A fascinating read of an article. How long are you willing to suffer before eating human flesh? How far till you eat your own parents? This episode of westward expansion is an example of natural selection and human group psychology. Hope you enjoy it!
back in the day, especially in some parts of africa, human meat was preferable to other animals and was considered the tastiest meat
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannibalism_in_Africa
Donner party is like people of a religion that cant eat pork having to subsist on pork.
disclaimer: im vegan and eat no meats made out of people of any species and find it immoral
There’s a fantastic book about the Donner Party called “The Indifferent Stars Above”, I highly recommend it. All most people know about the Donner party is the cannibalism but how they got there in the first place is just as interesting. It’s a great story filled with con men out to make a quick buck and people with just plain bad luck. One thing I learned was just how close they were to most of them making it out of the mountains but then an ill timed stop to rest, damned them all.
Yea the cannibalism is the hook but the whole story is enthralling. Thanks for the rec, I see this book is listed in “further reading”, I gotta check it out!
One aspect that struck me too was that American law did not apply west of the continental divide, so justice within the wagon train was decided by the group. Also, families within the wagons had a hierarchy and carried debts between one another if they borrowed one another’s supplies. I never really thought about the economics and different classes of people traveling together. Even when they were dying in the cabins (which were separated by miles) at Truckee lake, one family member coughed up $25 ($1000 today) to buy the ox carcass from another family… it’s crazy they didn’t pool resources and try to survive together.
Off topic, but where are there often downvotes to Wikipedia articles without any rebuttal?
If you disagree that’s fine, but it is not productive to conversation to downvote and say nothing.
I have posted quite a few links in this community, I do so because I find them interesting, not because I endorse the subject matter, or viewpoint. Many of them receive downvotes. I may be friendly to the subject, I may not.
I recently posted about Encyclopedia Dramatica, they are an important part of web history in and of themselves, but also if you look through the Wikipedia edits there have been times when Wikipedia was extremely hostile to that site. That adds more to it and reflects on the Wikipedia community itself. That is interesting to me. Maybe it is not to you, downvotes without a comment make me think you are lazy at best.
I agree it seems a little silly to downvote especially if you follow the instance. If I had to make a guess, if you don’t follow this instance and this post appears in your “All” or “local” feed, then some users might downvote because it’s not relevant to them or they don’t like the topic of cannibalism…or maybe their finger slipped.
Don’t read into the down votes, there are people on this site who just down vote everything for no reason that they will ever share.
I’m fine with having my comments downvoted, I find it strange that people downvote Wikipedia articles without saying why.
I’ve seen posts that are pics of adorable kittens, puppies, and amazing wildlife get down votes with no comment.
It’s the internet. You really can’t read into it. For all we know, some 4chan troll found Lemmy and thought it would be funny to setup a bot to downvote everything.
