Yes, we're standing on the shoulders of freaks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPKEk2aHjow
(I hope it's the right vid, YT is blocked here).
I've bumped into strange, often depraved things reading. A couple I remember, at one point in Rome, to get married, the wife-to-be had to prostitute herself at the temple before getting permission. The Jewish folks got a rep for being Patriarchial because at one point it was common to offer your wife to guests, so they kinda hid them away. In Greece they substituted condemned criminals for actors before the torture scenes in live plays. There's certainly no shortage of vileness in our sad history.
Pete