Ancient Apocalypse - Ancient types sacrificing and eating children? Really?

[likelysuspect]

Ive just started watching a series on Iplayer about the downfall of various ancient civilisations and only halfway through the series to find each one seems to end or have some degree of cannabilism and child sacrifice of some degree

I mean I know its good drama and people love a bit of blood and gore but as I get older I find it harder to believe that these things happen.

AIBU to believe its a bit exaggerated, I mean how come we hear about it in very very very ancient civilisations but not really in later ones. I dont recall this about the Romans, ME peoples or the Chinese dynasties. (for example)

It's all about cultural norms. We're all kidding ourselves if we think we'd be objecting to cannibalism if we lived in a society where it was normal. Maybe current vegetarians could plausible claim they wouldn't eat people.

It sees to me that people lack self-awareness when they object to things that other cultures do. Eating dogs is a really obviously example of that.

I also wonder what things we do that will horrify generations to come. It's really easy to look backward and see the racism, homophobia, slavery etc. But we can't predict easily what we are doing that will be seen in the same light.

Well, I wouldn't open with it.

There's also the aspect of desperate people in times of famine with cannibalism. Finding bones with evidence of butchery does not necessarily mean groups happily carved up children - it could also mean that people were starving and either did this to newly deceased people or became more predatory, as humans do, in order to try and save themselves.

Happens in many parts of the Africa today,especiallywest, central and southern regions. In South Africa, children are regularly kidnapped for muti (traditional medicine) by witchdoctors. That is likely what happened with Adam, the young boy found in the Thames PP have referenced (who was likely from Nigeria).

It happens now, not systematically but certainly as an outbreak within a group/society. In the Congo it seems to resurface occasionally as a weapon of war.

In the last decades, cannibalism in the Democratic Republic of Congo: https://news.un.org/en/story/2003/07/75822 UN reports. Seems to be a weapon of fear https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/aug/17/congo.theobserver

In China in living memory in one of the more extreme excesses of the Cultural Revolution: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/comparative-studies-in-society-and-history/article/abs/consuming-counterrevolution-the-ritual-and-culture-of-cannibalism-in-wuxuan-guangxi-china-may-to-july-1968/9D7B3DD84CF53C31B35E8C97D99BF9AE

In Pompeii or Rome, I forget which, they found the sewer gates near the brothels were clogged with the bones of newborn males. That's what we were told anyway. There seems to be some evidence to back it up.

I don't think there's any doubt that unwanted newborns in Victorian times were sometimes disposed of in rainbarrels if you read some of the out-of-favour, but not alarmist, literature (McDonald). It was referred to in passing very matter of factly by someone who worked in the worst of the slums as well as with lesser nobility.

Bear in mind that the Romans were so rapacious that the children of the nobility of Bithynia were sold into slavery as they only way they could survive, according to the historian Tom Holland in Rubicon (presumably well researched). The nobility presumably were the most well off, so god knows what happened to the rest of the population.

I know, but am not going to cite the sources, that cannibalism has taken place on at least several occasions among some groups of Russian soldiers invading Ukraine in the last years due simply to no food supplies getting through to them. I don't know if Ukrainian soldiers have resorted to this.

The islands off Australia still dabble, I believe. Papua new guinea, is it?

Mesoamerica? Notably the Aztecs (although they were far from the only ones). Actually there was a belief that Spanish accounts were sensationalized, but archaeologists, relatively recently, did find evidence that supported some of the claims considered most unbelievable.

www.science.org/content/article/feeding-gods-hundreds-skulls-reveal-massive-scale-human-sacrifice-aztec-capital

Yes, ritualistic cannibalism created an (recorded) epidemic of kuru, prion disease, in the 1950s, with the last documented death occurring in 2009.

Current starvation-related cannibalism: https://www.thetimes.com/world/russia-ukraine-war/article/ukraine-russian-soldiers-cannibalism-b6wpb2qxr

Which is different to ritualistic cannibalism.

I wonder if one reason for ritual human sacrifice has to do with sacrificing the thing that is most important to us, making an offering to fate or the gods, in order to gain favour?

I suppose it made sense in those ancient cultures where you believed 100% that your gods were responsible for your health and welfare, crop growth, weather, etc.
It was supposed to be a great honor....and if you didnt honor the gods who knows what they might do?
(obviously it sounds completely crazy and barbaric nowadays. Cases of it happening in recent times when we are more enlightened is just straight up criminal behaviour).

I think these things definitely happened.

Another important point is that, in the much more secular and scientifically aware world of the 21st century, it's hard to us to understand how different these ancient people's attitudes to death would have been. To most of us, death is the end, and something to dread. To people who believed fully in an afterlife (and a nice one, too), death wasn't such a dreadful thing. And the boundaries between death and life, and the dead (the ancestors) and the living were much more fluid.

It's really hard to get into the mindset of ancient peoples - impossible, really. But this is such an important difference between how they viewed life and death, and how we do.

In Iron Age Britain the Druids sacrificed humans as part of their rites. The bodies preserved in bogs in northern Europe have been shown to be sacrificial victims - they suffered the 'triple death' - strangulation, being hit over the head and finally, drowning. It was definitely part of many prehistoric (and in the case of the Aztecs and Mayans, more recent) religious practice.

They needed to make the sun and the spring return after winter. Making sacrifices ensured that this would happen, and the tribe would survive.

We know that the sun will come back in the spring, but they didn't.

I mean I know its good drama and people love a bit of blood and gore but as I get older I find it harder to believe that these things happen.
AIBU to believe its a bit exaggerated, I mean how come we hear about it in very very very ancient civilisations but not really in later ones. I dont recall this about the Romans, ME peoples or the Chinese dynasties. (for example)

OP, human beings can be horrible. History (much as it fascinates me) was utterly horrible, make no mistake. As we're typing into MN, in many places in the world, people are killing each other horribly.

Don't ever read what Tacitus said about the fate of the people of London after Boudicca's rebellion....

Or what the Ustace did in the Former Yugoslavia to peasant families. Apparently, their atrocities were too much for even the Nazis to stomach.

Or the Armenian Massacres at the beginning of the 20th century, or the Rwandan Genocide etc etc etc.

What on earth makes you think obscene horrors 'didn't happen', or are an exaggeration?

Theres loads of infanticide in greek/roman history

This - there are letters from Roman men to pg wives at home saying if it's a boy keep it if a girl leave to die.

I read Wild Swans and it covers Great Chinese famine 1959 and 1961 where 30 -46 millions staved to death - and there are references to cannibalism and the authorities prosecuting so it wasn't condoned but how widespread hard to say.

I'd heard of the kuru, prion disease when the dead where ritualistically eaten that was 20th century.

Aztec - some of that was likely intimidation of local populations as they migrated to a populated area and took over - as well as religious.

Depends how desperate peopel get and depends on relgious beliefs.

Re the Ustaše - yes, they managed to shock the Nazis with their brutality, considering them chaotic and bestial. They were Catholic Croatian nationalists, and they mainly targeted Serbs and Bosnians.

Stara Gradiška was, I believe, the only extermination camp specifically for women and children.

Events of WW2 were not an insignificant contributory factor to the Yugoslav wars of the 90s.

I don't find it at all hard to believe that such things happened and happened very often. With all our modernity and supposed hightened morality and law there are still countless peoole who are capable of sexually abusing children today so its really not hard to see how in a less modern time killing and eating was a doable act.

Humans are the worst of all animals and, as OP demonstrated, we can easily forget this about ourselves.

Why didn't that practice continue?

Well if you look at the Epstein files, and believe what they ascertain to, it has continued...

When I was at school I saw a photograph of Russian people during the great famine, skeletal, blank faced people sitting with body parts at their feet, labelled as an example of cannibalism. Horrifying, but I don’t know if it was accurate or widespread. A school friend had brought the book in, as it was relevant to something she was doing for A level.

It can be. Or sometimes cannibalism of an enemy is a way of acquiring their strength, or even showing them dishonour.
Cannibalism of relatives OTOH is usually about honouring them and keeping their spirit with you.

Tbf it didn’t continue largely due to the Spanish, that came with both advanced weaponry, and smallpox. Although that said, it did continue in more isolated communities for another couple of hundred years following the conquest.

Also bear in mind that this was also at the time that the Spanish were enthusiastically going all-in on the Inquisition, so they were hardly averse to bloodshed on religious grounds themselves.

basically many humans in anicent times were expendable assets

A good book on this subject is The Better Angels of our Nature by Steven Pinker which goes into the fact we now live in the least violent times in human history (and why).

I often wonder about the human aspect of this. If the reports of how many human sacrifices by the Mayans are true, every family would have lost someone to the practice. Did mums ever cry, or follow their loved ones to the temple thinking ‘not them, take someone else, not my son’ or did partners ever cry and feel the injustice of it all? Or was it so believed that it was noble and that the afterlife was better that they didn’t feel these things so acutely? I can’t imagine anything would make losing a loved one feel better. But then I’m the product of an individualistic, atheist society, it’s hard to imagine feeling this waste of human life was not only beneficial but integral to our survival.

Child sacrifice is in the Bible. Abraham is the famous one. Ok, he never done it, but he was going to.

Judges has one where it was carried out. Maybe not a child, but a virgin daughter. Age unknown. Name also not mentioned.

Jdg 11:29-40 and the Spirit of YHWH is on Jephthah, and he passes over Gilead and Manasseh, and passes over Mizpeh of Gilead, and he has passed over from Mizpeh of Gilead to the sons of Ammon. And Jephthah vows a vow to YHWH and says, "If You give the sons of Ammon into my hand at all then it has been, that which comes out from the doors of my house at all to meet me in my turning back in peace from the sons of Ammonit has been for YHWH, or I have offered up a burnt-offering for it." And Jephthah passes over to the sons of Ammon to fight against them, and YHWH gives them into his hand,
and he strikes them from Aroer, and to [where] you are going in to Minnithtwenty citiesand to the meadow of the vineyards, [with] a very great striking; and the sons of Ammon are humbled at the presence of the sons of Israel. And Jephthah comes into Mizpeh, to his house, and behold, his daughter is coming out to meet him with timbrels, and with choruses, and except her alone, he has no son or daughter. And it comes to pass, when he sees her, that he tears his garments and says, "Aah! My daughter, you have caused me to bend greatly, and you have been among those troubling me; and I have opened my mouth to YHWH, and I am not able to turn back."And she says to him, "My father, you have opened your mouth to YHWH, do to me as it has gone out from your mouth, after that YHWH has done vengeance for you on your enemies, on the sons of Ammon." And she says to her father, "Let this thing be done to me; desist from me [for] two months, and I go on, and have gone down on the hills, and I weep for my virginity--I and my friends." And he says, "Go"; and he sends her away [for] two months, and she goes, she and her friends, and she weeps for her virginity on the hills; and it comes to pass at the end of two months that she turns back to her father, and he does to her his vow which he has vowed, and she did not know a man; and it is a statute in Israel:from time to time the daughters of Israel go to talk to the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite, four days in a year.(LSV)

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Unfamiliar with that story, @RedTagAlan, I consulted Father Google for a summary:

After victory over the Ammonites, Jephthah vowed to sacrifice the first thing leaving his house; his daughter, his only child, greeted him dancing. She accepted her fate but requested two months to mourn her virginity in the hills with her friends before Jephthah fulfilled his vow.

She should've run away, silly girl.

Human sacrifice was supposed to be the difference really, I recall anyway. The other Gods demanded human sacrifice, but YHWH did not. Except when he did. There was all that stuff while Moses was up the mountain getting the 10 commandments. Burn a cow rather than a child sort of thing.

"2Ki 3:26 And the king of Moab sees that the battle has been too strong for him, and he takes with him seven hundred men drawing sword, to cleave through to the king of Edom, and they have not been able,and he takes his son, the firstborn who reigns in his stead, and causes him to ascend [as] a burnt-offering on the wall, and there is great wrath against Israel, and they journey from off him, and return to the land. (LSV)"

There are little snippets all over. And the big one. Where a father sacrificed his son. There is an entire religion based on that human sacrifice.