely free use the link in the description box below to claim your free audiobook and 30-day free trial today number 2 Ottoman fratricide the joy of being crowned Sultan of one of the most powerful empires in human history should be a moment of pride to share with one's brothers yet instead of celebrating with versa blings upon ascension to the throne the new Sultan of the Ottoman Empire would have his own flesh and blood strangled to death in an effort to secure his power and stave off future instability and the potential war of succession by simply wiping out everyone else who had a claim to the throne no matter how close they might have once been yet although striking down your own brother is considered to be one of the most heinous and unnatural crimes a man can commit the practice was not only tolerated by the ruling elite but actively encouraged the new Sultan forced to put aside his own personal feelings in favor of the supposed greater good the unusual practice that became enshrined in law for over 100 thirty years claiming the lives of at least 80 members of the same family with territory spanning Europe Asia and North Africa the man in control of the Ottoman Empire was arguably the most powerful person on the planet this sprawling superpower providing impersonal access to vast wealth virtually unlimited manpower and control over an army that was capable of engaging and defeating anyone who dared oppose him whoever rose to become Sultan of this terrifying force could wield these impressive tools to intimidate conquer and expand the own power to such an extent that at the time it must have seemed as though no force on earth would ever be able to resist Ottoman might with control over such a prize at stake it's no surprise that the pursuit of what was essentially unlimited power could drive men to do the unthinkable and both obtaining and keeping the throne were immense challenges that required an ambitious Prince to be utterly ruthless when news of his father's death was received for unlike most other kingdoms and empires in history the ottoman system of succession did not simply result in the eldest son of the deceased Sultan inheriting the throne for all of the late Sultan's often multiple sons there was everything to play for in a power struggle there was very much winner-takes-all this lack of any set rules of succession during the early days of the Empire often resulted in complete chaos when the reigning Sultan died as his many sons each attempted to press their own claims to the throne brother fourth brother as a never-ending stream of pretenders attempted to usurp one another the conflicts they unleashed threatening to bring the entire Empire to ruin with access to a vast harem of concubines a sultan could easily father dozens of children in his lifetime his numerous sons sent to provinces across the Empire for training in the arts of governing leadership and warfare when they reached just 12 years old a process which tended to produce competent and worthy heirs however this hands-on education proved to be a double-edged sword as with so many well-trained and capable claimants scheming and maneuvering to seize their late Father's throne ruin a civil war was all but inevitable each prince would raise an army of and rush back to the capital upon receiving news of his father's passing with outright battle usually the result as each faction clashed on the field of war yet even after one Prince had overcome his host of brothers and emerged from the ashes of Sultan the threats his vanquished siblings posed remained as defeated princes would usually take refuge in neighboring enemy states where they would continue to cause trouble from the safety of their new sanctuary serving as a symbol around which other dissenters could gather the threat of them returning at the head of an army to depose the reigning Sultan remaining ever-present so long as they lived it was clear that such an atmosphere of imminent peril coupled with cataclysmic Civil War every few decades or simply unsustainable and fatally detrimental to the Empire's prospects if the Ottoman state was to continue to thrive long into the future some way would have to be found to ensure that a new Sultan's brothers were neutralized it was sultan mehmet ii also known as Mehmed the Conqueror who finally decided that enough was enough Mehmed was no stranger to the problems competing family members could pose to a new Sultan having heard stories of his grandfather's lengthy and bitter civil war against his own brothers a struggle which almost destroyed the Ottoman state and when a sultan he besieged Constantinople in 1453 his own uncle fought against him atop the city's towering walls having earlier taken refuge with the Byzantine Emperor mehmed ii decided that the only way new Sultan's could prevent ruinous civil wars was to simply wipe out anyone else with a competing claim resulting in the introduction of the law of fratricide a piece of legislation that legitimized the practice of assault and murdering all male relatives including his own brothers on the grounds that it was for the greater good of the Empire to be the brother of a new Sultan was now a crime punishable by death when a new Sultan was crowned all of his surviving brothers would be immediately imprisoned in the royal palace where they would be held under lock and key until the fateful day when the Sultan's firsts and air was born with the dynasties bloodline now secure the entire remaining branch of the family tree would be wiped out in one fell swoop the Sultan's captive brothers murdered via strangulation with a silk cord by the palace executioner along with any other male relatives deemed to be potentially troublesome whether to ease their own guilty conscience placate an outraged population or some combination of the two the executions were given both legal and moral justification on the basis that they were carried out in the public interest to prevent internal strife and a potential civil war that could kill thousands of the Empire citizens and leave her vulnerable to outside enemies over the more than 150 years during which the law was enforced as many as 60 members of the ruling dynasty are thought to have been put to death with Mehmet the third said to have torn out his beard in grief when his young brother begged for mercy yet for an Ottoman Sultan mercy was not a luxury that could be indulged and the young man was executed along with 18 other brothers the sight of the 19 outed corpses being transported through the streets moving those who witnessed it the tears as the royal body count mounted moral objections to the law became more widespread until public discontent with the never-ending streams of dead princes emerging from the palace moved Sultan Ahmed the first to officially rescind the law replacing the executions with life imprisonment in the Imperial Palace and new Sultan's brothers would now be confined to special apartments in the Imperial Palace known as the cage their every action monitored by specially assigned guards while this imprisonment came with every luxury a man might desire is no surprise that so many years spent locked away from the outside world reduced the once proud Prince's to little more than debauched slothful alcoholics their precious time fretted away on the pursuit of earthly pleasures and many he were driven mad from the years of unending boredom any male with the semblance of a legitimate claim could suffer this fate and uncles brothers cousins and even the sons of the reigning Sultan could find themselves whisked off to the cage upon reaching adulthood a moment that mark to the end of the training and education and the lucky few who might ascend to the throne in the future could have spent their entire lives in confinement the coronation the first time they had been outside in decades this was far from ideal preparation for a new ruler of one of the greatest empires the world has ever known and the introduction of this new policy coincided with a marked decline in the quality of new Sultan's who were often physically and mentally degraded by their experiences in the cage gone were the days of energetic and brilliant Sultan's personally leading they're invincible armies on the battlefield to victory after victory and from the 17th century onwards the Empire fell into terminal decline as the Sultan became far more reliant on his advisors and counselors the policy of fratricide which to modernize appears incomprehensible actually ensuring that the most ruthless Prince ascends to the throne a quality which it could be argued was vital for expanding and maintaining an empire as large as the Ottomans number one human sacrifice when the Spanish first entered the Aztec capital in 1521 they encountered not only the spectacle of a new undiscovered and distinctly foreign culture but also a disturbing reminder of a dark side to humanity which was thought to have been long since forgotten the shocked conquistadors witnessing grisly mass sacrifices atop the city's central temple where chests were sliced open still beating hearts torn out and offered up to bloodthirsty gods whose desire for fresh victims was never-ending the giant skull towers and skull racks flanking the supposedly holy pyramid serving as chilling proof that the Dark Ritual occurring in front of the spaniards eyes was no mere one-off tragedy the thousands of lifeless eye-sockets staring back at them revealing the terrifying mass scale of the in the Seine slaughter yet this grim discovery in the new world was nothing new and for as long as humans have lived together in large groups self-proclaimed kings Chiefs and priests have been stabbing drowning strangling and burning victims both willing and on into modern minds what seems like a bizarre and nonsensical effort to appease angry gods or bring about good fortune but to the people carrying out the sacrifices was a normal sacred and indeed necessary practice if disaster and calamity were to be averted in fact evidence of human sacrifice is being carried out by cultures across the globe throughout various stages of history suggests that something about the idea of offering up another person's life to some kind of supernatural power in return for a reward is ingrained into the human psyche and although the killings were most commonly used to reverse drought or famine appears angry gods or provide a dead King with a retinue of servants in the afterlife human life seems to have been widely treated as something of a catch-all get-out-of-jail-free card during times of strife this recognition of human blood as the sacred force of life and therefore most valuable material for sacrifice has doomed an uncountable number of people to a variety of horrific deaths only limited by the human imagination and although these highly ritualized murders were generally carried out for the so-called greater good the real motivation behind them may have been far more cynically minded human sacrifice also seems to have served as a useful and highly convenient tool of control allowing the elites of society to maintain and cement their power over the masses the public and extremely violent killings instilling fear in the people they ruled and demonstrating the utter hopelessness of any potential uprisings evidence shows that the victims of sacrifice were more often than not drawn from the lowest classes while the chosen few carrying out the murders were always at the very top of society the entire ritual potentially little more than intimidation on a mass scale the message was clear step out of line and you might find yourself offered up to the gods at the next religious festival yet of all the cases of human sacrifice carried out around the world over the millennia its those performed by the Aztecs that are probably the most infamous not only because of their relatively recent occurrence coupled with the horrific array of methods used but so due to the sheer scale of victims involved with some historians estimating that perhaps as many as 250,000 victims were offered up to the gods every year a figure which if true would mean that millions were murdered during the Empire's long existence and although it's probable that the Spanish exaggerated their figures so as to demonize this new enemy growing archaeological evidence proves that these accounts were not merely propaganda in a disturbing demonstration of the almost industrial like scale to which this slaughter could be carried out over 80,000 war captives were sacrificed over a single four day long ritual during the recon secretion of the Great Pyramid often opted LAN in 1487 yet although such senseless death is incomprehensible for modern observers for the Aztecs alive at the time the never-ending sacrifices were a simple matter of survival according to Aztec mythology the Sun God was embroiled in a never-ending war against darkness with the continued existence of the world itself at stake the only way to keep the Sun rising every morning and thus stave off eternal darkness was to feed the Sun God the hearts and blood of the living and while many of the slaves and captives offered up upon the Aztec sacrificial altars were no doubt killed against their will many gave their lives willingly as for true believers it was considered to be a great honor to die in the service of the gods with such a selfless act believed to have granted guaranteed access to paradise in the afterlife yet as with most things in life there were less lofty and far more practical motivations behind the widespread killings the violent fruit allistic murders of war captives and subsequent display of thir skulls served to intimidate other tribes who might otherwise have considered breaking away these horrific displays a constant demonstration of Aztec power were served to keep rivals in check and DNA tests of recovered victims had shown that the vast majority were Outsiders usually enemy soldiers taken in battle or slave seized from neighboring settlements the way victims were sacrificed would depend on which God needed to be appeased and there were many gods sun-god demanded that his offerings be placed upon a sacrificial stone before having their abdomen cut open with a flint blade the still-beating heart would then be ripped from the chest and held towards the sky as an offering while the rest of the body would either be burnt or given to whichever warrior was responsible for capturing him to either be eaten or given tar Thurs as a gift victims of the fire God would be burnt alive while the rain God demanded the tears of children and the God of night was pleased only by deaths that took place in gladiatorial combat however unfortunately for the individual being sacrificed there could only be one outcome the chosen captive would be tied down and given a fake he versus weapon before being hacked to pieces by up to four fully armed knights and warriors in what was little more than a raked slaughter yet by no means was it just the Aztecs who traded human lives for favors from the gods the Japanese used the method known as human pillars which involved burying people alive under or near large and important buildings in the belief that doing so would motivate the gods to protect the building from destruction or attack in ancient Mesopotamia a deceased king would be entombed with his servants God's hand maidens musicians and anyone else whom he desired these poor individuals would then be expected to continue serving and entertaining him in the afterlife it was initially presumed that victims would have volunteered and swallowed poison before being entombed however skulls found that the royal cemetery showed that a sharp object was driven into the head making it likely that those who would be sacrificed did not go willingly or peacefully with the former master to the next world in the Pacific nation of Fiji being a married woman used to be a risky proposition if her husband were to die the surviving widow would be strangled to death on the day of the husband's funeral relatives of both the husband and wife would gather in the deceased man's heart the wife was then made to kneel whilst her own brother would tie his waistband around her neck the widow would then exhale all the air from her lungs while her brother strangled her with his waistband it was believed that this practice was necessary because only married people were allowed to enter the afterlife a spirit would greet the dead man and ask for proof of his marriage and with his freshly strangled wife at his side the couple would be allowed to pass into the afterlife yet conveniently for men if the wife died first the husband would not be cured he would simply have to have his beard shaved off so that the dead wife could present it to the spirits as proof of being married the beard was considered enough evidence and the woman would be allowed into the afterlife on her own excavations in North Africa of ancient Carthaginian sites also found evidence of child sacrifice by fire on a massive scale at one site up to 20,000 urns containing infant ashes were discovered each urn buried onto tombstones inscribed with messages of thanks to the gods it's believed that these children were cast into a fiery pit as payment for favors already bestowed by the gods as a location disturbingly described as the roasting place countless other examples of human sacrifice have occurred around the world over the centuries however the practice is now thankfully almost universally condemned and treated as an abhorrent crime nonetheless this barbaric relic of the past still lingers on in the present day with reports recently emerging from the East African nation of Tanzania concerning the ritual sacrifice of those afflicted with albinism a condition that leaves an individual without pigment in their skin or hair in some areas of the country it's thought that these rituals and the use of the sacrificed victim's body parts can bestow good fortune upon whoever possesses them and an article from as recently as 2015 reported that Tanzanian officials had arrested 32 so-called witch doctors who were allegedly involved in the rituals and subsequent raid in victims body parts proving the dark practices we thought humans had long abandoned are still simmering just beneath the surface and could quite easily emerge once more in the future given the right conditions so those might Weiss's for five of history's most disturbing traditions and practices let me know what practices you would have included in the comments below and don't forget to claim your free audiobook and 30-day free trial of audible using my link in the description box below and I'll see you again soon

Channel: Unknown5

Views: 802,373

Keywords: history, documentary, documentaries, ancient history, medieval history, traditions, unknown5, top 5, top5s, top 10, list, ottoman empire, ottomans, educational, war trophies, aztecs, aztec, japanese, human pillars, wife selling, strange practices, weird traditions, Disturbing Practices, Human History

Id: XFIcrJRieWo

Length: 44min 7sec (2647 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 01 2019