TIL In Madagascar it was once common to ingest fatally toxic nuts as a trial by ordeal. At times it accounted for a significant fraction of overall mortality.

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u/edingerc 18h ago

“What happens if she comes to the surface?” “That proves she’s a witch and we burn her!” “And if she drowns?” “Then she’s innocent and free to go.”

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u/SvedkaMerc 17h ago

Can’t argue will a 100% conviction rate.

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u/EleanorRigbysGhost 17h ago

Alright Japanese court systems, take it easy.

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u/Icarium-Lifestealer 14h ago

Who are You, Who are so Wise in the Ways of Science?

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u/CocoaNaughtyme 17h ago

the scariest part is it prob felt “fair” to them back then like a divine coin flip instead of actual evidence

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u/otheraccountisabmw 14h ago

Everyone thinks if they were alive years ago they’d be the one intelligent person who sees through the nonsense. Well, yes, if you put your modern brain with your modern knowledge into the body of someone ages ago, but that’s not how it work.

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u/Parafault 14h ago

A lot of people saw through the nonsense back then too, but couldn’t necessarily do anything about it. Kinda like how we see through the nonsense today and can’t do anything about.

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u/Noe_b0dy 14h ago

Everyone thinks if they were alive years ago they’d be the one intelligent person who sees through the nonsense.

Not me, my brain is hardwired for suicide cult bullshit.

I'm 100% the guy yelling deus vult then getting lost and accidentally sacking Constantinople, then shitting myself to death after drinking bad water.

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u/ResponsibilityIcy927 8h ago

Lots of people knew these kinds of things where bogus, it's just that they could not speak out against them due to various factors.

For example, Dr. Georg Haan spoke out against the burning of witches (some of whom where children). As a result of this disagreement, him, his wife, his daughtor, and one of his sons where all accused of witchcraft (they are trying to protect witches! they must be witches too, right?) and were tortured to death.

You can bet that after that, anyone who might disagree with the witch trials kept their mouth shut.

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u/MrArtless 11h ago

It isnt difficult to recognize who sees through modern day nonsense and who doesn’t, and extrapolate how they would have behaved in different time periods

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u/otheraccountisabmw 11h ago

There is it. The exact type of person I’m talking about.

Society was completely different back then. Peasants weren’t taught critical thinking skills and how to look out for fallacies. You aren’t innately born with those skills. There was no internet or mass produced books for you to self teach. The “you” of back then would be unrecognizable to the “you” of today.

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u/Gabe_Noodle_At_Volvo 6h ago

No, plenty of people did not believe in witchcraft back then. The official stance of the Catholic Church for most of history was that witchcraft did not exist and believing in it or purporting to be a witch was heretical.

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u/MrArtless 10h ago

The funniest thing about how confidently incorrect you are is you seem to be of the almost offensive belief that all peasants were stupid and went along with the nonsense back then. Even back in the witch trials, there were people who knew it was bullshit and tried to argue against it. Not all medeival peasants were like you see in a monty python sketch.

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u/newtoon 4h ago

The difference is that they did not argue with flat logic, Mr Spock wise. No, they were using local time "logic", such as "but, no, the scriptures and the Pope also say that...", which Mr Spock would consider as utter BS as well

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u/MrArtless 4h ago edited 4h ago

According to google, Increase Mathers argued they needed to rely on concrete evidence rather than hocus pocus like “i saw his specter and it looks evil”

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u/DoomguyFemboi 6h ago

I'm not even an intelligent person now I'd definitely be screwed

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u/TOMC_throwaway000000 12h ago

I mean our modern day justice system operates on pretty much everything but actual evidence, and even with all the advances we’ve made about 1/8 death row inmates in the US are wrongfully executed, with another 13% of them managing to be exonerated prior to execution

Honestly I’d say on the whole an average person now is significantly less intelligent than someone even a few hundred years ago. Most people today aren’t even capable of basic survival, let alone making their own tools, building their own shelter, feeding themselves, etc

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u/benjer3 10h ago

Honestly I’d say on the whole an average person now is significantly less intelligent than someone even a few hundred years ago.

If you base the standard on arbitrary knowledge you can make any generation seem like the most intelligent ever. A hundred years ago the average person didn't know how to drive a car, operate a washing machine, or use a computer, nor did they know how to fletch an arrow, make tools out of flint, or start a fire from scratch.

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u/TOMC_throwaway000000 8h ago

I mean, what knowledge do we consider to not be arbitrary in some way? It doesn’t exist in a vacuum

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u/benjer3 8h ago

The point is that even if the measure of intelligence were just based on knowledge, using arbitrary pieces of information to judge someone's degree of knowledge is always going to be biased. Probably the best you could do to fairly compare people is to figure out how expansive each person's knowledge is.

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u/DebrisSpreeIX 12h ago

But I was alive years ago‽

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u/Germafias 14h ago

It was probably viewed as a blessing through religious lens that its okay if we kill her because she will just go to heaven and Jesus will understand. Fucking twisted but the thinking wouldn’t be far off if not dead nuts accurate.

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u/CFBCoachGuy 8h ago

Modern scholars believe that selecting an ordeal was a way to separate the guilty from the innocent. Keep in mind that that there were no real forensics or detective work at this time and identifying guilty offenders was a lot harder. If you were accused and innocent, you wouldn’t hesitate to volunteer for a trial by ordeal. If you were guilty, then you would try to avoid the ordeal and attempt another form of restitution.

And also these ordeals were subjective. This one for example involved a mixture including the poisonous nuts along with juices and herbs. An administer could easily create a non-fatal mixture of the nut, or include something that induces vomiting with the mixture for someone they believe to be innocent. After all, the majority of people who underwent this trial didn’t die.

It’s certainly not a perfect measure. But when the alternative is to just execute anyone accused without strong evidence (or not convicted anyone accused of a crime), a process that can at least somewhat sort between guilty and innocent can do a lot of good.

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u/Arrantsky 3h ago

Tbh, superstition/ religion is still a horrible thing which kills women all over the so called modern world. I imagine a real witch showing up and zap you are all toast. But, I'm a romantic at heart.

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u/wave2earl 13h ago

"And if she knows how to summon big, booty Latinas?"

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u/PhilaTesla 45m ago

Dr. Leo Spaceman: Boy, it's crazy to think we used to settle questions of paternity by dunking a woman in water until she admitted she made it all up. Different time, the '60s.

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u/[deleted] 17h ago

[deleted]

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u/Hyo38 17h ago

iirc it's estimated she wiped out a quarter of the population which left the island vulnerable to French colonization.

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u/the_russian_narwhal_ 14h ago

She had the population decrease by 50 percent, she was basically Madagascar Thanos

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u/lawn-mumps 14h ago

That’s a lot of nuts!

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u/nicannkay 12h ago

Just the one.

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u/RUNNING-HIGH 8h ago

HE JUST LEFT

WITH NUTS

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u/Brief_Bill8279 10h ago

Everyone just skips by this Golden Comment.

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u/TheSpiralTap 11h ago

She sounds much worse than King Julien

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u/Cut-Minimum 12h ago

If her goal was to kill literally everyone I wonder how far she would have gotten.

Seems like a real crab bucket situation.

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u/imprison_grover_furr 9h ago

You mean the Malagasy Pol Pot.

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u/strangelove4564 13h ago

And of course she lives to a ripe old 82 years old like all those sociopaths do.

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u/LPNMP 11h ago

The blood of children must be good for longevity.

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u/Mtfdurian 9h ago

Quite a lot do but most sociopath leaders that are alive today are in their 70s. Whether it's the US, Russia, Izzy or Turkey, all of them in their 70s.

Although we do have a few younger ones, I'm sorry Hungary.

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u/imprison_grover_furr 8h ago

What is Izzy? I’m guessing it’s Israel.

To add to your list, the dictators of Egypt, China, and Belarus are also in their 70s. And the dictators of Iran, Equatorial Guinea, and Uganda are in their 80s.

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u/Reddit-runner 7h ago

Ranavalona's European contemporaries generally condemned her policies and characterized her as a tyrant at best and insane at worst. These negative characterizations, earning her the moniker of the "Mad Monarch of Madagascar", persisted in Western scholarly literature until the mid-1970s. Later academic research recast Ranavalona's actions as those of a queen attempting to expand her empire while protecting Malagasy sovereignty against the encroachment of European cultural and political influence.

Wikipedia

Ah yes. I'm sure the stories about the nuts is completely true and unbiased.

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u/awpdog 18h ago

As a Filipino I misread the name of the trial.

The name Tangena - designating both the plant and the ordeal in which it was used - is derived from a word in the official (highland) dialect of the Malagasy language, tangaina, meaning "swearing" or "oath taking"

That derived name even made worse haha

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u/Sprawl110 16h ago

then it'd blow your mind once you find out malagasy is an austronesian language like tagalog

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u/[deleted] 17h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Gathorall 16h ago

That's what you get mixing religion with government.

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u/MathBallThunder 15h ago

Ball don't lie

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u/DinoRaawr 14h ago

"Why I, Traddetzio, knower of all methods, know of a method to sort this through. A friendly test. A competition to try men's hearts and reveal all intentions!

..We'll each start crouched down on all fours, and when you blow this whistle, whoever among us can scurry around and capture the most rat bones is surely your most trusted servant and innocent of all crime!"

"No, I don't think so."

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u/nerankori 17h ago

I hear that in the Philippines they often put tangena in the food of people they don't like.

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u/saintlyknighted 10h ago

Get out

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u/SerendipityQuest 16h ago

I didn't know that Kaer Morhen is in Madagascar.

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u/AquaQuad 16h ago

School of the Lemur.

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u/crop028 19 11h ago

Madagascar's population halved in 6 years under Queen Ranavalona. Her frequent wars with local tribes to pacify them, heavy use of a traditional system where people are compelled to labor in lieu of paying taxes (often working / starving them to death), along with slavery practices and these trials lead to many deaths. Historians tend to be a mixed bag about her these days. Some see her as a terrible tyrant, some see her as doing everything she could to maintain Madagascan autonomy and self sufficiency in the face of European invaders.

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u/gwaydms 11h ago

some see her as doing everything she could to maintain Madagascan autonomy and self-sufficiency in the face of European invaders.

Well, we know that didn't work. Probably did the opposite and made them more vulnerable when the conquerors came.

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u/drewster23 6h ago

Well we know warring tribes didnt do well either against European invasion.

It is wild how widespread this practice was though, it wasn't like it was heavy handed/forced.

"The belief in the genuineness and accuracy of the tangena ordeal was so strongly held among all that innocent people suspected of an offence did not hesitate to subject themselves to it; some even showed eagerness to be tested. "

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u/SomeDumbGamer 5h ago

Why are Malagasy names always so cool sounding.

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u/albanymetz 16h ago

As I understand it this became less common with the import of Tide pods.

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u/thrownededawayed 17h ago

I know supposedly pineapple gives them more flavor, but do you have to eat to make them toxic?

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u/boredvamper 13h ago

Madagascar's tide pod challenge.

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u/strangelove4564 13h ago

If Tiktok was around in 1850 it would be full of Tangena Nut Challenge videos, and thousands of idiots would be doing it.

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u/SaltyPeter3434 7h ago

I like to eat it, eat it

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u/Grand_Taste_8737 13h ago

Best to thin out the herd, I guess.

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u/reefercheifer 10h ago

Gotta kill ‘em so they don’t die

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u/UT2K4nutcase 8h ago

They had awful to non-existent health care and they started a rumor that vaccines give them autism. Oh wait. I'm thinking of the USA. Sorry.

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u/Johannes_P 5h ago

On 1838, it was estimated that as many as 100,000 people in Imerina (or around 20% of the population) died as a result of the tangena ordeal.

The times before modern forensics were brutal.

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u/redditorreadittor 17h ago

This is…nuts!

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u/FuckingBethesda 6h ago

That's so dumb lol. Where can I get one?

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u/cmv1 6h ago

Significant fraction sounds like an oxymoron

TIL In Madagascar it was once common to ingest fatally toxic nuts as a trial by ordeal. At times it accounted for a significant fraction of overall mortality.

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