The Beginning Was the End

The Beginning Was the End
	The cover of the UK First Edition of The Beginning Was the End. This particular copy has been signed by three members of Devo.
Author	Oscar Kiss Maerth
Original title	Der Anfang war das Ende – Der Mensch entstand durch Kannibalismus
Translator	Judith Hayward
Language	German (later translated into English)
Genre	Pseudoscience
Publication date	West Germany: 1971; United Kingdom/United States: 1 January 1974
Publication place	West Germany
Media type	Hardcover
ISBN	0-7221-5712-6

The Beginning Was the End is a 1971 pseudo-scientific book written by Oscar Kiss Maerth (8 October 1914 – 26 August 1990) which claims humankind evolved from cannibalistic apes.^[1] The book has been criticized in relation to racialist and pseudohistorical claims.

Background

Maerth was a Hungarian-born entrepreneur, philosopher and writer. He studied the living habits of people living close to nature in Southeast Asia. In doing so, he pursued questions about the causes of emergence and development of human beings, their intelligence and behavior.

After emigrating from Hungary to South America, Maerth lived in Hong Kong for many years, later moving with his wife Elisabeth and three children to Lake Como in Northern Italy, where he bought the Villa Passalacqua in Moltrasio. He bequeathed the villa and much of his fortune to the Omnia Mundi Foundation. The foundation was registered in 1975 with SFr50,000 (equivalent to SFr56,079 or US$61,625 in 2021)^[2] as initial capital. The foundation was dissolved after the death of the founder.

Publication

Maerth rose to prominence in 1971 as the author of The Beginning was the End, a book he wrote in 1967 in seclusion at the Tsin San Buddhist monastery in Guangdong Province, China.^[3] In this book, he advocated the thesis that humans descended from apes, which systematically consumed the brains of their fellow species for many thousands of years. As a result, their brain volume gradually increased. Ultimately, humans came into being through cannibalism.

It was first published in West Germany as Der Anfang war das Ende – Der Mensch entstand durch Kannibalismus (Econ Verlag GmbH, Düsseldorf und Wien, 1971), then translated by Judith Hayward and published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph, Ltd, 1973 and re-issued by Sphere Books, Ltd, London in 1974, ISBN 0-7221-5712-6. It has been translated into eight languages.^{[citation needed]}

Synopsis

The Beginning Was the End claimed that modern humans devolved from a species of brain-eating apes.^[4] According to Maerth, this diet increased the apes' brain size, sex drive, and aggression, but suppressed their purported innate psychic ability, eventually causing insanity.^[1] Maerth offered no evidence for his theories, basing them largely on his alleged meetings with cannibals in Java and New Guinea^[5] and his experiences eating raw ape brains in a restaurant in Southeast Asia. He hints at having activated his latent psychic abilities through altering the shape of his skull in the manner of Incan tribes and/or trepanation, and his theories claimed to be mostly derived from the resulting divine inspiration. The frontispiece of Maerth's book says that after his travels in Asia, South America and Australia he settled in Italy where he lived with his wife and three children on Lake Como, where he was involved in the restoration of Villa Passalacqua.^[6] While future volumes were promised in the course of the text, none ever appeared, with the exception of The Speech of Moltrasio, a very rare 8 page pamphlet.^[7]

Criticism

The book contains no references whatsoever, rather it is based on alleged conversations with present-day cannibals,^[8] the eating of ape brain by the author^[9] and direct 'insight' from deep meditation. Many parts have been deemed by some as being outright racist, particularly the photographic plates comparing various ethnic faces (primarily Arab and African) to apes.^[10] He says that blacks have smaller brains than whites^[11] and that contemporary cannibal tribes are seeking to remedy this discrepancy by consuming brains in a frantic attempt to catch up, though he estimates that it would take them roughly 100,000 years to do so.^[12]

Popular culture

The book's legacy comes largely from the new wave band Devo, who incorporated several elements of the book into their concept of "de-evolution" and even adopted the book's title for their short film, In the Beginning was the End: The Truth About De-evolution.^[13] Bassist/synth player/vocalist Gerald V. Casale said of the book, "It's a better story than the Bible as far as DEVO's concerned."^[14] The cover of the 1989 album Now It Can Be Told is based on the cover of the US paperback edition.

Notes

^ ^a ^b Barton, Chris (13 June 2003). "Wacky evolution and the survival of the unfittest theories". The New Zealand Herald. Retrieved 28 March 2010.
^ 1501 to 1813: Roman Studer, Pascal Schuppli, Deflating Swiss Prices over the Past Five Centuries, Historical Methods, Summer 2008, Volume 41, Number 3. Afterwards, Switzerland inflation numbers based on FSO-EN to 2015, FSO-DE 2015-2021 "CPI, Global index on all index bases". Federal Statistical Office. Retrieved 14 May 2021. and table 18-10-0004-13 "LIK, Totalindex auf allen Indexbasen". Federal Statistical Office. Retrieved 14 May 2021.
^ Maerth 1974, p. 7.
^ Game, Ann; Metcalfe, Andrew W. (1996). Passionate sociology. London: SAGE. p. 72. ISBN 0-8039-7461-2. Retrieved 2 April 2021 – via Internet Archive.
^ Wilson, Colin (1984). "How Man Evolved". Criminal History of Mankind. London: Granada. p. 110. ISBN 0-246-11636-6.
^ "Villa Passalacqua - Villas on Lake Como". Barclay International Group. Archived from the original on 7 July 2011. Retrieved 10 October 2023.
^ Maerth, Oscar Kiss (1 January 1974). The speech of Moltrasio. Zurich: Omnia Mundi. ASIN B0007C60FA. OCLC 39234585.
^ Maerth 1974, p. 47.
^ Maerth 1974, pp. 52–53 "And a milder and permitted form of cannibalism still exists today in Africa, South East Asia, South China, Taiwan and on some neighboring islands: the eating of fresh ape brain. In Asia this still occurs even in public restaurants. When the brain is eaten in this way the same procedures are followed as among cannibals who eat human brain. Here too the brain is only eaten when the moon is increasing [...] The ape may likewise not come near metal objects because the rays emitted by metals have a prejudicial influence on the nervous system and the brain. It is therefore kept in a wooden cage. Shortly before it is killed it is offered a sip of an alcoholic drink and a handful of nuts to chew to stimulate the brain. The skull is broken with a stone or wooden hammer [...] The brain is immediately scooped out with a china or bamboo spoon and eaten as it is. The brain is tough and rubbery and can hardly be chewed. It is devoid of flavour, yet on account of the blood rather sweet, not a delicacy by any standard; those eating it themselves take alcoholic drinks with it. Only men partake of such repasts of ape brain [...] According to my own experience, about twenty hours after such a repast there is a feeling of warmth in the brain, like a gentle pressure. After about twenty-eight hours the body is flooded by vitality, with increased sexual impulses. The milder forms of cannibalism described above are a residue of true cannibalism, as a consequence of which a normal ape turned into an intelligent freak: which today calls itself HOMO SAPIENS."
^ Maerth 1974, pp. 168–169 (8-page photo supplement)
^ Maerth 1974, p. 180.
^ Maerth 1974, p. 68 "Man did not educate woman imperfectly: he gave her no brain to eat. To bring female intelligence up to the same level as that of man by education is just as impossible as to bring the intelligence of an aboriginal of New Guinea up to the level of a Chinese by education. If a race become cannibals one hundred thousand years later, then members of that race do not need education to raise their intelligence, but a hundred thousand years of cannibalism. If someone wanted to commit the error of giving woman man's intelligence, then woman would have to begin eating brain and continue doing so for several tens of thousands of years [...] As, however, intelligence gained by cannibalism entails for human beings the burden of delusions, there would be even greater chaos."
^ Cateforis, Theo (Winter 2004). "Performing the Avant-Garde Groove: Devo and the Whiteness of the New Wave". American Music. 22 (4): 564–588. doi:10.2307/3592993. JSTOR 3592993.
^ "Interview with Gerald V. Casale of Devo". Acidlogic.com. Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 10 October 2023.

References

Maerth, Oscar Kiss (1974). The Beginning was the End. Translated by Hayward, Judith. London: Sphere. ISBN 0-7221-5712-6.
Kossy, Donna (2001). Strange Creations: Aberrant Ideas of Human Origins from Ancient Astronauts to Aquatic Apes. Los Angeles: Feral House. ISBN 0-922915-65-2. Retrieved 6 October 2024 – via Internet Archive.