For 30 years, Genghis Khan and his Mongolian horde swept through Asia, slaughtering over one-tenth of the people on Earth and conquering nearly one-quarter of the land. His was the most violent reign in all of human history.

Most people know Genghis Khan through the statistics, but the details are just as mind-boggling. Some stories from his life and his battles are outright unbelievable—and among the most brutal stories you will ever hear.

10 He Killed His Brother for Not Sharing His Food

Genghis Khan was born the son of a powerful chieftain, but his situation changed when an enemy tribe poisoned his father. The young boy and his family were cast out of their home and forced to scavenge for food, mostly eating plants and discarded carcasses they found on the roads.

When he was 14, Genghis Khan found a fish and brought it back to his family, only to have his half-brother Behter snatch it from his hands and refuse to share a bite with anyone else. Furious, Genghis Khan stalked his brother until he was alone—and murdered him with a bow and arrow.

Genghis Khan didn’t get away with his first murder completely, though. History reports that his mother “scolded” him, so he at least got a good talking-to about how, in this family, we don’t murder our siblings.

9 He Beheaded People for Being Over 90 Centimeters (3′) Tall

When Genghis Khan was 20, he led an army against the tribe that killed his father and got his revenge. The Tatar army was crushed, and Genghis Khan set about exterminating the people in an incredibly unusual way.

Every Tatar man was lined up and measured against “the linchpin of a wagon,” which is the axle pin in the middle of the wheel. Anyone taller than these pins—which were 90 centimeters (3′) high—was to be beheaded.

In effect, Genghis Khan’s order slaughtered every male Tatar but the infants.

8 His Victims’ Bones Were Mistaken for Mountains

In 1211, Genghis Khan turned his focus to modern-day China and attacked the Jin Empire. It was a reckless decision. The Jin Empire controlled 53 million people, and the Mongols had one million. Still, Genghis Khan won.

Within three years, the Mongols had made their way to Zhongdu (now Beijing). The city walls were 12 meters (39 ft) high and stretched 29 kilometers (18 mi) around the city. It seemed impossible to get in, so they didn’t try.

Instead, the Mongols starved Zhongdu out. By summer 1215, the people there were so hungry that cannibalism was running rampant inside its walls. Finally, they surrendered, and the Mongols sacked and burned the city.

The massacre was horrific. Months later, a passing eyewitness wrote that “the bones of the slaughtered formed white mountains and that the soil was still greasy with human fat.”

7 An Enemy Archer Shot Genghis Khan, So He Made the Archer a General

While at war with the Mongolian Tayichigud clan, Genghis Khan’s horse was hit. An arrow sailed into the animal’s spine, and the horse fell beneath the warlord’s legs, nearly killing him in the process.

His army marched on and won the battle, and Genghis Khan went out for revenge. He demanded to know who had fired the arrow. He didn’t expect anyone to confess, so he was probably looking for an excuse for another genocide.

But the archer Jebe stepped forward, confessed to the deed, and told Genghis Khan to kill him if he wanted to. Genghis Khan was impressed, so he made Jebe a commander in his army.

Jebe later rose to be a general and one of Genghis Khan’s most trusted friends—all as a reward for nearly killing him.

6 He Made His Allies Marry His Daughters and Then Got Them Killed

One of the biggest ways Genghis Khan seized power was by marrying off his daughters to the kings of his allies. When Genghis Khan was behind it, though, even marriage was a death sentence.

For the privilege of marrying one of Genghis Khan’s daughters, the kings were required to cast out every other wife they had. This wasn’t because he was dedicated to monogamy. It was to make sure that his daughters were the only people in line for the throne.

The kings were then sent to the front lines of the Mongolian army. Almost everyone died in combat, and his daughters took over their kingdoms. By the time of Genghis Khan’s death, his daughters ruled an area stretching from China’s Yellow Sea to Iran’s Caspian Sea.

5 He Exterminated 1.7 Million People to Avenge One Person

The marriages might have been strategic alliances, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t any love involved. One of Genghis Khan’s daughters loved her husband, a man name Toquchar. Genghis Khan loved him, too, as his favorite son-in-law.

When Toquchar was killed by an archer from Nishapur, his wife demanded vengeance. Genghis Khan’s troops attacked Nishapur and slaughtered every person there. By some estimates, 1,748,000 people were killed. Other historians dispute that number, but there’s no doubt that his armies killed everyone they found.

Women, children, babies, and even dogs and cats were tracked down and murdered. Then they were beheaded, and their skulls were piled into pyramids—a request by Genghis Khan’s daughter to ensure that no one got away with a simple wounding.

4 The Mongols Had a Victory Feast on Top of the Russian Nobility

In 1223, the Mongolian army was making its way through Russia and had just won the Battle of the Kalka River. The Russian army had surrendered, their towns had been captured, and the Mongolians decided to celebrate.

The generals and nobility of the Russian army were forced to lie down on the ground. Then a heavy wooden gate was thrown on top of them, chairs and tables were set on top of the gate, and the army sat down for a feast.

They held their victory celebration on top of the still-living bodies of their enemies, eating and drinking while Russian princes were crushed to death beneath their feet.

3 He Diverted a River Through an Enemy’s Birthplace to Erase It off the Map

When Genghis Khan found the Muslim kingdom of Khwarezmia, he did something unusual: He took the peaceful route. A group of diplomats was sent to the city, hoping to establish a trade route and diplomatic ties.

The governor of Khwarezmia, though, didn’t trust them. He thought the diplomats were part of a Mongolian conspiracy and had them executed. He killed the next group they sent, too.

Genghis Khan was furious. He had tried to be nice, and he’d been repaid with dead diplomats. He set up an army of 200,000 soldiers, attacked, and completely destroyed Khwarezmia.

Even after he’d won, Khan sent two armies to burn down every castle, town, and farm they found to ensure that no hint of Khwarezmia survived. According to one story, he even diverted a river to run through the emperor’s birthplace, just to make sure it would never appear on a map again.

2 He Nearly Erased a Kingdom From History for Not Sending Troops

When Genghis Khan attacked Khwarezmia, he asked the conquered kingdom of Xi Xia to send him troops. They refused. Xi Xia tried to take a bold stand against their oppressor, and they quickly regretted it. The Mongolian army swarmed through Xi Xia, destroying everything that they found. They systematically exterminated every member of the population.

By the end, Xi Xia was erased from history. They hadn’t written down their own stories, so the only records of their existence came from neighboring countries. Their language wasn’t recovered for more than 700 years. It took until the mid-20th century for archaeologists to unearth stones that had their writing on them. In the meantime, every word they had spoken was forgotten.

Genghis Khan died during the battle, most likely from being thrown from his horse. Still, the Mongolian army carried out his work. They slaughtered every person they found, even after their leader was dead and their enemy had surrendered.

1 Everyone Involved In Burying Him Was Killed

When Genghis Khan died, he wanted to be buried where no one could find his corpse. In honor of his wishes, his body was carried miles into the wilderness by a group of slaves escorted by soldiers.

The slaves buried Genghis Khan in a place no one would ever find. To make sure the slaves would never divulge the secret, the warriors massacred them and threw them into the grave. Then the soldiers rode their horses over it and planted trees on top of it to hide the spot.

When the warriors who buried him made their way back to camp, they were promptly slaughtered as well, just to make sure they would never talk. And so Genghis Khan died in a massacre like the ones that pervaded his life, hidden away in a tomb that has yet to be found.

Most of us think of traditions as warm and fuzzy customs that were passed down through the years to remind us of a simpler time as well as the love of our friends and family. Then there are the insanely brutal traditions that may have started out with good intentions but now make us wonder why anyone would engage in such barbaric rituals in the 21st century.

10 Mingi

Just as Lord Voldemort is known as “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named” in the Harry Potter book series, mingi is the tradition that must not be named among the Kara, Hamar, and Banna tribes in the Omo Valley of Ethiopia. There are about 225,000 of these tribe members isolated in primitive villages, practicing their ancient ritual in secret.

Mingi means that a child is cursed and must be killed to protect the tribe. (Although we’ll use male pronouns, this tradition applies to both male and female children.) A child is mingi if his top teeth come in before his bottom teeth, if he breaks a tooth or injures his genitals, if he is born to unwed parents, or if his parents do not have the ceremonial blessing of the village elders to have children. Adults who don’t cooperate with these traditions are also designated as mingi and banished from the tribe.

If a child is mingi, the tribal elders will snatch that child from his parents and drown him in the river, leave him to starve or be eaten by animals, or push him off a cliff to his death. The elders may also suffocate the child by filling his mouth with soil.

These Omo Valley tribes believe that a mingi child will bring evil spirits to their village, resulting in drought, famine, and sickness for the tribe. Although no one knows the exact number, as many as 200 to 300 mingi children may be killed annually.

Even among the members of the tribe, mingi is a taboo subject. Children under 15 are never told about the ritual killing. It certainly isn’t something to be discussed with outsiders. Yet Lale Labuko, a young man from the Omo Valley who was the first of his tribe to be educated at a boarding school 105 kilometers (65 mi) away, found the courage to tell an adult outsider. Together, they’ve spearheaded efforts to save mingi children. In some cases, the government has imprisoned mingi executioners. The tradition is still practiced today—just more discreetly.

9 Pig Slaughter Festival

Each year in the small village of Nem Thuong in northern Vietnam, hundreds of people watch the ritual slaughter of two well-fed pigs to bring the village residents luck for the coming year. Always occurring on the sixth day of the first month of the lunar calendar, the Pig Slaughter Festival is held to honor Doan Thuong, a local protector deity.

According to legend, Doan Thuong was a general in the Ly Dynasty who drove invading forces off the villagers’ land. He fed his starving troops with slaughtered pigs, which is supposedly how the festival started. The pigs’ blood represents good luck in the forms of a good harvest, reproductive ability, monetary success, and good health.

As music is played, the villagers parade the live pigs around the village. Participants in the ritual lay the animals on their backs, pull their legs away from their bellies with ropes, and use swords to hack the squealing pigs in half in front of the crowd. The villagers rush to smear banknotes with the pigs’ blood so that they can place the notes on altars in their houses for good luck.

Animal rights activists have tried to convince the government to stop the festival. Although Vietnamese officials have pressured the village elders to be less publicly cruel to animals, the government has refused to ban the festival. Officials seem to be less concerned about animal cruelty and more apprehensive about the world’s opinion of their local festivals now that pictures can be disseminated over the Internet so quickly.

8 La Esperanza Rain Ceremony

Nobody likes a drought, especially farmers, so many cultures have rituals designed to bring rain. Even today, some Native Americans perform rain dances. In Takhatpur, India, the villagers conduct elaborate frog marriages to call upon their rain gods to end a drought. The frogs dress for the occasion and even kiss after they exchange vows.

But the village women of La Esperanza in Guerrero, Mexico, prefer a different approach. Each May, as the male farmers get their fields ready for planting, the women prepare a large feast of cultural foods like chicken, turkey, mole, boiled eggs, rice, and tortillas. They bring the food to a ceremonial site to share with others from the village. It’s a traditional day of offerings to their deities to ensure that the village has enough rain for the crops.

After they recite their prayers and offer food and flowers to their gods, they form a large circle and wait for people from neighboring villages to arrive. The children ready their cell phones to take pictures and videos of the festivities. And then the fun begins.

Inside the cheering human circle, the able-bodied women—young and old—find opponents from neighboring villages and beat each other to a pulp with their bare hands. Sometimes, men and children fight, too. This is a day-long blood fest for the female warriors. The goal is to make as much red liquid stream down their faces as possible. There are no winners or losers. No issues of revenge. At the end, they hug each other.

As a sacrifice to the gods, the spilled blood is collected in buckets and later ploughed into the fields where the crops are grown. The fights continue unabated until dark, when the proud and bloodied women walk home, happy that their sacrifice will help to feed the village for the next year.

7 Coconut Head Smash

In Tamil Nadu in southern India, thousands of devotees go to the Mahalakshmi temple to engage in a tradition in which they ask their gods for success and good health or offer thanks for wishes already granted. As a crowd gathers to watch, a priest smashes the head of each believer, who is seated on the ground, with a large coconut. A devotee must be at least 18 years old to participate.

The ritual takes place on the second Tuesday of the Tamil month of Aadi every year. It’s believed that the tradition started in the 19th century when the British tried to build a railroad through the village. The residents protested, so the British sarcastically offered to reroute the transportation line if the locals would break large stones with their heads. When the villagers complied, the railroad was built elsewhere.

The stones were soon replaced by coconuts as the preferred instrument to break over the devotees’ heads, but this tradition still comes with considerable risk depending on the coconut’s size and the force with which the head is whacked.

According to neurosurgery professor Anil Kumar Peethambaran in an interview with National Geographic, “What happens is . . . there is a certain amount of tolerance for the skull beyond which it will cause damage to the skull. So, if the coconut is big and if the coconut breaks, that means that a part of the energy is dissipated and the damage done is less and if the coconut doesn’t break, more damage is done to the skull.”

Dozens of people are treated for serious head injuries every year. Ironically, this good health tradition may be deadly.

6 People Trampled By Cows For Luck

A lot of cultures have rituals designed to bring them good luck. But in villages around the Ujjain area of India, the annual tradition of male residents getting trampled by their cows on Ekadashi, the day after the Hindu festival of lights known as “Diwali,” is probably one of the strangest. Stranger still, they’ve been doing this for centuries.

Cows are sacred to the Hindus in India, which may explain why the villagers claim that no one has ever been hurt in such a seemingly dangerous tradition. Before the ritual trampling, the cows are decorated with henna patterns and brightly colored baubles. As others crowd around to watch, the men lie with garlands in the street while their herds of cows literally run over them. In this way, the trampled men believe that their prayers will be answered by the Hindu gods and that they will receive good luck in the coming year.

5 Easter Rocket War

Just off the coast of Turkey, the villagers of Vrontados on the Greek island of Chios celebrate Greek Orthodox Easter a little differently than most believers in the faith. As the Sun sets on Easter Saturday, they like to pelt each other with tens of thousands of homemade bottle rockets in a traditional rocket war known as “Rouketopolemos.” The two sides in this mock war are the followers of the town’s two Orthodox churches, Agios Markos and Panagia Erithiani, who continue their battle into the wee hours of Easter morning.

Although the goal is to hit the opposing church’s bell while services are being held inside, there’s never really a winner. There can be a lot of property damage despite the protective wire mesh that covers the churches and surrounding houses. There have also been serious injuries and even deaths from the rockets.

Technically, it’s illegal to make rockets in Vrontados. The annual celebration is a big tourist attraction, so the local police usually pretend not to notice the deafening and illuminating illegal activities that have been going on around them for at least 125 years.

The origins of this battle are unclear, but there are two competing stories that the locals like to tell. In one version, cannons on local ships that were first used to battle pirates were eventually fired each Easter as part of the holiday’s celebration. When Ottoman invaders took the cannons in the late 1800s, the villagers began firing rockets on Easter instead.

A second version of the story is that the villagers wanted to celebrate the Easter services that the Turks had prohibited. The Greeks faked a war between their churches to keep the frightened Turks away while they celebrated Easter mass.

Some residents don’t like this rocket war. “We live as hostages to this tradition,” said one unnamed villager to the BBC in a 2004 interview. “We can’t breathe when it takes place, we have to be on standby in case a fire breaks out because if you are not careful you can even lose your house.”

4 Santhara

To outsiders, santhara (or sallekhana) is often confused with suicide or euthanasia. To the followers of Jainism, an ancient religion in India that focuses on spiritual discipline through a simple life that eschews physical pleasure, santhara is a religious right to worship as they choose. Every year, as many as 500 believers in Jainism starve themselves to death to liberate their souls from the cycle of death and rebirth through reincarnation. Instead, they believe this is the way to attain nirvana, the ultimate state of bliss.

Unlike Christians, who consider the body a temple of the soul, Jains see their bodies as prisons of their souls. Santhara can be a cause for celebration and pride for those left behind because the person who made the starvation oath took control of their own path to salvation.

Jains don’t see santhara as suicide, which they view as a violent act against the body, because santhara is nonviolent. It is physically painful but supposedly punctuated by moments of euphoria as the soul is transformed. Throughout the process, people near the starving person continually touch and hold that person. When it is time for the person to die, they are raised to a sitting position because divine beings in the Jain religion are never seen sleeping. They always appear in a sitting position or a half-sitting position.

Those practicing the ritual are seen by other Jain followers as living saints. Other Jains may travel from across the country to witness, endure, and be blessed by the sacrifice of the person who has taken this oath. As the person dies, the witnesses chant the names of divine beings.

Both monks and laypeople, the healthy and the dying, take the starvation oath. More women than men do it. The practice has been controversial for years among the general public. On August 10, 2015, the Rajasthan High Court in India declared santhara to be illegal. However, that ruling is being challenged in the Supreme Court as of late August 2015.

3 Costa Rica Bullfighting

Unlike bullfighting in Mexico and Spain, which usually ends with the death of the bull, Costa Rican bullfighting is a more humane tradition that elevates the status of the bull to that of a celebrity. No one can hurt the bull, although he’s free to hurt or kill anyone he chooses without reprisal. The rules may have less to do with love for the animal than with practicality. Thousands of farming families depend on cows for their livelihoods, so they don’t want their bulls killed. Even so, some animal rights activists believe that the animals are mistreated.

When a bull enters the ring in Costa Rica, an announcer introduces him by name and gives his weight and information about his background, including his father’s bullfighting history. Then the improvisados, or rodeo clowns, face him down. Most improvisados are untrained young men who either stay close to the fence for a quick getaway or foolishly taunt the bull to amuse the crowd. They try to be as daring and entertaining as possible to win cash prizes from the festival’s organizers and sponsors.

The trouble is that when these bulls get fired up, it’s almost impossible to outrun them. If you can’t get over the fence quickly enough, your best hope is that the bull becomes distracted by someone else because you’re not permitted to fight the bull. You can only run away from him, and he’s darn fast.

As shown in the video above, there are a lot of rear-end collisions, with the bull tossing the men into aerial somersaults before sometimes trampling their bodies when they land on the ground. There’s no time limit on how long you can stay in the ring with the bull. But more time is not your friend. Hundreds of improvisados are injured each year.

No one’s sure how this tradition began, but bullfighting festivals are held throughout the country each year. It’s almost a rite of passage for young Costa Rican men to enter the bullfighting ring after they turn 18. “It’s just the Tico thing to do,” said Jon Carlos Cattano, 28, to the Tico Times. “It’s important to do it at least one time in your life.”

2 Gotmar Mela

Each year for at least a century, the residents of Pandhurna and Sawargaon, two villages in India divided by the Jam River, have pelted each other with stones for one day in a festival known as Gotmar Mela. Before each battle begins, a tree trunk with a flag tied on top is stuck in the middle of the riverbed. The team that retrieves the flag first is the winner.

However, climbing the tree to grab that flag while villagers throw big rocks may be the last thing a participant ever does. Injuries number in the hundreds every year, and there have been at least 17 deaths. Government officials have tried to persuade the villagers to use rubber balls instead of stones—to no avail. An outright ban didn’t work, either, and was lifted after pressure from the villagers.

There are conflicting stories about how the festival began. In one version, a Pandhurna boy fell in love with a Sawargaon girl, but their parents forbade their marriage. The young lovers decided to elope. As the boy carried his lover across the river to Pandhurna, the Sawargaon villagers began throwing stones at him. The Pandhurna residents returned the favor from their side of the river. Eventually, everyone agreed to let the kids get married, and they throw stones at each other once a year to mark the occasion.

Another version of the legend says that the king of Pandhurna abducted the beautiful daughter of Sawargaon’s ruler about 300 years ago. When the villagers of Sawargaon realized what had happened, they began pelting stones at the Pandhurna king, who had escaped to the other side of the river by then. To protect their king, Pandhurna villagers fired stones at Sawargaon. The king made it safely to his palace, and now the grooms from each village supposedly throw stones during the annual festival to win brides from the other village.

1 Yanshui Beehive Rocket Festival

“Insane” is almost too mild a word to describe the annual Beehive Rocket Festival held in the Yanshui District of Tainan, Taiwan. The Beehive Rocket Festival is part of the Lantern Festival that celebrates the Chinese New Year. But in some ways, it’s a uniquely dangerous celebration. During the Easter Rocket War in Greece that we talked about earlier, bottle rockets are launched toward church bells. They’re not meant to hit people directly.

However, with the Yanshui Beehive Rocket Festival, bottle rockets are arranged in large beehive structures, and people willingly move toward the exploding fireworks, deliberately trying to get hit as many times as possible. The more times you’re hit, the luckier you’ll be in the coming year. The often tightly packed crowds seem to bounce up and down with the rocket blasts, which at their peak can sound like the buzzing of bees in a hive.

Most participants suit up in protective gear, including fire-resistant clothing and helmets with face masks. Some young men rely on faith to protect them, wearing only a loincloth and a towel to shield their eyes from the intense heat and flying debris. Despite the cavalier attitude of the crowd, people do get hurt and sometimes require treatment at a hospital.

The festival began as a response to a cholera epidemic that raged in the city about 200 years ago. To ward off the evil spirits that were believed to be causing the illness, residents lit a massive firework display to win the favor and protection of their god. The epidemic subsided, and the rocket festival became an annual event for good luck.

Genghis Kahn and his Mongolian hordes swept through Asia, slaughtering and conquering a huge part of the world. No army could stand in their way. By the time their conquests had ended, they had wiped out a tenth of the world’s population.

It took an intense and brutal army to pull it off. Fighters in the Mongolian army did not have the option to be weak. Life, in a Mongolian horde, meant giving up even the most basic of comforts and doing some absolutely horrifying things.

10Mongolians Never Cleaned Their Clothes

The Mongolians of Genghis Khan’s time believed that contaminating water would anger the dragons that controlled its cycle. They feared that, if they dirtied the water, the gods would send a storm to destroy their homes—and so they did not wash anything.

Bathing in running water or washing your clothes was prohibited. Most of the Mongolian fighters would not even change their clothes. At most, they would beat their coats to get the lice out and put them right back on. They would wear the same thing, day after day, until it literally rotted off and could not be worn anymore.

They did not wash the dishes in water, either. Instead, they would wash their plates in the left-over broth from the last meal. Then they would pour the used broth back into the pot and cook their next meal in it.

It was smelly—but they took pride in that. There was a power to their stench. It would be considered an honor if a great Khan gave someone his cloak, not just because he had his clothes, but because he could now carry the Khan’s stench.

9They Learned to Ride Horses When They Were Three

As soon as a Mongolian could walk, they learned to ride. Every family had a horse, whether they were wealthy or poor, soldiers or farmers. Even shepherds would take care of their flocks on horseback. They had to get ready young—so they started when they were three years old.

The Mongolians had custom saddles made for children, designed with a few extra safety features to make sure they did not get hurt. They wanted their kids to start practicing as soon as possible. It made a huge difference. When Europeans saw them, they wrote back that the little girls in Mongolia were better horse riders than most European men.

The kids learned archery, too. As soon as they started riding, they were given tiny bows and taught to shoot. For a Mongolian in the time of the great Khans, riding a horse and shooting a bow were as essential as learning to walk.

8They Drank Blood from a Vein Cut in Their Horses’ Necks

The Mongolian army covered incredible distances. In a single day, they could travel 80 miles (129 km), a distance that, in their time, was completely unheard of. It took intense and vicious riding to do it, and they did not have time to stop for food.

To make the journey possible, they would put raw meat on their horses’ backs. It is believed that this was to tenderize the meat, so they could eat it on the go, although that is debated. Some now believe that the meat was for the horse, meant to help heal their sores while they pushed through incredible treks.

Marco Polo claimed that these warriors would ride for ten days straight without stopping long enough to make a fire. When they got thirsty, they would pierce a hole in the necks of their horses and drink the blood that came squirting out.

The horses helped them get drunk, too. They would ride female horses whenever possible and would milk them when they stopped. Then they would take that milk with them, letting it ferment into liquor for the road.

7They Cut Open Animals’ Chests to Butcher Them

Mongolians barely ate vegetables. From time to time, they would gather a few wild plants or eat some food that had been offered to them by a surrendering army, but they mostly relied on meat and dairy.

Their diet was, essentially, the exact opposite of veganism—and the way they prepared it was the exact opposite of kosher. When they wanted to butcher an animal, they would tie the animal down, jam a knife into its chest, and cut it open. Then they would reach in, grab its heart and squeeze to fill the carcass up with blood.

They would tear out all of its internal organs and cook them up. Every part of the animal’s body would be put to use, usually boiled in a pot of broth, but, on special occasions, cooked on a skewer. The blood would be drained out of the body and worked into sausages.

Usually, they ate mutton, but they would eat horses when they could. Horses were usually saved for special occasions, but they ate whatever horse meat they could. According to one missionary who went to Mongolia, they would even eat the afterbirth of mares.

6A Mongolian Man Could have 30 Wives

The Mongolians were strict about extra-marital sex. If a man was caught with a married woman, he could have his lips cut off. If they were in bed together, he could be killed. And if he was caught with an unmarried virgin, both the man and the woman would be put to death.

As long as you married them, though, a man could have as many women as he wanted—or, more accurately, as many as he could afford. He would have to pay a dowry for each one, and he would be expected to provide her with her own tent to live in. Some Mongolian men had thirty wives, and the Khans had hundreds.

The women just accepted that this was how life was. It is claimed that, after some men spent the night with his wife, he would invite in all of this other wives to share a drink together.

5The Youngest Son Inherited His Father’s Wives

When a Mongolian’s life came to an end, they made sure that his wives were taken care of. His land and his possession were divided up among his sons, with the best bounty going to the youngest. He would get his father’s home, his slaves, and also his wives.

The boy would not be expected to marry his own mother, but he would be expected to provide for all of his father’s other wives. And while there were no rules saying he had to, he was allowed to take them as his own. It was not uncommon for a young man who had lost his father to make his stepmothers his wives and bring them into his tent.

4They Used Psychological Warfare

One of the main ways the Mongolians became such effective killers was by using psychology. They could not have conquered so many nations by fighting alone—they needed to get as many as possible to surrender without having to waste the life of their men.

No matter the circumstances, they would hide their numbers. If the opposing army was bigger than theirs, they would put dummies on spare horses or light extra campfires to seem more imposing. If their army was bigger, they would ride their horses in single-file, with branches tied to their tails to mask them in a cloud of dust.

They were experts at scaring people. They would travel with their yurts, tents that they could set up before a siege as portable homes. In at least one case, they used the colors of these tents to terrify the people within a city’s walls. First, they put up white tents, telling them that if they surrendered now they would be spared. If they did not surrender, they would put up red tents, telling them that only the men would be killed. If the people were still not ready to fight, they would put up black tents, telling them that everyone inside would die.

3They Massacred Whole Cities

The key to their psychological terror was their reputation for brutality. They needed their enemies to believe that if they did not surrender, every person in the city would be horribly killed. They did not use any tricks to get that reputation—they really did it.

If a city did not surrender, the Mongolian horde would massacre every single person inside. They rounded up the women and children and slaughtered them all. Sometimes they even rounded up the cats and the dogs and killed them for good measure. Their heads would be removed and they would make a pyramid of their skulls to let anyone who passed by know what happened if you angered a Khan.

The most horrible thing was what they did to pregnant women. According to an Arabian writer, the Mongolians would not stop at killing them. They would rip open her stomach and kill the unborn baby inside of her.

2They Had to Kill Nobles without Spilling Blood

The Mongolians believed that blood contained a person’s spiritual essence. They did not dare spill the blood of a nobleman, believing it would defile the ground on which it fell. So, when they killed royalty, they had to find other ways to do it.

Usually, noblemen would be suffocated or drowned. If a member of the Khan’s family betrayed him, he would usually be rolled up in a carpet and thrown in a body of water. Sometimes, though, they got creative. Guyuk Khan took care of one of his rivals by sewing every orifice on her body shut and pushing her into a river.

They had to get creative with enemy nobles, as well. In one case, they trapped Russian princes under a board and held a feast on top of them to suffocate them without spilling their blood. In another, Genghis Khan had a man killed by pouring molten silver into his eyes.

1They Catapulted Diseased Bodies over City Walls

The Mongolian army might have been the first to use biological warfare. While they swept into Europe, they were hit by the Black Plague—and they decided to use it to their advantage.

Their enemies had holed up inside of the city of Caffa, where the Mongolians had them surrounded. When the Black Plague started killing their people, though, they realized they could not stay forever. They wanted to make the biggest impact they could before they left—so they threw their dead over the city walls.

Any Mongolian who died of plague was put on a catapult and sent flying over the walls. On the other side, the people tried to get rid of these bodies by throwing them into the sea, but this just tainted their water supply. Soon, the plague had spread throughout the city.

A few people fled over the city walls and ran further west, but it was too late for them. They were already carrying the plague, and, as they ran out westward, they spread it through Europe.

Mark Oliver is a regular contributor to . He writing also appears on a number of other sites, including The Onion’s StarWipe and Cracked.com. His website is regularly updated with everything he writes.

Hollywood is a world that was designed to look as shiny as possible on the outside, but everybody knows that it can be extremely ugly on the inside. Some Hollywood stars that are beloved in the entire world turn out to be something else entirely that most of the public could not have seen coming. And sometimes, a single mistake can turn into a lifetime of career-ending chaos. Here are the most brutal falls from grace Hollywood has ever seen:

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10 Kathy Griffin: One Bad Joke

Believe or not, Kathy Griffin was once a highly appreciated and respected comedian in America, making herself famous in the 90’s through her standup comedy and her clever parodies of music videos and major events in pop culture. Often praised for being a bit of an outsider in Hollywood who thinks outside of the box, Griffin built a quite unique name for herself through the years. But everything came to a scratching halt for her in May of 2017, when she posted to social media an extremely bloody and disturbing picture of herself holding a mask representing Donald Trump’s decapitated head.

The image, snapped by American photographer Tyler Shields, created an instant uproar in the country, and even Trump’s most outspoken detractors came forward to denounce Kathy Griffin’s choice to display such an image to the world, some even comparing it to terrorist behaviors we have seen in the past. In a matter of hours, Griffin’s career was reduced to ashes, being fired from all of her ongoing projects, and having her stand up tour cancelled. She has since gone to great lengths to attempt to revive her career, but despite her apologies and her subsequent work, Kathy Griffin never fully recovered from the incident.^[1]

9 Katherine Heigl: A God Complex

Hollywood has no shortage of rude and entitled celebrities, and everyone is willing to deal with them for the sake of making money. That is why people are still surprised that Katherine Heigl ruined one of the most promising careers of our time for the one and unique reason that she was an insufferable diva. To say that her success got to her head is an understatement — after becoming one of the most talked about actresses in Hollywood during her prime in the mid 2000’s, Heigl began to repeatedly bite the hand that fed her.

While promoting her movie “Knocked Up” with Seth Rogen in 2008, she began bad mouthing the film to the media, famously calling it “a little sexist” in a Vanity Fair interview. Her words caused a lot of people to question her integrity, many criticizing her for deciding to speak up against the movie only after having been paid millions to star in it. Heigl’s diva behaviour on set began to be a problem for many productions she worked on, and everything came to a head when she was nominated for an Emmy Award for her famous role as Dr Izzie Stevens in “Grey’s Anatomy”.

In an ultimate show of vanity, Heigl publicly demanded for her nomination to be withdrawn from the ceremony, claiming that “the material she was given this season was not good enough to warrant an Emmy nomination.” This did not go well for her. The criticism she faced for these comments led to her abrupt exit from the show, her character being written out of it the following season, and Katherine Heigl was blacklisted from Hollywood.

Since then, she has tried to achieve a comeback a few times, to no avail. She notably starred in a number of failed romantic comedies and TV shows, such as CBS’s “Doubt” in 2017, which was historically cancelled after only 2 episodes had aired. She eventually joined the cast of USA’s “Suits”, at a time when the show’s ratings were at an all time low. Unfortunately, the show ended a year later, and she returned to oblivion, where she has now been for over a decade.^[2]

8 R. Kelly: Highway To Hell

R. Kelly highly contributed to shaping Hip-Hop in the 90’s and early 2000’s by redefining the R&B genre. From top hits, Grammy Awards and even a Guinness World record under his belt by the age of 31, the man was a force to be reckoned with when it came to music, and his talent was praised from all corners of the world. That was until accusations of human trafficking, sexual abuse and racketeering started to pile on against him, slowly backing him into a dark corner for the better part of 20 years.

Ultimately, the year 2019 became R. Kelly’s doomsday, as he was indicted on no less than 18 charges of pedophilia, child pornography, kidnapping, and more. His offences were all detailed in the now famous six-part documentary “Surviving R. Kelly”, in which it was revealed that he was essentially running a sex cult from his home, where he detained underage girls and enslaved them for his own pleasure. And this time, the evidence against him was too big: R. Kelly has been incarcerated in a Chicago prison since July of 2019, and despite having been savagely attacked by other inmates in 2020, he was denied bail twice in the last year.^[3]

7 Louis CK: Too Close To The Sun

Louis CK was one of the most successful comedians of his time. He was also one of the most beloved comedians since his very first special “Live In Houston” in 2001, which immediately made him a legend of comedy. Which is why the world was shocked when he was caught in the tsunami of sexual misconduct allegations created by the #MeToo movement in 2017. The accusations against CK were all confirmed by him, as he admitted in his official response that every woman that came forward was telling the truth. As you can imagine, his shiny career went down the drain overnight.

The fallout from the scandal saw the abrupt cancellation of his Netflix deal, as well as his acclaimed TV series “Louie” and his upcoming film “I Love You, Daddy”, which he was in the middle of promoting at the time. CK has completely disappeared from the public eye, aside from a few attempts at a comeback, most of which were very poorly received by the masses. He eventually released a self-produced standup special on his website in 2020 (which got a very divisive response), but it is safe to assume that his career will never go back to where it was.^[4]

6 JK Rowling: A Broken Legacy

JK Rowling, the legendary author of “Harry Potter”, is a celebrity unlike any other. Until the last couple of years, it seemed like she could do no wrong. The love and respect she got from the entire world felt like something special and she was undeniably one of the most beloved pop culture figures out there. But things started to change with Rowling’s increasingly dishonest habit to retcon the story of Harry Potter in order to make it more diverse than it actually was.

It started when she announced that the character of Albus Dumbledore was gay at a public event In 2007. While it was met with major acclaim, many questioned why that was never actually made clear in the books. A few years later, when the play “Harry Potter & The Cursed Child” cast a black woman as Hermione Granger, Rowling defended the choice by claiming that she never actually specified in the books that Hermione was white. That claim was a very bold lie that was quickly debunked by fans, but Rowling’s dishonest shenanigans have become way too common over time.

The true scandal, though, came in 2020 when Rowling went on an extensive and highly publicized rant against the Trans community on Twitter which caused an absolute mayhem online and in the media, forcing hundreds of celebrities (including stars of the Harry Potter movies) to publicly come forward to denounce her words. The backlash Rowling faced was astronomical, and she has now become one most of the most disliked personalities in the world.^[5]

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5 Roseanne Barr: Gone In A Blink

Roseanne Barr is a personality that warmed the hearts of American audiences for an entire decade. Her sitcom “Roseanne” was a huge success in the 90’s, and she became kind of an American monument long after the show ended. So, the excitement that overtook the country when it was announced that “Roseanne” would get a 10th season 21 years after the 9th ended was perfectly understandable. The revival broke records for ABC, premiering to 18 million viewers, but that victory was very short lived.

On May 29, 2018, just one week after the end of the season, Barr posted a highly criticized racist tweet aimed at Barack Obama’s former senior advisor Valerie Jarrett. The tweet (which compared Jarrett to an ape) created an absolute tornado of backlash, and in a matter of hours, Barr’s entire world and legacy crashed and burned — the “Roseanne” revival was cancelled a couple of hours later, and she lost everything. Barr later tried to apologize for the tweet, claiming that she was on Ambien at the time of writing it, but Ambien manufacturer Sanofi responded to that apology by simply tweeting that “racism is not a known side effect of the drug.”^[6]

4 Ellen DeGeneres: A Crack In The Mask

While Ellen Degeneres has spent almost two decades building a flawless brand entirely based around kindness and generosity, rumours of her on-screen personality being completely fake have been floating around for years, now. But even then, no one was truly prepared for the shock that hit the world when Buzzfeed released anonymous testimonies from both current and former employees of Ellen’s famous talk show in 2020, detailing the terrible conditions of their workplace environment. It quickly prompted other employees and celebrities to publicly denounce Ellen’s true self, not only confirming every rumour, but seemingly affirming that it was only the tip of the iceberg.

Ellen’s perfect image was shattered as more and more people added to the accusations, and claims of common bullying, racism and sexual harassment at her show led to three executive producers being fired before the start of the new season. Her lack of response was highly criticized, until the season premiere, where she delivered a subpar apology in which she mainly blamed others and didn’t address the majority of accusations against her at all. Her fall was brutal, as it was reported that her show’s ratings are currently down 38% from the previous year, making it the biggest decline of any talk show ever.^[7]

3 Milli Vanilli: A Deal With The Devil

Imagine a duo so incredibly successful that their very first single broke charting records in eight countries, and was certified 6x platinum in just seven weeks. Such was the case for German duo Milli Vanilli, who became the biggest Pop sensation in the world back in 1989. They became an unstoppable force, dominating the charts with every single one of their singles, and inevitably making their way to a Grammy Award in 1990. And they did all of that without singing a single note.

Milli Vanilli is now known for being the largest hoax in music history, entirely orchestrated by genius producer Frank Farian. The members of Milli Vanilli had been lip synching to other vocalists this entire time, and kept a tight cover with the help of their team. But their immense success got to their heads and they started getting sloppy. Drugs, alcohol and partying began to take over their lives, and the sloppier they got, the more people started to have doubts about them. And when Farian tried to calm them down in order to keep their cover intact, they turned against him.

Unfortunately for them, Farian was the pillar that was holding the castle, and when they came at him with a lawyer, he decided he was done with this little experiment, and he organized a press conference where he publicly outed Milli Vanilli as imposters.

What followed was a historic catastrophe that completely shook the music industry as a whole. Lawsuits were flying left and right, and the band had to return their Grammy Award and publicly apologize…it was a mess. In the span of 24 hours, Milli Vanilli went from being kings to being the laughing stock of the world. They lost everything, and the lasting consequences even led to the death of one of the members, Robert Pilatus, who died of an overdose at 33, after 8 long years of struggle from the fallout.^[8]

2 Shane Dawson: The Fallen God of YouTube

Today, it is almost funny to think that Shane Dawson was one of the most beloved figures in Internet History as recently as last year. One of YouTube’s original creators, with over 15 years of history on the platform, Shane has had his fair share of controversy throughout the years, but nothing even comes close to the insane fall from grace that destroyed his career in June 2020. Now famously known as “Karmageddon”, the dire series of events that lead to Shane Dawson’s end was a 2-year long unfolding of public incidents that ruined the lives and careers of more than one person.

The dangerous tension that was rising since 2018 within a community of beauty gurus on YouTube led to an unceremonious amount of accusations of blackmail, racism, predatory behavior and corruption. It all came to a head when beauty star Tati Westbrook revealed that most of these accusations and lawsuits amongst the community were orchestrated by Shane Dawson and Jeffree Star, in an attempt to hold a monopoly over the extremely lucrative business of beauty products. Public outrage immediately followed, with media outlets from all around the world relaying the story in a matter of minutes.

Shane’s response to Tati was a very public meltdown on an Instagram livestream that same day, which showed millions of people a different side of him that is the polar opposite of the perfect “good boy” persona he had built. The stream saw Shane going on an angry and incoherent rant, during which he attempted to discredit Tati, called her crazy, and claimed she lied about being a victim of abuse. As he paced frantically around his home, screamed and hit himself, even his most devoted fans saw his true face, before he abruptly ended the stream and completely vanished from the Internet, like he was never there.

And while everything was already over for Shane by this point, the final nail in the coffin came a month later, when a young YouTube creator named D’Angelo Wallace released a 73-minute documentary titled “The Exact Moment Shane Dawson’s Career Ended”.

The film takes an extremely detailed dive into Shane’s 15-year long YouTube career, highlighting past patterns of racist, pedophilic and manipulative behavior, brilliantly explaining how his fake “good boy” persona works, and how he went about creating it. The documentary is filled with old videos and lost footage that back up every single one of D’Angelo’s claims. The video took over the world in mere days (watched by over 15 million people) and effectively terminated what was left of Shane’s career.^[9]

1 Harvey Weinstein: The End Of An Empire

We previously mentioned the #MeToo movement, and how massive it was. So it is only fair to mention the one that started it all. Because what makes Harvey Weinstein’s downfall so legendary is the fact that led to the downfall of hundreds of insanely powerful people after him. The man quite literally inspired a purge that transcended cultures and put an end to hundreds of iconic careers around the world.

Weinstein was one of the most successful movie producers in the history of Hollywood, and he had become so powerful that even attempting to go against him was career suicide. He essentially had the power to banish anyone from Hollywood, and while thousands of people on the inside knew what horrible things he had been up to for decades, many were too scared to speak up. But there is also power in numbers, and when 87 women banded together to take him down at once, his fate was sealed.

For almost three years, Weinstein watched his empire burn down to the ground in a slow and painful agony, until February 24, 2020, when he was finally defeated by a 23-year prison sentence. Knowing that he would finish his days behind bars, the world took a final look at Harvey Weinstein, as his downfall became a shining example that, in the end, karma does not spare anyone.^[10]

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Warfare has been around for a very long time. As ancient mass graves have shown us, interactions between various groups of human beings haven’t always been peachy—if anything, they’ve often been nothing shy of horrific. And sometimes, horrific is actually the point of some forms of warfare, tactics intended to intimidate and scare the other side. Such is the nature of psychological warfare, and it, too, has been around since humanity’s inception, beginning way back in prehistoric times when the first group of Paleolithic men decided to scream before charging an enemy in an attempt to startle and cause a deep, primal fear within their opponents before they struck.

Psychological warfare is a blend of propaganda and actual tactics that can create a firestorm of terror in the mind of the enemy, long before the first arrow is shot or the first bomb is dropped. Carl von Clausewitz remarked in his work On War that the goal of warfare is to disarm the enemy and make them submit to the will of those conducting the war.^[1] Sometimes, through the use of psychological warfare, this can happen easily, without a fight. Long before the use of newspapers and digital media, cultures had to conduct psychological warfare using more organic and rudimentary tools, the only things that they had at their disposal at the time. Here are ten brutal methods of psychological warfare from the ancient world.

10 Occupation

Alexander the Great employed psychological warfare in ways that were quite novel at the time, and the results were outstanding, as the massive empire he forged shows us. What most people think about when they think of psychological warfare is purely intimidation, but as von Clausewitz said, all warfare is political.

Alexander used a new tactic that he invented to expand his empire, one the Romans would later use as they became a powerful military force, and that tactic contained a beautiful mixture of friendly alliances and intimidation. See, before Alexander, military leaders would march through a city, plunder the goods, often execute the men and keep the women, and then burn it to the ground. Alexander changed this by leaving a certain amount of his troops and forces behind, leaving the cities standing, and making friends with the social elites of each conquered culture so that those defeated foes could then adopt Greek culture and become assimilated into the empire.^[2]

The tactic relied on political genius, mutual friendliness, and, of course, the implied threat of having a very powerful group of soldiers occupying your hometown that could smother any dissent that came about. Alexander’s brutal method was occupation, and while it was sometimes friendly on the surface, imagine the soldiers of a foreign nation standing on your street corners, in your homes, forcing you to adopt their ways at the threat of killing you. This tactic wasn’t all nice—it was more deeply psychologically disturbing.

9 Timing

Cyrus the Great was a military leader and conqueror who would rise to become the leader of the Achaemenian (or Achaemenid) Empire, also known today as the Persian Empire. Initially, Cyrus conquered many local cities in the area of modern-day Iran, and then he set his sights on a bigger prize—the city of Babylon—and he successfully took it by employing psychological warfare. Cyrus showed through psychological warfare that if you show up at just the right time, you can win a war and claim a city with a minimal fight.

Cyrus waited until things were ripe in Babylon, an ancient city with very powerful and respected priests, who the nation’s leader, Nabonidus, had seriously pissed off right before Cyrus showed up.^[3] The Babylonians had come to believe that their leader had disowned their major god, Marduk. The priests of the Babylonian religion saw this as a major transgression, and to top all of this off, Nabonidus had been on a military conquest for 11 years, hoping to control and dominate trade routes in the area. It seems he’d been gone for so long that his own people began to dislike him, though he’d left his son in his place to hold down the fort. Cyrus not only capitalized on this but had instigated it all along, sending representatives into the city to slowly spread propaganda until the people were totally fed up with their king. This process took years.

When the timing was right, Cyrus showed up and won over the already angry, elite class of the priests of Babylon and turned them against their leader. He was also able to make nearby armies who had sworn alliances to Babylon defect and join the fight against Nabonidus. Together, these smaller towns helped Cyrus in his campaign as his Persian army rolled through the ancient city.

8 Political Clout

When it comes to a shining, lovable, political image put forth by a political and/or military leader, very few, if any, people in history come close to the political savvy displayed by Julius Caesar. From the First Triumvirate to the treatment of the Gallic tribes north of Rome at the time, Caesar was a master manipulator in the name of furthering his political and military aspirations.^[4]

The Celtic warriors of Gaul had conquered the city of Rome after laying siege to it in 390 BC. Now, in 58 BC, Caesar wanted payback after centuries of skirmishes between the loose-knit band of ethnically and culturally similar tribes that composed the unofficial nation of Gaul, and he got it by starting with a smile. Initially, Caesar was trying to attack a nearby resource-rich nation and not actually Gaul, though Gaul was always on the back burner. At first, Caesar took it upon himself to go make friends with the Gallic tribes in the area. He became well-liked among the local tribes and was welcome in the area. But little did the Gauls know that Caesar was planning on totally dominating the unofficial nation at a later point.

By 52 BC, the Gauls had grown weary of Caesar, and a lot of the tribes turned against Rome, eventually culminating in an attack by the Belgian Gauls from the north, who would consolidate Gallic military might and lead a charge against the expanding Rome. But Caesar had already been perfecting his strategy for years—his plan was laid out, and his Roman legions crushed the Gauls and pushed them far back into the territories of Northern and Western Europe.

7 Impalement

It’s quite obvious how a mass of impaled human bodies might intimidate and dissuade an invading army, making it reconsider its effort in your territory. Even if it did not, it would serve to strike fear into the hearts of the combatants who sought to conquer your land and take your riches. Thousands of years before Vlad the Impaler came on the scene, there was Assyria. Assyria was unanimously agreed upon as a violent culture, something that’s even mentioned in the Holy Bible.

Ancient depictions show us that the Assyrians not only used to impale people like Vlad did, but they took it a step further by stabbing the stake through the victim’s abdomen.^[5] All this would leave a grisly and horrifying sight for any passersby who might have considered taking on the ancient Assyrians. This no doubt terrified both criminals and foreign armies alike.

6 Gifts Of Flesh

When it comes to psychological warfare in the form of sheer brutality, impalement wasn’t the only thing the ancient Assyrians turned to—they had other methods of scaring the life out of their neighbors. Ashurbanipal was the king of Assyria from 668 to 627 BC, and he was apparently quite gifted intellectually. Ashurbanipal would use his intellect sometimes for torturous ploys which would turn out to be genius military strategies.

See, Ashurbanipal seemed to take tremendous joy in removing the flesh of his victims and rivals, but he did this for a calculated reason—to terrify others. He is quoted as saying, “I will hack up the flesh and then carry it with me, to show off in other countries.”^[6] Can you imagine the looks on the faces of today’s leaders if one nation’s highest chief met with another toting a bag of well-preserved flesh which had been systematically carved off his enemies? Needless to say, the message was loud and clear.

5 Flaying And Staking

Another notable tactic of highly intimidating psychological warfare from ancient Assyria, the real ancient kings of brutality, was called flaying and staking. Flaying and staking is mentioned in the Holy Bible, and other surviving works depict this gruesome process, which was a horrific style of execution in the name of intimidation. It began with flaying the offender, usually a provincial governor of a conquered territory who refused to bow to the mighty Assyrian rule. The Assyrians would skin the person alive but not quite until death, just enough to make them suffer and to gather enough skin to place around the walls of wherever they were in order to scare off any rival armies.

Staking was similar to impalement, but the executioner would slowly shove the stake up through the anus of the condemned, taking great care to only move the vital organs aside so as to not kill the offender.^[7] Then, in traditional impalement-like fashion, they would sometimes hoist the stake up by burying the butt end of it into the ground to put on display before their cities. The reason for the tedious process was to keep the person alive as long as possible, and sometimes, these poor condemned persons would live for several days on end.

4 Crucifixion

Crucifixion could almost be likened to cultures erecting skyscrapers of their enemies, both living and dead, to stand tall and tower, terrifying their enemies and potential adversaries—such a sight of a group of crucified, helpless victims would be enough to make anyone reconsider a challenge to the people doing the crucifying. Crucifixion was actually pretty widespread throughout the ancient world. The Persians, the Carthaginians, and other cultures practiced it as both a military and criminal deterrent.

There were many different methods of crucifixion to terrify an enemy with, and some cultures used various versions of the practice over time. In Rome, for instance, nails weren’t always driven through the intended victim, so as to prolong the suffering in the air rather than risk the offender bleeding to death.^[8] In these cases, the victim would be simply tied to the cross or T-shaped wooden crucifix. Then the bones would be bent and misshaped and often broken to increase suffering, and the victim would be erected into the air for all to see. Many people died slowly as birds ate their flesh over a series of days.

Nails were also employed in various ways. Sometimes, the victim would have their legs bent around the sides of the wooden log, and then the nail would be driven through the side to fasten the legs in a much more uncomfortable position than the one we’re most familiar with. When nails were used on the upper body and driven through the arms, the weight of the body would cause the shoulders and other bones to break or dislocate, further adding to the pain of the condemned. This definitely scared away many of far-off armies who may have sent a traveler abroad and also made occupied cultures think twice about an insurrection.

3 Siege

Siege warfare relied on extremely powerful psychological tactics to force the enemy into submission. Siege warfare still remains a potent tool in the military commander’s toolbox that is often dug out even today. A war of attrition is where the forces of one military attempt to wear down the forces and supplies of another army and has long been a very powerful weapon, trading a quick conquest for the slow and certain collapse of decay. The side with the greatest access to resources over time intentionally prolongs the war to wear down the other side’s supplies.

Laying siege to a city often meant surrounding it in the form of a blockade, to cut off all supplies inbound and outbound, and then simply waiting . . . slowly waiting . . . for the enemy within the city limits to burn through all of their available resources, such as food and fresh water.^[9] As people began to slowly starve and resemble skeletons, they more often than not became much more willing to negotiate a peaceful solution, and if they wanted to fight, their weakened, starved armies didn’t pose a very serious threat. In the most extreme of cases, cities under siege often turned to cannibalism as a last resort if their leaders refused to concede to the army surrounding them. The psychological effects of such tactics are as obvious as they are terrifying.

From beginning to end, the Romans were the masters of siege warfare in ancient times, starting with the Siege of Veii, a city which belonged to their culturally similar yet long-rivaled neighbors to the north, the Etruscans. After being beaten in many fights, the infant Roman nation fortified their army and moved to lay siege to Veii in 405 BC. They successfully implemented a long siege but were pushed back in 402 BC by reinforcements and continued their stronghold nearby. It should be noted here that siege warfare back then took a long time—a very long time. In 396 BC, after years of siege, the Romans devised a plan to take the weakened city and dug under the walls that surrounded it and took it from within. This was the beginning of many Roman sieges laid upon the ancient world, with devastating results for anyone and everyone on the receiving end.

2 The Helepolis

And then there came the Helepolis—the taker of cities. This ancient marvel was a terrifying sight to behold, a massive, mobile tower that could effectively take any city by giving the persons on board a higher vantage point from which to fight downward while they climbed over the walls of the enemies they fought. This mobile skyscraper would be rolled into battle on its eight wheels by hand, pushed slowly and intently toward the enemy.

Imagine that it’s the fourth century BC, and suddenly, approaching upon the horizon, you see the largest chariot you’ve ever seen, the size of a modern-day high-rise building, slowly creeping toward you as you hold out at your fortification. The terrifying sight must have been an absolute nightmare to behold, as those on the receiving end of the slow-moving Helepolis knew their city walls that they’d relied on their entire lives were absolutely useless.

The Greeks made more than one siege tower over the years, but the Helepolis was the grandest of all, with an iron exterior that couldn’t be set on fire like other siege towers, but it ultimately proved a failure in the Siege of Rhodes in 305 BC.^[10] At 40 meters (130 ft) tall and 20 meters (65 ft) wide, the Helepolis was a behemoth, but as it approached Rhodes, the people inside the city had a genius idea. Using the cover of night, they built a large pool of mud and sewage near where they thought the Helepolis was likely to make its assault—and they were exactly right. The massive machine ended up becoming stuck and was eventually abandoned.

1 The Brazen Bull

The brazen bull was a torture device used in ancient Greece. (Note that some historians believe its existence was a tall tale; others say there is sufficient evidence that it was real.) The ancient Greeks didn’t often venture into the outside world to conquer aside from Alexander the Great, a period of unification, as the various city-states were typically fighting among themselves. The brazen bull was developed in the sixth century BC for the ruler Phalaris as a method for executing criminals, all while sending a clear and tyrannical signal to any would-be rivals.

Perillos of Athens was the man who invented it, creating a brass bull that had a striking resemblance to the real thing.^[11] This brass bull was hollow on the inside, with an opening in the side of it that could be shut and locked from the outside. The carved out nostrils and mouth were the only ventilation from the inside of the bull. After someone was convicted and condemned, they would be placed inside the bull, and a fire would be set beneath it. Because metal transmits heat quite well, the brass would heat up and cook the person inside alive. The screams and cries of the condemned surely sent a clear message—don’t mess with Phalaris.

In a stunning betrayal, when Perillos of Athens presented the brazen bull to Phalaris, the king decided that Perillos would be the very first man that the bull would be tested on. Perillos was placed inside the bull but was taken out before he died. This wasn’t a reprieve, though; Phalaris is said to have then thrown Perillos off a hill. In the end, however, the people of Athens, who had long been subjected to Phalaris’s cruelty, became tired of the tyrannical ruler and turned against him, killing him with nothing other than the brazen bull.

I like to write about the dark, the deranged, the twisted, history, true crime, and macabre stuff.

Battle has been an unavoidable element of life since the beginning of time. Animals have always fought for food and survival, and humans have waged war for innumerable reasons since the advent of our species. Territorial, political, religious, and other bases for bloody conflict have written violence into our blood. Violence is so much a part of us, in fact, that we have developed a recreational instinct for it and created games in order to slake our evolutionary bloodlust.

The following are some of the means by which we scratch our bloody little itches. Some may have come from long ago, but all are presently practiced. Here now, for our sadistic glee, are the ten most brutal modern-day fighting sports.

10 Catch Wrestling

Catch wrestling, for those unfamiliar with the term, is basically a combined form of grappling, allowing for techniques from wrestling, judo, and jujutsu. It values both pins and submissions while focusing more on the power of wrestling as opposed to the finesse-oriented principles of judo and jujutsu (the names of both of which translate roughly to “gentle way” in reference to their focus on technique over strength).

A unique element of catch wrestling is that victory comes through a best-of-three system (in which individual wins are referred to as “downs”) rather than single-win determination, essentially forcing competitors into three submission grappling matches rather than one.^[1]

Though catch wrestling does not carry the threat of concussive and blunt-force damage, the slams and submission holds carry a great risk if they are not executed carefully (and still to a significant extent even if they are). This, accompanied by the requirement of the “downs” for a victory, earn catch wrestling a spot representing grappling arts on this list.

9 Bare-Knuckle Boxing

Recently returning to the US is the art of bare-knuckle boxing. This new iteration, known as the Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship (BKFC), features a new rounded, four-rope “squared circle” but is otherwise the same brutal sport that was banned in 1889, Broughton rules and all.^[2]

The immediately possible injuries in boxing are largely obvious, including damage to the skull, eyes, ribs, and hands. (Broken hands by the puncher are very common in fight sports—a risk greatly exacerbated in bare-knuckle context.) But the biggest threat to a boxer is cumulative brain damage from continued blows to the head over time, which can lead not only to common forms of brain damage and “punch-drunk syndrome” but also to a greater risk of brain illnesses such as Alzheimer’s later in life.

8 Sambo

Russia has a reputation as a cold, hard, unforgiving place, and the fight sports that come from there are no different. Sambo isn’t just a fight sport but also a military combat system as well, with separate training systems for each version (military, sport, self-defense, freestyle, specialized). “Sambo” is a Russian portmanteau meaning “self-defense without weapons,” and it is essentially the official fighting system of Russia. It is used by everyone, including soldiers, police, athletes, citizens, and, presumably, bears on unicycles.

Sambo was formed in the early 20th century by a series of Russian martial artists by combining the effective elements of various fighting styles. Vasili Oshchepkov—a karate and Russian wrestling master who was also one of very few non-Japanese in the world with a black belt (second-degree) from Jigoro Kano (the creator of judo) himself—teamed up with Victor Spiridonov—a master of various grappling martial arts who focused on finesse and redirection of force over power due to a left arm lame from a bayonet wound—to form a new hand-to-hand combat system with the knowledge they’d acquired from their unique combat training and experience. From here, they joined up with Vseobuch, the general combat training system of the Red Army under Vladimir Lenin. In this context, they combined their studies with Anatoly Kharlampiev and I.V. Vasiliev—both extensive students of world martial arts systems and Vseobuch leaders—to complete their martial arts concept. Thus, Sambo was born.^[3]

The use of headgear and gloves may allow for greater protection against the cumulative brain damage that can be caused by some other strike-oriented combat sports, including bare-knuckle boxing, but the added danger of immediate injury from kicks, knees, elbows, judo throws, and submission holds earns Sambo a place on this list.

7 Muay Thai

Muay Thai is a form of extremely aggressive kickboxing that originated in Thailand. It evolved from an earlier, more military style called Muay Boran. As warring with neighboring nations decreased, its military nature declined in favor of sport combat, and Muay Thai was born. It was always an important national pastime in Thailand but gained worldwide popularity in the 1970s and 1980s, when Muay Thai fighters gained a reputation for readily defeating kickboxers of other disciplines.

Affectionately known as “the art of eight limbs,” Muay Thai gets this notorious nickname due to its use of elbows and knees in addition to the typical punches and kicks of other forms of kickboxing. (More ancient rules also allowed for headbutts, but those have since been banned.) The sport also contains a technique known as “Thai Clinch,” in which the hands are locked behind an opponent’s head in order to control their movements and deliver a series of difficult-to-defend-against knees to the face and occasionally throw them to the ground.^[4]

The elbows and knees make Southeast Asian forms of kickboxing especially brutal as a fight sport, even in the face of other types of kickboxing. There are many versions of kickboxing from this region of the world with similar rules—such as Kun Khmer and Pradal Serey—that could be included on this list, but for the sake of maintaining variety, Muay Thai, the best-known of the bunch, has been chosen as a representative.

6 Mixed Martial Arts (MMA)

Mixed martial arts (MMA), is largely exactly what it sounds like: a sport in which competitors of various fighting styles compete against each other in a unified context. The rules, or relative lack thereof, are what make this type of competition one of the most brutal on Earth. A fairly accurate way to describe it would be to combine the rules and allowances of Muay Thai with catch wrestling, and it thus carries the combined risks of both. But there’s more: there is no pinning in MMA, so any victory in grappling is achieved by the much more dangerous act of submission holds or, even more brutally than that, the “ground-and-pound.” This term refers to the act of throwing punches and elbows—almost always to the head—at an opponent who is pinned to the ground. It is as difficult to defend against as it is brutal.

The few techniques that are banned from this sport are kicks or knees to the head of a grounded opponent, downward strikes with the point of the elbow, groin strikes, and “dirty fighting” techniques, such as biting, eye-gouging, and so on. Beyond such things, almost anything goes.^[5]

5 Historic Medieval Battle (HMB)

Saying “medieval” may cause one to question whether or not this is a modern sport, but the term actually refers to a modern sport intending to simulate medieval combat for modern athletes. The sport essentially involves competitors donning armor and wielding steel weapons, simulating the nature of medieval fighting as closely as possible without killing each other. The armor sounds like it might remove a good deal of the sport’s brutality, but the axes and maces put it right back in. A competitor being held against a rail by two opponents as another beats on his helmet with an ax is quite a sight to behold.

One forgiving element of the sport is that the rules for elimination of a team member are rather merciful—essentially, hitting the ground means you’re out.^[6] The competition is decided on a last-man-standing basis, with teams consisting of five to 21 fighters. There are also substantially less brutal (but still pretty rough) one-on-one fights based on traditional rules for competitive dueling.

4 Medieval MMA

This sport, just as it may sound, is essentially an MMA equivalent to HMB. Two fighters enter a ring in medieval equipment very similar to that worn by HMB fighters. From here, many elements are similar to what would be a one-on-one HMB match, but with one drastic difference: You’re not out when you’re knocked down. Victory in medieval MMA is claimed through means similar to hand-to-hand MMA—knockout or submission—except with weapons. The brutality of this is displayed well by Rustam Kukurhoev’s vicious knockout of Vitaly Kravchenko in an early event by taking Kravchenko down and bashing his helmet with the edge of a shield. (You can watch it above.)

Originally created as a bit of a sideshow to divide the undercard from the main card at an M1 MMA event, the attraction was so well-received by fans that the sport has grown to where entirely medieval fight events are now being held.^[7]

3 Eskrima

Rounding out the section on weapons is the national martial art/sport the Phillipines—Eskrima, also known as Kali or Arnis. Some may argue that the three are technically different styles with different focuses, but they all fall under the category known as FMA, or Filipino martial arts, and are largely interchangeable.

The art was admired by colonial (1521–1898) Spaniards but was banned by 1596 and completely forbidden by 1764, due to it being too dangerous. The Spanish attempted to wipe out FMA, as well as most of Filipino culture, but the natives found ways to keep their traditions alive and hidden, with FMA concepts specifically being hidden in forms of dance.

Unlike most martial arts, which focus on hand-to-hand conflict first and integrate weapons later, FMA emphasizes weapons—particularly modern available weapons such as sticks of various range, knives, longer blades like machetes, chains, and even projectile weapons like guns—and uses unarmed techniques as only one part of the mix.^[8]

When engaging in sport Eskrima, the most commonly associated form is single- or double-stick fighting styles. Most, if not all, professionally sanctioned FMA organizations use heavy padding to protect fighters from serious damage, making the sport decidedly less dangerous, but the version that gets FMA onto this list is the unarmored type. It is not uncommon for FMA practitioners to engage in semiorganized competitions in which they beat the bejesus out of each other with wooden sticks almost completely unprotected (often with the exception of their hands). The unsanctioned nature of these competitions make them especially dangerous, as well.

On seeing these bouts, this form of Eskrima is clearly more fight than sport, and it’s incredibly brutal. Though not associated with an official sports league, there is a wealth of organized competitions for unarmored FMA. There are many instances of a few individuals engaging in unarmored weapons practice in other styles, but these, unlike unarmored FMA, are not widely organized enough to constitute their own sport.

2 Calcio Storico

Originating from a game designed by the Romans to keep their legionnaires fit for battle (harpastum), Calcio Storico is commonly referred to as “the most violent sport on Earth.” Though the previous entries on this list have all been martial arts competitions, this sport is a predecessor of modern soccer and also shares many similarities with American football and rugby. The ball is carried much like in rugby or American football and then thrown into one of a series of spaced-apart goals on the far side of the opposing team’s territory.^[9]

What qualifies Calcio Storico as a fight sport, however, is that martial arts are still regularly used—and with far less regulation and protection than in martial arts sports. It features no wearable protection and very few rules. No attacking from behind, ganging up, or striking a downed opponent. That’s about it. The lack of shielding from harm, accompanied by the vicious nature of interaction, leads to a staggering 50-percent injury rate! This is what earns Calcio Storico the notoriety of being the world’s most violent sport.

It must also be noted that participation in this sport is strictly an act of passion, as the competitors don’t even get paid!

1 Lethwei

Though Muay Thai has already been used as a representative for Southeast Asian boxing, Lethwei is being listed separately, and for a very brutal reason. Firstly, Lethwei is “bare-knuckle” (although handwraps are used), and in response to Muay Thai’s nickname of “the art of eight limbs,” Lethwei is referred to as “the art of nine limbs,” as it is the only combat sport remaining that allows for headbutts.^[10] Those facts, however, are little more than incidental in the face of the real reason for which Lethwei is the number-one item on this list, that being its handling of the concept of a “knockout.”

In Lethwei, when a fighter is knocked out (unable to answer an eight count), rather than the fight being called, the unconscious fighter is dragged back to his corner, revived with smelling salts, and given the option to continue! The fight is not called until a fighter chooses not to continue or until the fight runs out of time, in which case the fighter who knocked out the other more times wins. In the case of no or equal knockouts, the fight is determined a draw. Essentially, what we have here is sport with the most vicious of existing contact rules, where what would be considered an outright victory in other fight sports merely constitutes a single point. It is astonishing that people survive this sport, let alone the fact that it is legal and gaining popularity!

Bloodthirst has been a favorite human pastime for a good long while, and with the popularity of the items on this list, that doesn’t seem to be changing anytime soon. We may no longer allow gladiator battles to the death, but some of these warrior athletes come awfully close.

Jason Karras writes, therefore he is.

When skeletons talk, scientists listen. How someone died centuries ago can reveal more about the social violence and beliefs of long-gone eras. The language of bones is graphic but not always clear. For unknown reasons, people were struck down by professional killers or slaughtered children on a scale that archaeologists had never witnessed before. Other killings were more telling. They provided more details about old mysteries and the brutal reality of medieval tournaments’ lack of sportsmanship.

SEE ALSO: 10 Brutal Facts About The Most Humane Method Of Execution

10 Man Murdered On A Dune

In 2005, a construction crew found human bones in Sydney. Located in the suburb of Narrabeen, the skeleton belonged to an aboriginal man in his thirties. He turned out to be Australia’s earliest spearing victim. Scientists from all fields came together to reconstruct his life and death. Chemical analysis showed that the young man lived on a diet of seafood, coastal birds and seaweed.

Around 4,000 years ago, he found himself on the beach. Likely surrounded by several killers, he was stabbed to death and possibly left on the crest of a dune. During the excavation, a number of spear barbs were recovered. This was important to add some context to the slaying. Old records mentioned how Europeans witnessed ritual punishment in the Sydney area during which a person was killed by barbed spears.

Indeed, 17 pieces of barbs were found stuck in the Narrabeen skeleton or scattered around it. Several of the points also had smatterings of human bone and tip damage consistent with spearing a human. What the man did to deserve this remains a mystery.^[1]

9Masonry Man’s Real Story

The so-called “Masonry Man” fled the city of Pompeii when Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D. He failed to escape and died along with thousands of other residents. When the man’s remains were found in 2018, the Internet had a field day. The scene beggared belief. The skeleton was lying face down with his head trapped under a massive piece of masonry.

At first, the cause of death was obvious. He was running for his life when a flying 300-kilogram (661-pound) rock nailed him. This crushing end made the man a unique Pompeii victim. Around a month after the discovery, archaeologists removed the stone. They fully expected to find a crushed skull. After all, the evidence suggested that that the upper part of the man’s body, including his thorax and head, was dragged downwards by the velocity of the block.

Remarkably, the head was unscathed. Not a single fracture could be found. The downward angle appeared to have been caused by 19th-century tunneling that slightly collapsed the area surrounding the rock. The man was probably killed by a pyroclastic flow before the rock arrived. This horrifying death is released by volcanoes as a searing cloud nobody can outrun. While we now know the man was not crushed to death, it remains unclear why the masonry did not cause more damage.^[2]

8 Rosemarkie Man Could Have Been Royalty

A few years ago, the so-called Rosemarkie Man was found in a Scottish cave. He belonged to a mysterious group called the Picts and was murdered around 1,400 years ago. Facial reconstruction showed a handsome, serious-looking man.

Rosemarkie Man was also powerfully built, which was probably why his assassins took him down in a group and without finesse. The first three blows broke his teeth, fractured the back of his head and jaw. A fourth strike was so savage that it passed through the skull from one side and out the other. A fifth blow was added for good measure. The 30-year-old was buried in the cave where earlier excavations found signs of a feast. People were either really happy that the man died or his status demanded a big show.

A 2019 study gave the status theory more substance. Despite being in his prime, the man showed no injuries other than what had caused his death. There was nothing to suggest he was a warrior or performed any labor. Additionally, tests revealed that he had an unusual, high-protein diet – almost as if he ate nothing but pork. No signs of a hard life, eating exceptionally well and receiving a careful burial all pointed to the man being an elite member of a royal family, or that he was a chieftain.^[3]

7 The Child In The Baths Building

In 2018, archaeologists entered Pompeii with scanning equipment. The city’s central baths complex was considered “fully excavated” since the 19th century, but the team decided to sweep the structures anyway. There was a blip on the screen that turned out to be a child’s remains. The remarkable find likely escaped previous searches since the skeleton was hidden under a layer of soil.

Nobody knows why he or she was alone that day, where the family or guardians were, or exactly what killed the child. However, it would appear that the youngster was desperately scared. In an attempt to hide from the falling debris and ash, the roughly 7-year-old darted into the baths complex. The decision would be a fatal one. Although nothing is certain, the researchers believe that the child possibly died when Vesuvius released its deadly pyroclastic flows. As the scorching ash billowed over the building, the flow would have entered the windows and suffocated the child.^[4]

6 Clues About The Southern Maya Collapse

In 2019, a Maya warrior’s grave was discovered in Belize. Located in the Maya city of Pacbitun, the tomb included two trophy skulls. Both were crafted and decorated to be worn as necklaces. While one carried a glyph believed to be the first known word for “trophy skull,” the pair had greater importance. They could add valuable information to the greatest Mayan mystery.

The culture’s height was the Classic period. Society, the political system, architecture, and their military flourished for hundreds of years. Then for some reason, everything dissolved. Over the course of 150 years, starting in the eighth century, the powerful culture went into a fatal tailspin and nobody knows why. Researchers looked for a single cause until it became clear that no one factor was responsible. Instead, a complex merge of drought, violence, overpopulation, and weakening authority all played their part.

At least, the Pacbitun trophy skulls, along with a handful of others, suggested a reason why warfare destabilized cities in the south, including Belize. Previous evidence showed that their leaders and monuments were deliberately destroyed by somebody. Regardless of where the trophy skulls were found, most of the necklaces belonged to northerners and were made from southerners. It would appear that Maya in the north, sensing that the south’s dynasties were declining, moved in for the kill.^[5]

5 Mutilations In Cambridgeshire

In 2018, archaeologists found a rubbish dump in Cambridgeshire. The gravel pit dated from late Roman or early Saxon times. Nearby stood a Roman well. Both were enclosed by a circular ditch that held some kind of settlement. An investigation pieced together a tragic community. Once, they lived their lives. Then the Romans arrived, broke through the ditch and enslaved the villagers. There were signs that agriculture intensified afterward, perhaps to feed the Romans who forced the locals to tend the fields.

When the excavations found human remains, they showed what probably happened when the people tried to resist. Two male skeletons were discovered inside the trash pit. Their legs were hacked off at the knees – hopefully after death – and placed next to their shoulders. One theory is enough to make anyone cringe. The archaeologists believe that the mutilation might have occurred to keep the men from climbing out of their graves. The brutal act could also have served as a warning to others not to run away. The skeletons looked tame when compared to a third man who was found in the well. The body was missing everything from the waist down. He had been chopped in half and thrown away like rubbish.^[6]

4 A Professional Medieval Killing

During the 11th century, a man was violently stabbed to death. Archaeologists recovered his body in 2019 while digging in Sicily. At first, the crime went unnoticed. What piqued the team’s interest was the man’s unusual position. He was face-down, something not commonly seen in medieval Sicily. In fact, this was the first such discovery in the region.

The grave was also shallow and empty of goods. These already suggested that somebody disliked the 30 to 40-year-old but the wounds clinched it. After scanning the skeleton, a rough version of his final moments emerged. The man was kneeling when he was stabbed at least six times from behind. Whoever attacked him was likely a professional killer, because he delivered a quick and certain death. The heart was pierced several times.

The perfect stabs also suggested that the victim could not resist. Indeed, his feet were found close together as if tied by a long-gone rope. The researchers felt that the execution-style killing and disrespectful burial indicated that the man might have been an outlaw. However, nothing is known about that day. The victim could have been a normal man who earned the dislike of somebody that settled scores with hired killers. ^[7]

3 The True Brutality of Medieval Tournaments

In 1997, around 12 skeletons were removed from Stirling Castle. One of them was an English Knight who died during a tournament in 1388. Fatalities during jousting and other “war games,” might sound accidental. However, a recent review of the knight’s remains proved otherwise.

The man was called Robert Morley, a heavily muscled character in his mid-twenties. Several physical traits and injuries suggested that Morley led a hard life that included brutal tournaments. During earlier contests, he survived an arrow to the chest. At one point an ax put a dent in his skull. He survived that too. Falling from his horse or another blow also cost Morley a few teeth.

The tough knight was finally killed when an opponent razed a sword through his face, which cleaved through his nose and jaw. Apparently honor was not included in tournament rules. Morley was fatally struck while lying on the ground.^[8]

2 A Brutal Portuguese Punishment

In 2001, researchers removed almost 100 bodies from a necropolis in Portugal. Located in Estremoz, the medieval burials were normal except for three. The trio’s graves were at the southern end in the cemetery. The archaeologists were more than a little horrified when they discovered the men’s hands and feet had been amputated. The chopped off parts were stashed under their bodies or next to it. Worse, there was every reason to believe that the removals happened as a punishment while the men were still alive.

The angle of the cuts showed that the legs and arms were held together as each set was severed by an ax or sword. One man gruesomely suffered a botched attempt to hack off his legs. There were no other injuries on the bodies. This suggested that after the amputations, they were allowed to bleed to death.

What prompted the brutality will never be known. But sometime between the 13th and 15th centuries, the three individuals, aged 18 to 35, earned somebody’s hatred. Since medieval law removed hands that stole or supported the counterfeiting business, it is plausible that the men were criminals. If so, then the additional axing of their feet suggested that a very serious crime had taken place.^[9]

1 New Report On Largest Child Sacrifice

In 2019, a new report released the scope of a horrifying event that happened in Peru. The media already reported stories about the site, which was first discovered in 2011. Several kids and baby camelids (llamas or alpacas) were killed in what became the largest child sacrifice ever to be discovered in the New World.

The Huanchaquito-Las Llamas site belonged to the Chimú culture and was a 15th-century human abattoir. The unspeakable place remained hidden for centuries until passersby noticed human and animal bones sticking from dunes. The first excavations found 43 children and 74 camelids. Years later, the body count spiked to 3 adults, 137 kids, and 200 camelids. Based on incomplete skeletons scattered around the site, the death toll could be much higher. So far, the mass grave covers an area of 700 square meters (over 7,500 square feet). One of the worst things to come to light was the possibility that the children’s hearts were removed. Some had cut marks on their chests and the ribcages were pulled apart.

Archaeologists had never seen anything like this before. There was no forewarning that ancient Peru was into mass killings of the child-camelid kind. What is known, however, is that the sacrifices took place as a single event. For some reason, children aged 5 to 14 were killed and their bodies turned to face the sea. The animals faced the mountains. One theory suggests that the weather caused the killing frenzy. The region was normally arid but the skeletons came with a lot of mud. Perhaps the rainy season became so destructive that people performed the sacrifice to appease whatever gods they thought were angry.^[10]

The American Civil War is one of the most studied, dramatized, and reenacted events in world history. Much less covered is the period generally agreed by historians to have spanned from 1865 to 1877 known as the Reconstruction.The Civil War could easily be portrayed as a glorious campaign where the forces of good triumphed and in the process freed millions and preserved the union. It’s all very reassuring if not inspiring. Meanwhile the American Reconstruction is largely a matter of blunders. Blunders that cost countless Americans their lives and generations their livelihoods. Hard to feel inspired by that.

10 Ways American Slavery Continued Long After The Civil War

10 Black Codes

The Thirteenth Amendment which banned involuntary servitude “except as punishment for a crime” may be the most abused amendment in US history. In November 1865, Mississippi passed laws that quickly spread throughout the South to deny a number of basic rights to black people such as being able to enlist in militias, serve on juries, testify at trials, or take jobs without the approval of a previous employer. These were largely overturned, but after Reconstruction ended, new and arguably worse laws to ensure a steady flow of involuntary labor, such as criminalizing loitering or “vagrancy” which meant being caught in public while unemployed.

In Georgia for example, between 1864 and 186 8 the number of freed slaves that were convicted increased twentyfold. This got even worse towards the end of Reconstruction in 1875 when Convict Leasing, a practice whereby prison labor was provided to private businesses, exploded and remained in common practice until it was formally banned in 1941. By then, an estimated 200,000 African Americans had been put through the convict leasing program, while 800,000 were estimated to have been forced into unpaid labor. Under these conditions, for some prisons the annual death rate was reportedly as high as 5%.

9 Field Order No. 15 Betrayal

With the freeing of four million slaves at the end of the Civil War, the issue loomed of what exactly the Union would do to allow those people who had been legally barred from owning property to escape destitution. One experiment the Union Army intended to try was conceived of during a meeting between Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, General William Sherman, and 20 black community leaders led by Reverend Garrison Frazier in Savannah, GA on January 11, 1865. 400,000 acres of coastal farmland from Charleston to St. John’s river in Northern Florida would be distributed to 10,000 freed families, with the benefit of a mule added later. Sherman issued the order on January 15 with Lincoln’s approval.

Unfortunately for the future of countless freed slaves in America, Abraham Lincoln’s replacement Andrew Johnson was a Democrat who’d been put on the ticket by Lincoln to promote unity, and while he’d been loyal to the Union he was sympathetic to the slave owners. Thus he cancelled the order in 1865 and redistributed the land to the same planters that had in many cases taken arms against the United States. Deeply disillusioned, vast numbers of freed slaves were forced into the poor agricultural wages that left many of them more vulnerable to Black Code incarceration.

8 KKK Wars

It’s questionable whether the families would have been able to hold on to the lands allotted in Field Order No. 15, for two years after it was founded in 1865, the Ku Klux Klan moved from intimidating Republicans in the South to violence. Of the roughly 600 black candidates elected to office during the Reconstruction, the Klan would physically attack about ten percent of them and successfully assassinate at least seven. Their war against the federal government drove Republicans entirely out of power in the South.

The Klan also demonstrated a significant degree of shrewdness in how it waged a number of small wars. A prime example of this was the Kirk-Holden War. On February 26, 1870, Union League founder and 2nd US Colored Cavalry veteran Wyatt Outlaw was lynched in Graham, NC. In response militia forces under George Kirk were dispatched to hunt down the Klan. 100 members were arrested, but none of these went to trial. Spurred on, Klan candidates gained control of the North Carolinian general assembly and in March 1871 successfully impeached governor William Holden for sending the militia after them.

7 Freedman’s Bank

For many black veterans of the Civil War, there was a significant issue of what to do with their pay when many local banks in former Confederate states couldn’t be trusted with their accounts. Reverend John Alvorod of New York City and a group of twenty philanthropists founded a savings service that was given federal approval on March 3, 1865. Over the course of the Reconstruction, it would open 37 offices in 17 states and collect $57 million in assets from more than seventy thousand depositors, much of it from tens of thousands of black veteran families.

Unfortunately despite its initial stated aim that none of the funds be used for loans, the bank drew a number of managers that by 1870 were giving out loans without so much as token collateral among other forms of fraud. Such was the loss of public trust in the bank by March 1874 that no less than Frederick Douglass was elected its president. Unfortunately for Douglass he invested $10,000 in the bank as a show of trust before fully reviewing the bank and realizing what a horrid state it was in, and within months he was calling for the federal government to close it, which it did in June 1874. It was soon revealed that the federal government did not guarantee anyone compensation for their lost funds. Among the account holders, the fortunate ones were the half that received 60% of their deposits. Petitions for compensation from the federal government continued for thirty years, further shrinking public trust.

6 Race Riots

Even outside of the Klan terrorism the American reconstruction was in large part not peaceful. For example during the first three days of May 1866 Memphis, TN was embroiled in riots after an altercation between a white police officer and a black veteran. The aftermath was 48 deaths, of which 46 were black, 100 buildings burned down, and zero arrests. Two months later in New Orleans an attempt to reconvene the Louisiana Constitutional Convention of 1864 and extend suffrage to freedman was declared an unlawful assembly by confederate veteran mayor John Monroe. On July 30, 25 delegates convened anyway while a mob protested outside, and when 200 freed supporters of the convention arrived, fights broke out until deputized police began firing into the freedmen. 34 freedmen were shot dead and an extra 119 were wounded, and while initially the press and authorities claimed it was a riot later accounts described it as a massacre. It went on through cities such as Richmond, VA and Franklin, TN in 1867, and the 1868 riot in Millican, TX which left 25 black people dead. Even the presence of tens of thousands of federal soldiers throughout former Confederate states through 1875 wasn’t enough to prevent such violence.

5 Panic of 1873

Not all of America’s problems involved race relations. During the Reconstruction America’s rail programs had been wildly ambitious. Beyond finishing the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869 an additional 35,000 miles had been built through wild speculation, much of which it must be said was partially facilitated by Abraham Lincoln’s paying off Civil War expenses through authorizing mass printing fiat currency. By September 1873, Jay Cooke’s bank, which had been functionally the bank of the Civil War and rail development in the US, closed its doors. This drove almost a quarter of rail lines into bankruptcy, put 18,000 companies out of business over the next two years, and raised unemployment to 14%, dropping average wages by a quarter. While it took until 1883 for the US economy to recover, it was actually much worse for other nations. For example the United Kingdom suffered a depression that lasted twenty years.

An effect of the crash was significant conflict between the American labor movement and the government, such as when federal troops were called in to deal with the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. This had the dual effect of draining troops that were desperately attempting to keep the peace in the former Confederacy away and removing public support for the working class, allowing such practices as convict labor to get away with more atrocities.

4 Regular Epidemics

The state of medicine during the Civil War was such that twice as many soldiers died of disease as died from combat. It was hardly an improvement on the home front, where epidemics were practically a routine semi-annual occurrence. A single cholera epidemic in 1866 killed 50,000 Americans, the equivalent of 500,000 today, and that was actually relatively mild compared to an 1849 epidemic which killed three times as many. At the same time a smallpox epidemic was underway which by 1867 killed 49,000 Americans. In the Southern states yellow fever raged more summers than it did not, and in 1867 alone it killed 3,000 people in New Orleans. In the city of Shreveport, LA, 1873 witnessed so many deaths that the city declared a suspension to funerals. Under these circumstances it was unsurprising that many of the federal laws such as the 1878 National Quarantine Act were passed that form the basis of dealing with the Coronavirus pandemic.

3 The Locust Swarms

Aside from humans, no animal has ever posed a greater threat to the future of the United States than the Rocky Mountain Locust. As a drought struck the Rocky Mountains from British Columbia through Wyoming in 1874, the food shortage drove the unusually massive population of locusts to the fertile farmland of the Great Plains instead. From Texas to Minnesota two million miles of farmland were attacked by a swarm that supposedly covered 198,000 square miles, making it functionally impossible to stop, especially by the means available at the time. The damage from the lost crops alone was estimated at $200 million, not even getting to how their corpses left huge numbers of chickens inedible and their scat left water undrinkable. It was only that the 1874-1875 winter was particularly harsh and long that prevented future giant swarms.

A massive relief campaign was begun for financially ruined farmers and speculators. While the effort successfully distributed huge amounts of funds and goods, it was accompanied by a large number of complaints and even official reports that inevitably the relief money would go into the hands of lazy and idle people.

2 Mass Lynchings

Returning to the issue of race, there really never was a time in American history that so many people were murdered so publically with so little fear of retribution. In 2020, the Equal Justice Initiative released a report that 2,000 known lynchings had occurred during the twelve years after the Civil War. By contrast, between 1878 and 1950, there were 4,400. A mass-lynching could be set off by something as benign as just a number of black people going to the polls, as happened in Eufala, AL in December 1874. Even black National Guard soldiers were attacked and killed in groups, as occurred to at least six of them in Hamburg, SC in July 1876.

It was not limited to black citizens either. In 1871, a shootout between a few Chinese people in Los Angeles, CA snowballed after a police officer and saloon owner were caught in the crossfire, and as a result, eighteen Chinese immigrant bystanders were lynched near the site of the shooting. While there were several convictions for manslaughter, all of them were overturned on technicalities.

1 The First Opium Epidemic

400,000 morphine addicts is one of the lesser known products of the Civil War. Field hospitals regularly used it not only to give relief to wounded soldiers but also the generally ill. Its use was also common for many Confederate veterans attempting to cope with the pain of defeat. According to the 1868 book Opium Habit that year there were still an estimated 100,000 opium addicts in America, though that was surely a huge undercount as a general perception that being addicted to opium was a sign of weak character meant many people were unwilling to admit it. Returning to unfortunate Shreveport, LA, as much as 1% of the population suffered from an addiction. This was one area where black southerners had something of an advantage, as opium addicts were vastly more likely to be white people, even proportionate to population. Interestingly, this is also the case in America with the contemporary opioid epidemic.

10 Burning Facts About The Ku Klux Klan

About The Author: Follow Dustin Koski on Twitter for a lighter view of history.

The Second World War has been extensively studied and analyzed, and yet, so many of its most horrific parts remain largely forgotten outside communities that experienced them. There are few historical parallels to the kind of violence faced by millions of people throughout the painfully-long duration of this global war – from Eastern Europe to South Asia to the Japanese islands. 

Most of it has since been hidden behind Cold War-era geopolitics and a misplaced idea of a ‘good war’ among the victorious allied nations. If anything, the brutality of WW2 proves that there’s no good war, and that on a battlefield, there are no winners. 

10. The Pet Apocalypse

When Britain declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939, London was expected to be one of the first cities in the line of German fire. To prepare for that, the National Air Raid Precautions Animals Committee (NARPAC) issued an advisory to all pet owners to either relocate their pets to the countryside, or to have them put down by dedicated ethunasia centers set up all over the country. England had a particularly high rate of pet ownership back then, too, with about twice as many domestic animals in the country as people. 

In the next few days, as many as 750,000 pets were taken to be euthanized by their owners, making them one of the first British casualties of the war. Buildings were converted into dedicated euthanasia centres, as vets worked day and night to put down as many animals as they could. As it turns out, the advisory was only talking about agricultural pets, though the damage had already been done by the time they clarified it a few days later. 

9. The Massacre Of Manila

The battle for the liberation of Manila from Japanese forces began on February 3, 1945, led by US forces under General Douglas MacArthur and assisted by Filipino resistance fighters. They had expected it to be a quick battle; MacArthur even announced that the city was taken barely three days after the invasion began, even though the most horrific episode of the battle had only just started to unfold. 

For about a month, allied forces had to fight a gritty, close-quarter battle against fortified Japanese soldiers, who were busy systematically exterminating the city’s citizens behind their lines. Advancing Allied soldiers witnessed scenes of horror beyond their imagination – infants tossed in the air for sport and then bayoneted to death, thousands of people massacred by beheadings in one building, rape and violent mutilation of women of all ages, entire families buried alive after being forced to dig the grave themselves, among countless others. One part of the town was deliberately set on fire with artillery and incendiary bombs, setting off a firestorm that burned everyone trapped inside alive. 

The ordeal went on until the final capture on March 3, as anywhere between 100,000 to 240,000 civilians lost their lives during the entire battle. According to bits and pieces found on-field, the Japanese military was operating under explicit orders to exterminate all non-Japanese in the city.. 

8. The Fall Of Berlin

The Soviet advance on Berlin was a massive, ruthless affair. Popularized in the Russian media as a do-or-die fight for the motherland and a final push into the ‘lair of the fascist beast’, it involved over two and half million Soviet troops, many of whom were directly affected by Nazi atrocities during their earlier advance into Russia. That, combined with a loose chain of command once the war was won, resulted in some of the worst civilian atrocities of the war. 

Rape was by far the most commonly-reported of them all, as over 100,000 German women – and in some cases children – were subjected to all degrees of sexual violence in the initial days of the occupation. Over 10,000 of the victims ended up committing suicide, according to aid groups on the ground, though many of the actual figures remain classified in Russian military archives. 

7. The Trophy Problem

Taking trophies at times of war is thought of as an ancient, barbaric practice, though you’d be surprised at how prevalent it was even during WW2. American soldiers taking various kinds of trophies from fallen Japanese soldiers – including skulls, fingernails, bones, and hair – was surprisingly common. It’s not difficult to find photographs of American soldiers boiling skulls or cutting off a dead man’s hand to make trophies, often posing or laughing next to them.   

The problem was so widespread that the US military had to explicitly pass orders to cut it out, though that hardly helped. Soldiers would often hide the body parts on their way back home and gift it to their loved ones. It may sound savage and unreal in today’s context, though by that time in the war, anti-Japanese propaganda in the US had reached a feverish, extremely racist phase. Moreover, the Japanese were much more brutal in their own victories earlier in the war, as the Americans would often find the bodies of their fallen comrades mutilated or beheaded, further fueling their hatred and sense of revenge against the Japanese.

6. Anti-Fascist Reprisals

As it became clear that the Axis powers might not win the war after all, a wave of reprisals began across the occupied territories. From Italy to China to Russia, people suspected of collaboration with Japan or Germany were often brutally executed by liberating forces. It’s now a rallying cry for many fascist and neo-Nazi groups in Europe, as most of the victims were actually fascists and Nazi collaborators. 

Quite a few, though, were not. Apart from collaborationist forces in the occupied countries and Axis soldiers, the violence was also directed at ethnic Germans and Croats, royalist Chetniks, and anyone else ethnically or ideologically related to the Nazis in any way. In one case at Huda Jama near Slovenia, around thousands of prisoners of war and suspected collaborators, were buried alive inside a coal mine. The true number is hard to gauge, as the site has never really been opened and examined due to the mass of bodies there. 

While it’s true that most of them were fascists – no doubt about that – the severity of this violence would be relevant in the politics of the region for many decades to come, especially during the breakup of Yugoslavia in the ’90s. 

5. The Croatian Holocaust

The systematic genocide of Serbs, Jews, gypsies, communists, and rebels of any form in Croatian-occupied territories remains one of the forgotten genocides of the war, even if it would have a far-reaching impact on post-war relations in East Europe. From 1941 to 1945, the Ustaše – Croatia’s own version of the Nazi party – operated numerous concentration camps across the territory. The largest of them – the Jasenovac camp – may have been responsible for as many as 99,000 deaths. That might just be a conservative estimate, too, as most of the records were destroyed by retreating Ustaše forces.

Unlike German camps – where killing was a more industrial affair – the violence in Croatian camps  was usually carried out with blunt melee weapons, and often included torture and mutilation of the bodies for sport afterward. Some camps were specifically built for children, where kids from all over the country were sent to convert to Catholicism – as a majority of Serbs were Eastern Orthodox Christians – and then intentionally worked to death. 

4. The Bataan Death March

By April 9, 1942, the Bataan peninsula in the Philippines was overrun by the Imperial Japanese Army, forcing the surrender of anywhere between 70,000-80,000 American and Filipino soldiers. After months of surviving on meager rations and multiple deadly outbreaks of diseases like malaria and yellow fever, they assumed that whatever the Japanese had in store for them would be better. 

As they would gradually but surely realize in the coming days, they were wrong about that. The prisoners – seen to be a lower form of people by the Japanese, as surrender had no place in their military code – were forced to undertake a 65-mile long journey through thick jungle and sweltering heat – an event that has now come to be known as the Bataan Death March. 

The prisoners were deliberately starved and kept thirsty throughout the ten-days-long journey, and many were bayoneted or beheaded simply for asking for water. Some prisoners were thrown in front of the tanks for sport, or just shot if the Japanese soldiers didn’t like how they looked. According to one estimate, by the time they reached the Japanese camp, only about 54,000 prisoners were left standing.

3. Soviet POWs

The German treatment of prisoners of war taken during their invasion of Russia was one of the darkest chapters of the war. It stands in stark contrast with the war on the western-European front – where international rules for wartime conduct were largely respected by all sides – or even in how Axis countries like Hungary and Romania treated their own Soviet prisoners. 

The numbers are staggering. Out of the 5.7 million Soviet prisoners captured during Operation Barbarossa, 3.3 million ended up dying in captivity. Many were tortured or experimented on – Soviet prisoners were the first experimental victims of the mass extermination policies later deployed against Jewish prisoners. They were the first occupants of many infamous concentration camps, including Auschwitz. 

Soviet prisoners of war were the second largest group of people affected by Nazi policies after Jews, except it was fueled more by their perceived existential war against Bolshevik communism than racism (even if there was quite a bit of racism involved, too). 

2. Anti-Partisan Violence

Partisans were large groups of resistance fighters in territories occupied by Axis forces, made up of concentration camp survivors, escaped prisoners of war, Jewish civilians, ex-soldiers, and others. The Yugoslavia chapter of the movement was perhaps one of the most successful and organized rebel groups in history, as they played a major role in slowing down – and ultimately reversing – the Nazi advance in Russia. 

Nazi reprisals for Partisan attacks in the East were ruthless and far more violent than anything seen in the West. In case of a German casualty nearby, the population of an entire village was often entirely exterminated. In Belarus alone, as many as 629 settlements were razed to the ground with all of their residents killed, often with brutal methods like putting everyone in one place and burning it down with flamethrowers. 

1. Operation Meetinghouse

When a bunch of American B-29 bombers started approaching the city of Tokyo on the night of March 9, 1945, many people in the city took them for reconnaissance planes – a common sight in Japan at that stage of the war. Little did they know that they were about to experience perhaps the worst few hours for a civilian population in the history of warfare, as it was only the beginning of the deadliest air raid in history – Operation Meetinghouse. 

The guns on the bombers were removed to maximize the payload, and they were armed with newly-developed incendiary weapons like napalm and white phosphorous. Close to 1,500 tons of incendiary explosives were dropped on an area of 16 square miles that night, selected for its mostly wooden and paper buildings. The goal was maximum, absolute destruction of the target, and by the end of it a few hours later, there was no doubt that it had been achieved.

Anywhere between 80,000-100,000 people in Tokyo died due to all kinds of reasons that night. Some were crushed under the resulting stampede, as the bombs had created multiple large fire-walls throughout the city, trapping panicking people inside and burning them alive. Many who had taken shelter in swimming pools and other water bodies were boiled alive, as temperatures reached as high as 1,800 degrees on the ground in some places. 

The only survivors were people that had managed to escape before the deadly firestorms started, or those buried under piles of the dead, shielded by the deadly flames. It was so bad that some American pilots reported a stench of burning flesh and had to use oxygen masks to breathe, along with violent turbulence directly above the affected area due to the firestorms.