Aaron Mahnke

You see, in ancient China, it was believed that the body did not belong to you.

It was a gift from your parents.

So if you really wanted to punish someone, then messing up that precious gift was pretty much the worst thing you could do to a person.

Ancient Egyptians placed a similar importance on a pristine body, but for different reasons.

They believed that in order to have a good time in the afterlife, you needed to stay intact after death.

Hence the whole mummies thing.

And suffice to say, Egyptian executions reflected this.

Everything from murder to tomb robbing to perjury in courts could earn you a messy death.

While nobles were usually allowed to drink poison, ordinary citizens weren't so lucky.

Techniques included being buried alive, impaled on a stake, and, my personal least favorite, being fed alive to a crocodile.

Some crimes even had specific corresponding penalties.

For example, children who killed their parents would have finger-sized pieces cut out of them with a sharp reed before being burned alive on a bed of thorns.

Pleasant stuff, for sure.

In classical Greece, they tried to keep things a bit more civil.

Tried being the operative word here.

You see, the Greeks believed that committing a murder, even in the context of execution, left behind a hideous spiritual stain called a miasma.

And so they came up with ways to kill someone without, well, actually killing them.

Things like throwing the convicted into a deep pit and just leaving them there, or tying them to a board before abandoning them to the elements.

You see, the state didn't really kill anyone, just left people outside for a while.

And if that person happened to die, well, no harm, no foul.