Human-hunting is thehunting and killing of human beings for other people'srevenge,pleasure,entertainment,sports, orsustenance.[citation needed] Historically, incidents of the practice have occurred constantly and without pause as long as the wealthy have been able to kill with impunity.[1]
In Ancient Greece, theupper class ofSparta regularly practised the stalking and killing of members of their servilehelot population; such murders were carried out both by the secret police (Crypteia) as a means of keeping the helotscowed and unlikely to revolt, and as part of the military training (agoge) for Spartan youths.
In Europe, authorities sometimes hunted down adherents of "heretical" religious minorities, such as theWaldenses in the Alps[2] the Cathars in the Languedoc,[3] Anabaptists in Germany,[4] and theHuguenots in France.[5]
In Netherlands[6] and Germany[7] in the 18th century,Gypsy hunts or heathen hunts, also known as "Heidenjachten," were a practice that involved hunting and persecuting theRoma people.[8]
The Mexican government, particularly the states of Sonora and Chihuahua, introduced a bounty system in 1836, offering rewards forApache scalp. The bounty for an Apache male scalp was 100 pesos, while for an adult female Apache, it was 50 pesos, and for a child under 14, it was 25 pesos.[9][10]
During theSelkʼnam genocide, livestock companies used employees and third party hunters to hunt down theSelkʼnam to make way forestancias (large ranches).
During theSpanish Civil War of 1936–1939, the killing practice became popular[11] among the sons of wealthy landowners. The hunts took place onhorseback and targeted landless peasants as an extension of theWhite Terror. They were jokingly referred to as "reforma agraria" referencing themass grave the victims would be dumped into and the land reforms thelower classes had been attempting to attain.[12][11]
Between 1971 and 1983, serial killerRobert Hansen flew many of his victims into theAlaskan wilderness, then released them so that he could "hunt" the women with a rifle and a knife.
There are allegations that during thesiege of Sarajevo between 1992 and 1996, some "rich" foreign tourists paid theArmy of Republika Srpska to take part in organized "human safaris" (Sarajevo Safari) where Serb soldiers would take the "tourists" to various sniper positions so that they could "hunt" the local populace.[13][14]
Some accounts of early human violence associate the development ofwarfare – aggression against humans – with the practice of hunting game.[15][16]
In 2016, Daniel Wright, senior lecturer in tourism at theUniversity of Central Lancashire, wrote a paper on the possible future of tourism where he discussed how the hunting of the poor ("hunting humans") could become a hobby of the super-rich in a future plagued by economic turmoils, ecological disasters, and global overpopulation.[17]
^For example:Hochschild, Adam (2016).Spain in Our Hearts. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. pp. 37.ISBN978-0547973180.'Sons of landowners,' writes the historian Antony Beevor, 'organized peasant hunts on horseback. [...]'
^Tice, Paul (2003) [1829].History of the Waldenses: From the Earliest Period to the Present Time (reprint ed.). San Diego, California: The Book Tree. p. xii.ISBN978-1585090990. Retrieved21 November 2022.In 1233 the Inquisition was officially unleashed on the Waldenses, and the assault continued for centuries. [...] the Church hunted Waldensians as a group and individually.
^Barber, Malcolm (17 June 2014) [2000].The Cathars: Dualist Heretics in Languedoc in the High Middle Ages. The Medieval World. Abingdon: Routledge.ISBN978-1317890386. Retrieved21 November 2022.If the Cathars could be deprived of their customary refuges, they would be vulnerable to an active policy of heresy hunting. 'We will purge', promised Count Raymond,'these lands of heretics and of the stench of heresy [...].'
^Beard, Augustus F. (1884). "Churches of the Huguenots and the religious condition of France". In Smyth, Egbert Coffin (ed.).The Andover review. Vol. 1. Newton, Massachusetts: Andover Theological Seminary. p. 64. Retrieved21 November 2022.The army, as if led by the Furies, was employed for years in hunting Huguenots. The history reads as if diabolism were let loose.
^MacLaughlin, Jim (2008). ""The Gypsy as 'other' in European society: Towards a political geography of hate".The European Legacy.4 (3):35–49.doi:10.1080/10848779908579970.
^Mendoza, Abraham O. (2011). "War and Diplomacy: Introduction: Conflict and Aggression in Early Human Societies". InAndrea, Alfred J.; Neel, Carolyn (eds.).World History Encyclopedia. Vol. 10. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. pp. 256–257.ISBN9781-851099290. Retrieved21 November 2022.Scholars who subscribe to sociobiological explanations for violence and conflict in early human societies [...] argue that biological drives predetermine human behavior. Though initially displaying such behaviors when hunting game and developing tools for such activities, hunter-gatherers eventually used their developing aggressive techniques against each other [...].
^Otterbein, Keith F. (24 March 2009). "The Evolution of War".The Anthropology of War. Long Grove, Illinois: Waveland Press. p. 65.ISBN978-1478609889. Retrieved21 November 2022.Warfare developed along two separate paths. The hunting of large game animals was critical to the development of the first path. Early hunters, working as a group in pursuit of game, sometimes engaged in attacks on members of competing groups of hunters [...].
