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)

I believe the majority of those sacrificed were prisoners of war. As well as a being a religious ritual, it was also intended to project power, and to instill fear in their enemies. Unsurprisingly, the Aztecs weren’t particularly popular with their neighbors, which is why those same neighbors aided the conquistadores.

As far as those chosen to be sacrificed from their own community - not all classes were chosen from equally, as it were. A lot were slaves, criminals, and ‘ordinary’ people not from the social elites. They didn’t see it as human sacrifice, or at least not with the connotations we attach to ‘human sacrifice’. It was seen as a payment of debt to the gods. As the gods gave, i.e killed themselves to bring forth the world, those that received those gifts gave to the gods in return. It was considered honorable, and it was believed that those sacrificed would be especially blessed in being raised up to sit alongside the gods.

The reason for all those little models of people and animals in elite Egyptian tombs is that people got fed up of being killed when their boss died. The dead - well, the rich and powerful ones - needed all the same comforts after death that they'd had while alive. All their servants were sent off to the afterlife with them.

By about 2,800 BC they'd decided pretend servants would be just as good. They did carry on ritually killing enemies, though, and boiled the heads for some reason.

Very many societies practised 'retainer sacrifice', sometimes sending hundreds of servants, soldiers and wives to the grave. Most also progressed to burying models of the people instead.

Yes, many Asian and Scandinavian cultures did the sacrifice of wives/concubines and servants/slaves.

The noble Egyptians moved to models instead of real people to save money, not lives. The commoners had probably been fed up since day 1 so that’s not why it changed.

The reason they needed to save money is because waves of different epidemics, eg malaria, ta-net (Asian disease possibly an earlier bubonic plague), etc repeatedly decimated the population such that slaves and servants became very expensive.

Yes it did happen. Even in Europe people were sacrificed to bogs to appease gods.

We learnt about either the Actecs or the Mayans for year 5 history...I absolutely hated it and had nightmares (the bit about cutting out the sacrifices hearts mainly)

I think Hansel and Gretel the fairy tale is about mediaeval peasants resorting to cannibalism during a famine 😢

I think too, the cultures where they ritually ate the dead, the dead were not sacrificed but died of the usual causes. The ritual eating was usually only a certain body part or parts. For example, sharing out a piece of cooked heart so the deceased is never forgotten or drinking the blood of your slain enemy.

Some cultures they thought were practicing full on cannibalism based on butcher marks on bones they later found out it was burial practice where you remove the flesh from the bones and dispose of it, so the bones can be better cremated or interred in a burial place. It means you avoid the diseases and stench of decomposition. In some cultures the burial place would be in pits in the floor of the family home. The idea being your ancestors spirits can then protect the home from all the evil spirits that walk abroad at night.

Christianity is based on human sacrifice. One scapegoat dying for all the sins.

It was heresy in earlier times to suggest that the wine and bread was not transmutated into the actual blood and body of Jesus for consumption by the congregation.

Not quite the same thing as regularly killing actual children though is it?

I remember reading that the Mayans went into a sort of panic mode at one point when things were looking particularly bad for them and massively increased the rate of human sacrifice to try to appease the gods.

It's really hard for us, but we have to try to understand their mindset (not in any way justifying it - just trying to understand!!). They genuinely thought it was the way to make things safe/better for their people, and the sacrifices would no doubt be led to believe that they would enter paradise through their deaths (rather as ISIS terrorists believe they'll immediately meet 77 virgins, or whatever) on their martyrdom.

And there's evidence in some cultures (Iron Age Britain, for eg) that the sacrificial victims would have been treated very specially before their deaths - so it would have been framed as a great honour.

Almost impossible for us to understand now, but it wasn't always a case of dragging someone kicking and screaming to the sacrificial altar.

Having said that, personally I cannot even look at those child mummies, or think about child sacrifice - it's just too awful to contemplate. But the past was a savage place.

I always roll my eyes when TV historians try to sell us the idea that the Vikings were really not so bad, or that, after the Romans left, the invading Saxons just arrived, said 'Peace, man' and assimilated with the Romano-British population. Er...no, people don't give up their land and homes just like that, and the whole process was probably extremely violent and bloody.

Yes - I think you're right about Hansel and Gretel. It was a fact of life in times of famine. The Irish Famine in the 1850s was appalling - especially when you consider it was in modern times but famines were common in the past and must have led to some desperate behaviour which we shouldn't judge too harshly.

Isn't there a story in Old Testament where some sieging army demands that all the maidens be sent out to them for rape & probable murder, and this happens without further comment bcz it buys the besieged population some respite. Only when the sons are asked for as sacrifice is there a rebellion.

Also don't discount european settlers in America and how they would go hunting.

I mean there are still countries today where women are stoned to death so is this really a surprise? Humans have always been and will always be vile.

Tbf they weren’t predominantly sacrificing their own. The main source was captives from the flower wars and traditional wars, tributes from their vassals, criminals, and slaves.

They may have believed it was necessary to sacrifice, but those of the middle and upper social classes weren’t usually volunteering*, or being volunteered.

*They would in so far as they would practice bloodletting on themselves, but that isn’t quite the same as being marched up the templo mayor to have your heart excised.

No

It’s disputed that Jephthahs daughter was killed, some interpret it as being offered to God like Samuel, and living in seclusion. She would have been unable to marry which is why the women wept over her virginity. And it says they went to visit her every year.

They may have believed it was necessary to sacrifice, but those of the middle and upper social classes weren’t usually volunteering, or being volunteered.*

But the 'bog bodies' have been shown to have well-cared-for hands - manicured, even, and with no callouses. The theory is that they were high-status people or at least people who had been selected some time before and treated as special.

There is lots of mythology about the king who must die to save his people (of which the Christian story is an example), so perhaps the sacrifice of a high-status person was a thing in Iron Age Europe.

We'll never know, will we?

In the Bible there is also the story of Abraham and Isaac, in which Abraham is ordered to sacrifice his son to God. It's presented as a test and Isaac is saved at the last moment and an animal substituted. But it shows that the idea of child sacrifice was a 'thing'!

I’m referring to the groups mesoamericans chose from within their own society. They did sacrifice nobles and high status individuals, but those tended to come from elsewhere.

It could be that those in Iron Age Europe sacrificed their own high status individuals, but it could also be they did the same as the Aztecs and sacrificed captured nobles from whatever neighboring city state or tribe they were in conflict with.

You are saying the Bible is wrong then ?

Try reading the message you quote?

she said "some interpret it".

And if you think the Bible isn't wrong in some areas and that it wasn't a document of its time and put together by men in around 400AD, then you need to improve your critical thinking

Fair enough. I am atheist myself, and it was me that mentioned the story about the daughter upthread. That reply with the " some interpret it" is the usual sort of Bible apologist response. You know, the Bible being totally clear what supposedly happened, and then someone says, " Ahh, but some say...". The person most likely to say that is a theist, not an atheist.

When I posted the verse above, I expected someone to say that. Hence my reply.

The books of Judges dates to about 500BC BC , not 400 AD.

I reckon my thinking is fine thanks.

There is something weird that happened in Europe about, oh was it 5000 bc?? 99% of all male human dna lineage was wiped. There’s archaeological evidence of mass death pits or I’d question dna alone. Watch YouTube videos and of course it’s all sexist crap about how women were fought for as slaves, once it got to 20 women to one man I don’t think so… the time of the cuceteni- Trypillia culture was just after this time. It’s not my period so I’m no doubt confusing and compressing time and space into total inaccuracy, but it seems interesting that there may have been more egalitarian cultures potentially after a wipeout of men…

Anyway I mention it because there are really weird things going on like at Herxheim where there seems to have been mass cannibalism. It reminded me of the ancient European myths of man eating giants and cyclops.

The only semi historic Old World cultures I know of in Europe that were accused of human sacrifice were Carthage / Phoenicia and the Druids of the Celts, coincidentally or not both great enemies of Rome, so the jury’s always been out. I think general feeling is that it may have been something kept for traumatic circumstances, such as Roman invasions.

Im like you op, mostly interested in medieval and Roman old world cultures. America did have very violent cultures.

Isn’t it in the Old Testament too?

^ 5000 BC would have been as agriculture was spreading and it’s generally considered that agriculture offered a much harder life for lesser gains, so there may be explanations there.

Re post Roman times in Britain, obviously there’s the Welsh tales of Vortigern and the slow takeover of Hengist and Horsa. There’s also thought to have been a plague, and an undoubted economic collapse that would have left large areas uninhabited, perhaps much like the reduced inhabitation of parts of north east England now. It was turbulent, chaotic, and every valley of England would have had a different story to tell: some areas would have been empty and people moved in in peace, others with local people coming to various small local agreements, others with elites still in control and organised societies with fighting and genocide, and all manner of mixes of all these things going on.