History’s Most Brutal Cultures

They say war is Hell, but international laws and conventions have tried to limit just how terrible it can be. War certainly still isn’t fun, but the world has tried to come together to eliminate unnecessarily cruel and brutal acts perpetrated by one warring nation on another.

But it hasn’t always been this way, and even with international laws in place there will always be some people that just don’t want to play by the rules. Throughout all of recorded history, including into present day, there have always been cultures that are unnecessarily cruel in their quest for power, wealth, or maybe even just for the fun of it.

The Vikings

The Viking Age began in the late 8th century and lasted through much of the 11th century. Though the term Viking is often used to refer to all people from Scandinavia during this time period because of the immense influence they had, the Viking culture was not meant to describe a specific race or nationality. Derived from the Old Norse word “vikingr” meaning “pirate”, the term itself was more of an occupation than anything.

The Vikings didn’t produce any literature or historical documents, with their only writing coming in the form of runestones. These Old Norse runic inscriptions were short and formulaic, often just being memorials to the dead, so it’s important to remember that much of what is known about the Vikings came from other cultures that existed at the time as well as non-contemporary sources that were heavily influenced by Christianity.

This means that contemporary sources about the Vikings were often written by others who encountered them, and unexpected encounters with pirates were unlikely to be pleasant. But even with this context, it is impossible to deny how brutally violent the Vikings were as they traveled through Europe, northern Africa, the Middle East, and North America raiding and pillaging everything as they went.

Strength and skill in battle were placed above all else, in no small part due to the worship of Norse gods. While the official Norse god of war was Tyr, all of the gods were in some way associated with war. Warriors who were slain in battle were believed to join Odin in Valhalla, the Norse equivalent of Heaven, where they would spend their afterlife continuing to engage in combat daily.

All Vikings were required to own weapons which would be passed down through generations, and they were often given names like “Leg-Biter”, the sort of names you would expect to see swords given in Lord of the Rings style fiction rather than in the real world.

One of the battle tactics that made the Vikings so feared was their use of berserkers. These were warriors who would enter a trance-like state before battle, believed to be caused by ingestion of hallucinogenic mushrooms. Berserkers often needed to wear special outfits that would make them easily identifiable to the other Vikings so they knew to keep their distance; once a warrior had entered a berserker rage, they would indiscriminately slaughter anybody near them.

While such an uncontrollable soldier could be a potential liability in war, it’s important to remember that the Vikings were pirates and raiders. They weren’t famous for engaging in geopolitical struggles against warring nations, they attacked coastal towns and monasteries without provocation. The people would be slaughtered, women taken captive to serve as wives for the polygamist culture, and the cities would be burned to the ground. They left such a complete trail of destruction wherever they went that, despite their relatively small population compared to those that they combated, the Vikings were able to colonize many areas and set up agricultural towns to help support their warmongering.

But it wasn’t just their enemies to whom the Vikings were so brutal. Infanticide was a common practice, with weak and sick babies being either outright slaughtered or left alone to die. The most common reason given for this practice is that they valued strength above all else, so there was no benefit to trying to raise a sickly child. However, an alternate theory is that the practice was the result of their belief in reincarnation.

It was believed that the dead would be reincarnated in the body of a newborn relative. If that newborn was a sickly child, the family would be condemning their loved one to live out their new life in an enfeebled body, so the infanticide may have been seen as an act of kindness rather than pointless child murder.

Despite being some of the most skilled and feared warriors, the Vikings demonstrated their brutality by spending most of their time raiding defenseless settlements rather than fighting trained soldiers. That’s not to say they never fought actual soldiers; they did, and they usually emerged victorious. But their goal wasn’t to kill the most capable opponents in battle, it was to kill whoever was most profitable. They were pirates, after all.

But there is no greater depiction of Viking brutality than their preferred form of torture: the blood eagle. Victims would be captured in battle who were in turn tortured and executed. The blood eagle was performed by cutting open the person’s back, breaking off their ribs and turning them backwards, then pulling their skin over the bones to create a pair of bloody wings.

At least that’s what they allegedly did, according to accounts dating back to the 11th century. It’s such a horrific form of execution that historians have questioned whether it really ever happened or was just a poetic exaggeration of the Vikings’ brutality, but scientists have shown that this technique would have been possible using tools available at the time.

Khmer Rouge

Pol Pot was born in Cambodia in 1925. He was the son of a wealthy farmer, and as a member of the upper class he was afforded the best opportunities and was admitted to the most elite schools growing up. Despite this, he was a poor student who failed his high school entrance exams. After spending a year working as a carpenter, he received a scholarship to study radio electronics in Paris. Pot ultimately failed out of college, but not before becoming deeply involved in the French Communist Party.

After returning to Cambodia, Pot would build up support for the Communist Party of Kampuchea, better known as the Khmer Rouge. With the aid of North Vietnam and the Chinese Communist Party, the Khmer Rouge would engage in civil war against the Republic of Cambodia and the subsequent Khmer Republic, who were backed by both the United States and South Vietnam. In 1975, the Khmer Rouge emerged victorious thanks to an unprecedented level of support from the CCP.

With Pol Pot now in charge of Cambodia, called Democratic Kampuchea during his reign, it was time to make some big changes. Even though he had the opportunities of an elite upbringing, Pot’s failures throughout his early life instilled in him a loathing of the elites. It was his intention to turn Cambodia into an agrarian communist state, completely self sufficient and isolated from the rest of the world.

The first step to creating this agrarian society was the elimination of all urban areas. Every city was evacuated, with residents being told they were only being moved a couple of kilometers away and that they would return in a few days. Schools, hospitals, factories, and banks were all shut down, and all currency and records at the banks were burned as part of the abolition of personal wealth and property. Anybody who tried to resist being evacuated would be executed and their houses would be burnt down.

Though they had been told they were only being moved a couple km, the evacuations were actually grueling marches from the cities to the residents’ new home in the countryside where they were expected to work as collective farmers. Thousands of children, elderly, and sick died during these marches, but this was only the beginning of the Cambodian genocide.

The Cambodian Civil War had not just brought about a regime change, but an entire societal revolution. Pot wanted to remove all Western influence from the nation while reverting them entirely to an agrarian society, something that was only possible through swift and violent oppression of anyone who could be deemed a threat.

Once the former urbanites were relocated to whatever farm to which they had been assigned, they had to write a brief autobiographical essay. These essays would determine the fate of each person, particularly their activities during the five years of the U.S. backed Khmer Republic. Anybody who had served in the military of the Khmer Republic was assigned for reeducation to eliminate any possible sources of dissent against the Khmer Rouge.

But it wasn’t just former military that were seen as a threat. The Khmer Rouge wanted to eliminate all Western influence, and so elite professionals, white collar workers, and anyone educated was also sent for reeducation. Anyone who had shown the slightest hint of personal success could have been corrupted by the west and posed a threat to the new communist regime, and they had to be dealt with.

Of course, throughout history the term “reeducation” is almost exclusively used as a euphemism, and this was no different. Nearly all former military officers, professionals, and intellectuals were taken to what would become known as the killing fields for immediate execution. Those that were not executed were sent to forced labour camps, but that was the minority.

Among those that were not selected for reeducation, most became workers on the collective farms. The except were people with specialized technical skills that could be used to reopen the now abandoned factories from Cambodia’s cities.

Life for the farmers was brutal as well, with the Khmer Rouge demanding each hectare of farmland to produce three tons of rice, triple the average yield from before they took power. This was simply impossible, especially for those that had been relocated and had no experience with farming. The existing rural farmers refused to help them, both from a lack of sympathy towards their inexperience and out of fear of repercussions from the Khmer Rouge.

This inevitably led to famine. The famine combined with the extremely long work days, insufficient sleep, and refusal to import western medicine, led to many more deaths of those working in the fields. Even after the initial purge of the elites, executions remained common. Any minor infraction could be punishable by death.

For example, a person caught picking wild berries could be executed for attempting to engage in private enterprise. Even being badmouthed by one’s coworkers, regardless of the veracity of the claims, was a capital offense.

The brutality of the Khmer Rouge was not limited to Cambodia, either. Part of Pol Pot’s goal was to make the nation a Khmer ethnostate, which meant the extermination of Chinese and especially Vietnamese within their nation despite having been former allies. This aggression extended beyond their borders, and Pot’s forces would invade Vietnam to massacre civilians and burn villages to the ground. A number of small scale battles took place while China attempted to mediate an understanding between the nations, but it didn’t work.

On Christmas, 1978, Vietnam invaded Democratic Kampuchea to overthrow the Khmer Rouge. It only took them two weeks to do so, and less than five years after gaining control of Cambodia the Khmer Rouge had fallen. But in that short span of time, their Cambodian genocide claimed the lives of over 2 million people, or roughly 25% of all Cambodians.

The Assyrians

The Ancient Assyrian city state dates back to the 21st century BC, and it went through a lot of ups and downs. But when people think of the Assyrian Empire, they generally think of the period from around 900 BC through 600 BC. This is when the Assyrians were at their most feared and most brutal.

The Assyrians had a number of tactical advantages that made them formidable opponents in battle, particularly because they were early adopters of a lot of technology that gave them a strong advantage. For example, they made the transition to iron weapons while most others were still using bronze. Not only was iron stronger, but it was more abundant allowing them to easily arm their troops with weapons that outclassed their opponents.

They also created siege weapons, most notably battering rams, that rendered certain defenses useless despite previously being seen as impenetrable. Tactically, they were also one of the first militaries to have a dedicated support staff of engineers. Though not engaging in combat, the support crews would fill in moats, set up ladders so troops could scale walls, and dig tunnels so they could get beneath walls. Through superior arms and tactics the Assyrian Empire was able to greatly expand, but they were as brutal as they were skilled.

The Assyrians were one of the first, if not the first, civilization to perform the act of crucifixion. After battles, fallen enemies would be decapitated or impaled on spikes, and survivors would be flayed alive. Following the quelling of a rebellion in 883 BC, King Ashurnasirpal II left the following inscription:

“I built a pillar over against the city gate and I flayed all the chiefs who had revolted and I covered the pillar with their skins. Some I impaled upon the pillar on stakes and others I bound to stakes round the pillar…From some I cut off their noses, their ears, and their fingers, of many I put out their eyes. I made one pillar of the living and another of heads and I bound their heads to tree trunks round about the city. Their young men and maidens I consumed with fire.”

The full inscription is a bit longer than that, but you get the point. It’s worth noting that, while horrific, a lot of these tactics weren’t exclusively to the Assyrians. Iron tools certainly allowed them to be more precise and deliberate in their torture, particularly the skinning alive of enemies, but many of the more brutal behaviours attributed to the Assyrians weren’t necessarily outrageous for the time period.

So why then were the Assyrians considered exceptionally cruel and ruthless by their contemporaries, and why has that perception persisted? They almost certainly were more brutal than the civilizations they waged war against, but likely not by as wide a margin as we are led to believe. It turns out that one of the keys to the Assyrian Empire’s success, and certainly the key to their notorious reputation, was their ability to weaponize fear.

Given the less than complete documentation of ancient history it’s hard to say for certain if the Assyrians were the first culture to weaponize fear, but they are certainly the first to have become so famous for doing it so effectively.

A key aspect of many of the tortures described above, such as crucifixion or the flaying of enemies, was how publically it was done. The Assyrians didn’t want to just torture and exterminate their enemies, they wanted everybody to know it was happening. During the atrocities that followed a successful battle, tablets would be drawn depicting the tortures that were being inflicted on the unfortunate survivors. Messengers would then deliver these tablets to the next city on the army’s path to let them know exactly what Hell was marching towards them.

Many civilizations composed art featuring scenes of everyday life or ornate depictions of their kings looking all dignified and regal, but the Assyrians would draw their kings relaxing in their garden surrounded by the severed heads of their enemies. While the Babylonians wrote of their great architectural masterpieces, the Assyrians wrote the sort of thing we quoted earlier. After completely razing a city, the Assyrian king left an inscription describing the slaughter of all the residents, the burning of the buildings, and how he even had the foundations flooded so that no trace of the city ever existing would remain.

That’s not to say that the Assyrian’s didn’t construct architectural masterpieces as well, and they built one of the most impressive cities of its day. They just weren’t particularly interested in documenting it. Everything the Assyrian Empire did was in furtherance of its brutal conquest and its even more brutal reputation, and that larger than life reputation has continued to this day.

Key Takeaways

• The Vikings were notorious for their brutal raids and pillaging, targeting defenseless settlements.
• The Khmer Rouge regime under Pol Pot aimed to create an agrarian communist state, leading to widespread genocide.
• The Assyrians used fear as a weapon, publicizing their brutal tactics to intimidate future targets.
• Viking culture valued strength and skill in battle, with warriors believing they would join Odin in Valhalla.
• The Khmer Rouge’s brutal regime resulted in the deaths of over 2 million people, roughly 25% of Cambodia’s population.

Sources

• Original Side Projects video: History’s Most Brutal Cultures

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