The ancient Assyrians built a vast empire. The empire reached its height during the Neo-Assyrian era, from 911 BC to the fall of its largest city Nineveh in 612 BC. The Assyrian dominion, stretching from Egypt to modern-day Iraq, controlled richly diverse cultures. To quash any uprising in these conquered areas, Assyrian leaders utilized extreme violence. Their horrific campaigns were celebrated in stone reliefs festooning the palace walls. They created tablets containing every single punishment the Assyrian army carried out. They cut off the limbs, gouged out the eyes, and then left those poor victims to roam around. Those poor people serve as a living reminder of the Assyrians’ cruelty. The Assyrians were proud of the mass executions. The victim’s skin was hung on the city wall. The brutality of the Assyrians was extreme, even for the ancient standards of cruelty. u/SuvenPan

It’s not particularly ancient and the actions aren’t as fucked up as many of what is listed here, but I find absolutely insane that East India company, a private company, ended up accidentally colonising India. The idea that a company that exported tea would end up with a standing army is some real sci if dystopian shit. u/throwaway384938338

Aztecs were pretty messed up, but Babylonia? They left behind whole walls of sculpture depicting how many hundreds of thousands they killed for sport. I’m pretty sure it was worse when Neanderthals walked amongst us but no written record. u/asu3dvl

What I always thought horrific was the Imperial Chinese practice of 'nine degrees'. As in Nine Degrees of Relation. Say that someone seriously offends the Emperor. The Emperor then orders that not just that person, but everyone related to that person, within nine degrees of relationship, is to be executed. Grandparents, parents, siblings, spouse, children, cousins, more cousins. Concubines and their children. Babies in the cradle, old people who were bedridden, all their household servants, probably their in-laws too. u/No_Secret8533

Feudal China was super into burying people alive. Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor responsible for the unification of China, upon his death, had 70,000 concubines, servants, and workers forcibly interred alongside him. The Terracotta Army was constructed only because murdering all the soldiers as well wasn't an option. u/UhOhFeministOnReddit

If one travelled to ancient Rome some 5000 crucified rotting corpses would guide you the way. u/woutomatic

The Incas, I’m peruvian and the national myth here is that the Inca empire was paradise on earth until the evil spaniards showed up. The Inca empire raped and kill its way through South America. The conquered only had two choices: be assimilated into the empire or be razed to the ground, gengis khan style. u/[deleted]

Sparta. People in general remember them as just being these badass super soldiers, but don't know how Spartan society was built on draconic slavery and institutional pedophilia. u/Viktorfalth

I was recently stunned by the amount of atrocities the Japanese empire has done. Mutilation of babies, forcing kids to rape their mothers, putting mothers into chambers with boiling grounds to test them if they would put their kids on the ground so that they don't get their feet scorched by stepping on their bodies, carrying baby corpses on bayonets...not to mention carving a whole in the belly of pregnant women to rip fetuses cold blooded and then murdering the fetus while the mother is screaming... u/mr_tasc1

The Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt were ten generations of absolutely fucked, bookended by two actually good leaders. (Ptolemy and Cleopatra.) Their family history would make for a fun trashy soap opera, full of backstabbing, famicide, and a truly appalling amount of incest, as they spent 200 years running Egypt into the ground. Too bad it was all real. And yes, Cleopatra was one of history's few inbreeding success stories. She managed to get all the best traits of her insane family, and none of the bad ones. u/ApeacfulWarrior

Ten million Africans died under the reign of King Leopold the second of Belgium. Absolute horrific brutality. He belongs in the same category as Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot. u/Eldistan1

Genghis Khan and the Mongolians of the steppe were absolutely ruthless and efficient. Entire unknown civilizations are reportedly wiped out by them with zero trace of their culture intact, just fields of bones saying something big was there. u/MassDriverOne

Not necessarily ancient but the Iroquois, they had many rituals of torture for prisoners of war including ripping out fingernails/cutting off fingers, followed by forcing them to run the gauntlet and then if they survived they would be scalped and burned alive. u/yoshamus

A lot of pacific cultures practiced cannabalism. Some still do in Papua New Guinea. But Māori here in New Zealand did in some tribes as well. So the worst insult you can use in the Māori language pokokohua means to boil your head. Harking back to when people were boiled and eaten. u/rheetkd

Samurai and feudal Japan. People like to imagine the Samurai as some kind of noble order built around the belief that honor and service were to be held above all. Samurai didn't give half a sideways fuck about the "common peasant" they were a blue blood aristocracy that used their power and training to perpetuate a totalitarian regime that would make the house of Windsor blush. u/Iskandar

The ancient Phoenicians/Carthaginians had a child killing cult. They thought that their gods needed children to be appeased. Other Canaanite/Semitic peoples dropped this practice, depicted in the Tanakh (Bible's Old Testament) through the story of God sending a goat when Abraham was about to sacrifice his son. u/teldarra

The first modern humans, or Homo Sapiens, date back 200,000 years. That's 33x as long as recorded human civilization. Imagine the type of shit that went down. It wasn't just a bunch of random monkey looking people hanging out by themselves. They absolutely got banded up into tribes and you know they went to war with each other. u/willinaustin

The habsburg dynasty in Spain used to breed with their own family to "keep the bloodline pure", it ended with reign of charles II who was so inbred that he had black testicles and several developmental disorders, he was unable to have any kids which led to the end of the habsburgs in Spain. u/[deleted]

When I was watching Castlevania I did some research where the Dracula myth comes from and stumbled upon Vlad Tepes Dracula or by his nickname called Vlad the impaler. They are not sure about the numbers but you have to impale a lot of people to get that nickname. u/ZedsDeadZD

Ancient Greece. A lot of people imagine clean villas, people with white togas talking about arts and philosophy all day. The truth is that most people were dirt poor, being born disabled (or being born a girl) could be a death sentence, and pedophilia was rampant among the rich, also a lot of their economy was based on slavery. u/StuffEmersonSays