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Let's face it, the very act of sex is weird. And gross. And the reason you exist. And the driving force behind the world's technology. Human beings have developed some very strange habits, and it's easy to look at something like, say, nasolingusts (nose lickers) and wonder, simply: why? But the science behind bedroom practices is actually fascinating.
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From movies like Night of the Living Dead to TV shows like Yellow Jackets and Santa Clarita Diet
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human beings seem to have a morbid fascination with eating each other
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Reports on the subject have appeared throughout both ancient and recent history
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providing a grim account of what humans have resorted to in order to survive
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But ritualism and religion have also played a role in the consumption of what we'll delicately call people jerky
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So, today, we're whetting our appetites with the history of cannibalism. Here's some food for thought
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Alexander Sawney Bean led a merry band of man-eaters around Scotland around the 1400s
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However, the exact time frame of his existence, and whether he existed at all, is up in the air
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The story goes that Bean was a tanner from East Lothian, who moved to a remote cave where he lived with his wife
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They lived off the land and were pretty well isolated until some travelers happened by one day
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The Beans, responding the way any hospitable couple would, slew the travelers and robbed them immediately
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To hide their foul deed, the Beans allegedly consumed the evidence. They were finally undone
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when one of their would-be victims escaped and alerted the authorities, which back then were mostly just angry mobs
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The band of men sent to vanquish Bean were said to have found body parts curing and being cooked
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and they dispatched the beans on Halloween night, 1589. That definitely won't lead to any kind of curse
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If anything comes close to a real-life horror movie villain, it's people like Peter Nears and Peter Stump
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men with identical first names, and identical, albeit unconventional, tastes. First of the Peters was Niers, a full-time 16th century German bandit and part-time ghoul
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If Niers was Nier, you'd want to be far. Niers enjoyed all the flavors
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Men, pregnant women, and perhaps his most favorite of all, fetus hearts
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He believed the consumption of his fellow humans gave him magical powers
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although we have to stress that it very much does not, so please don't try this at home
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Niers eventually confessed to at least 75 slayings, which he presumably referred to as meals
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Niers eventually escaped prison for several years, which is surprising, because if you were guarding a man with a belly full of six dozen humans
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you'd probably never take your eyes off of him. He was recaptured and put to death in 1581
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Niers claimed his final count was something around 544 people But if we talking 16th century skin snackers we need to discuss Peter Stubb aka Peter Stump aka Awoo the Werewolf of Bedberg
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Like Niers, Stubb liked to eat people, particularly fetal hearts. But unlike Niers
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Stubb did it in a wolf costume he allegedly received from the devil as a child. And that guy
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never leaves a gift receipt, so it wasn't like Stubb could return it
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for a different animal. Strangely, this werewolf idea wasn't a unique phenomenon in Europe
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during the 16th century. Two accused flesh-eating wolfmen, Michel Verdun and Pierre Bourgot
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were active in Paris during the early 1500s. But terrifying tales of people-eating
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go back way further than that. Jewish priest and historian Flavius Josephus
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produced many works over his illustrious career, including his firsthand account of the first Roman Jewish war
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from 66 to 73 CE. In book six of his work, The Jewish War
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Flavia Flavius relays the story of Mary of Bethesob, who was unfortunate enough to be stuck inside a besieged Jerusalem
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With misery and famine gripping the city, Mary resorted to eating her own infant
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Some other scavengers came to see what she was feasting on, and presumably quickly wished they hadn't
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She explained that since this was her own child, she could do whatever she wanted
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The scavengers didn't join her in her offer to join in on the meal
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and eventually everyone heard about what she did. Now, whether or not this story is literally true is up for debate
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as it may have simply been given a gruesome parable about the cruelty of siege warfare
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Speaking of sieges, in the 2nd century BCE, Rome and tribes in Hispania, modern-day Spain
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had been embroiled in a decades-long war. Roman commander Scipio Aemilianus finally had enough of it
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and headed on over to Hispania to give them a piece of his mind
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in the form of a complete besiegement of their settlements. However, Scipio's terms of surrender were unreasonable
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and he ended up whacking Numenite leader Avaris and his followers. The Numenites were left with no leader
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no food, and no means of survival. At first, they boiled old hides, and when that stopped working
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they began boiling their dead. And when that stopped working, well, let's just say appetite
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shifted towards more prime cuts. The Pneumonites eventually surrendered, but what remained of the
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tribe had been decimated by the extreme conditions Flash forward several hundred years to the Tang dynasty in China which fought a lesser known but nonetheless brutal battle against the army of the An Lushan Rebellion in 755 CE After two years of fighting
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Chinese forces 7,000 men strong defended Suyeng against an army of over 100,000
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like the movie 300, multiplied by about 23. The siege started in January, but lasted well
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into August, with casualties running steep every step of the way. When reinforcements arrived to aid both sides, they discovered citizens had resorted to consuming
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women, elderly men, and even children to survive. When rebels reached the city walls, they claimed only 400 of the 20,000 civilians were still alive
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After the city fell, leader Zhang Zun, who many believe gave the order just to go ahead
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and eat everybody, was whacked. The summer of 1314 through 1316 was a rough time for Britain and much of Europe
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The rain fell almost continuously, rotting crops and drowning livestock, and postponing most of the World Series
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Pair the heavy rain with conflicts like the Hundred Years' War, and you've got a land ravaged by nature and mankind alike
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The perfect conditions for a famine, which is exactly what clammed 10% of the population between 1315 and 1317
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There was little food and even less hope, slowly sliding the scale from starvation to desperation
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People resorted to consuming precious horse meat, dogs, and, according to some reports
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hanged criminals or even their own children. Child abandonment was also rampant at the time
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forming the basis for the folktale Hansel and Gretel, two kids who get abandoned and nearly eaten
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That story makes a lot more sense now. The Irish potato famine of the 1840s
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was devastating for Irish farmers and citizens alike. Once the mold phytophthora infestans came to town
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it nuked any chances of growing proper food and drove much of the Irish population to desperation
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Relief efforts were attempted by Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel. However, his successor decided it was best
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to let the Irish fend for themselves, leading to a mass immigration
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and the loss of nearly 1 million lives by 1851. When the potato food source is gone
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and the dead bodies are piling up, it doesn't take much math to figure out
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how to balance the equation. Parish priests recorded incidents of human-on-human snacking
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throughout Cork Galway Cary and Mayo Are we sure Jonathan Swift was joking when he wrote a modest proposal Jack Want an Australian lawyer and yachting enthusiast longed for a new vessel to satisfy
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his love of sea jaunts. So he traveled to England to purchase Minionette, a 52-foot vessel perfect
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for Want's needs. And his wants, too. The only way to get a big ship home was to hire a crew to sail
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it. Want put together a motley crew consisting of Captain Tom Dudley, Edwin Stevens, Edmund Brooks
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and 17-year-old cabin boy Richard Parker. Delicious Parker, they called him. Probably
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After journeying a bit in 1884, a massive wave capsized the mignonette, forcing the crew to
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abandon ship, taking only minimal provisions, zero water, and two tins of turnips. Parker fell ill
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after a diet of salt water and his own urine. With him unlikely to survive
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and no next of kin to consider, the remaining survivors decided to off Parker
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and consume his remains. That gruesome decision kept the crew alive for nine more days until rescue finally arrived
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Hooray! The survivors made it back to England, but Dudley and Stevens were tried for murder
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and spent six months in the slammer. Their legal case, Regina, or Queen Victoria
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v. Dudley and Stevens, established that extreme necessity and desperate conditions still don't excuse offing someone
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Prehistoric records are pretty sparse. It's right there in the word prehistoric
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However, artifacts unearthed at various anthropological sites over the years tell their own stories, and some of them are kind of spooky
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Back in 2001, an excavation in Alveston Cave in South Gloucestershire, England
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revealed what is believed to be a 2,000-year-old piece of evidence, suggesting cannibalism most definitely took place
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Similar evidence was found in Goff's cave in Somerset, tracing back roughly 15,000 years
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Bones in the cave were not only from humans, but contained evidence of being violently slain
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with the marrow practically scraped out of cracked femurs, for one you need to get every last drop
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The logical conclusion is that early humans were engaged in people snacking
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perhaps in a ritualistic manner during the Iron Ages based on the region
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The Romans made their way to Britain and reported on similar instances among the Celts there
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Julius Caesar was also in Britain in 55 and 54 BCE, where he described alleged sacrificial rituals
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performed by druids, but doesn't mention anyone being gobbled up afterward. However
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first-century writer Pliny the Elder wrote that druids viewed consuming a person as an act of the
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greatest devoutness and would secure the highest blessings of health. So, don't accept any dinner
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invitations from a druid