Did it really happen?
Is there evidence?
The brutality of man to man does not surprise me, but did we once nail people to crosses?
I think they tied them to the cross in most cases, but it did happen. It’s called crucifixion, by the way.
According to tradition, Jesus was given an especially painful death. They whipped his back tremendously, put a crown of thorns on him, and then put nails through is wrists/forearms and feet.
The normal way, I think, was to tie them up there and then break their legs later so they slumped down and suffocated.
Yes. Cecil on the subject:
Plenty of info there, including one gruesome photograph of a real crucifixion in 19th century Japan.
Philipinos crucify themselves occasionaly.
Here is one such video.
There’s a fair amount of references to crucifixion as a standard mode of execution in quasi-contemporary Roman historical accounts (Livy, for one).l
Usage nitpicks: The verb is crucify (-fied, -fying). The associated noun is crucifixion. (While occasionally a typo, the form “crucifiction” is usually considered a bit of snark, shorthand for “(Jesus’s) fictional crucifixion.”) A crucifix is a bit of (nearly always Catholic) devotional art, showing Jesus on the cross.
There was also that South Korean guy who fatally crucified himself. Drilled holes with a power drill in his hands and slipped them onto the nails.
Is there a creationist version of the Darwin Awards?
Read some of the stories of modern Iraqi terror - people with eyes gouged out, holes drilled in their body in the most painful places with power tools. Read about medieval torture - racks, burned alive, hands and legs crushed, etc. Read about some of the works of the holocaust or the Cambodian genocide, or the 20% or more of the population hacked to bits with machetes in Rwanda. Knee-capping in Northern Ireland…
Human cruelty is not limited by race, creed, colour, time, geography, education, or civilization. The only odd thing about crucifixion as torture is that it seemed to be limited to the Roman Empire.
My mind just assploded upon reading that.
Crucifixion was practiced by Japan and is prescribed by Islam as a punishment for certain crimes. It’s still in the penal code of states like Iran and Sudan, though it’s not clear whether the punishment has ever been applied there in modern times.
First offense?
Seciond offense is usually actual or attempted cerebrophagy.
At least it gets you out in the open air.
There is even archeological evidence of it.
ETA: A picture of an old foot bone (calcaneus, I think) with a crucifixion nail in it.
Bloody Romans.
According to a documentary on it that airs *occasionally on the History Channel, one of the precursors to actually hanging the person up to die practiced by the Romans was “scourging,” in which the back was essentially flayed open with nasty whips knotted with nasty sharp objects. You were already in pretty bad shape when they hung you up to die.
*When they’re not showing UFO and Bigfoot stories.
Plus the Persians apparently used it in pre-Roman times (and the Macedonians and Carthaginians seem to have borrowed it). As with many things borrowed from their neighbors, the Romans just “went big” with it.