The Beginning Was the End is a 1971 pseudo-scientific book written by Oscar Kiss Maerth (October 8, 1914 – August 26, 1990) which claims humankind evolved from cannibalistic apes. 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 50,000 Swiss francs 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. 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, . It has been translated into eight languages. Synopsis The Beginning Was the End claimed that modern humans devolved from a species of brain-eating apes. According to Maerth, this diet increased the apes' brain size, sex drive, and aggression, but suppressed their purported innate psychic ability, eventually causing insanity. Maerth offered no evidence for his theories, basing them largely on his alleged meetings with cannibals in Java and New Guinea 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