human sacrifice

[cptJACK]

What conditions lead to the establishment of religions whitch partook in human sacrifice?

Was it born out of desperation?
A savage and violent culture?
A coincedence?
Is it a phase that all civilisations go through?

Can anyone cite accurate examples of where and when ritual human sacrifice (on a large scale) took place?

[kahn]

maybe it was a way to get rid of some of the bad people in the society? although that doesn't explain why people sacrificed virgins?

[old_abe]

Reasons for human sacrifice

The reason for human sacrifice is suggested in its definition: ritual sacrifice involves offering human lives to dieties to as payment for favorable interventions in an event of special importance, to forestall unfavorable events, or to purchase disclosures about the physical world. Human sacrifice has been practiced on a number of different occasions and in many different cultures. These include:

* Sacrifice by Indian adherents of Tantrism who believe that human sacrifices to the gods can change their fortune.
* Sacrifice to accompany the dedication of a new building like a temple or bridge. Chinese legends hold that thousands of people were entombed in the Great Wall of China, though they were not.
* Sacrifice in Aztec and Mayan cultures to the god of fertility to assure good corn harvest.
* Sacrifice of his daughter by a victorious Biblical general Jephthah who considered it a quid pro quo for a monumental victory.
* Sacrifice upon the death of a king, high priest or great leader; the sacrifices were to serve or accompany the deceased leader in the next life. Mongols, Scythians and various Mesoamerican chiefs could take most of their household, including servants and concubines, with them to the next world. This is sometimes called a "retainer sacrifice," as the leader's retainers would be sacrificed along with their master.
* Sacrifice by ritual combat. Etruscans organized gladiator fights in funerals because they believed that "important men required a blood sacrifice in order to survive in the afterlife." Aztecs also killed prisoners in ritual combats.
* Sacrifice for divination; a priest would try to predict the future from the body parts of a slain prisoner or slave. According to Strabo, Celts stabbed a victim with a sword and divined the future from his death spasms.
* Sacrifice in times of natural disaster. Droughts, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, etc. were seen as a sign of anger or displeasure of gods and sacrifices were made to appease the divine ire. Cretans tried to stop the destruction of their island this way.

[Bloodhound]

I believe that this savage ritual was born from pure evil. It is even observed on Belatine today (albeit without humans sacrificed).

[Mike2000]

Very interesting question.

I personally don't think this is a matter of good or evil practices; we can't judge other cultures by comparing them with our own cultural backgrounds. It is important to try to understand the circumstances and backgrounds in which those cultures unfolded in order to attempt to understand what they did.

Now, this said, I think that human sacrifice evolved through the necessity of mankind to know, understand, and if possible, control the cycles of nature. For people without a solid scientific background, nature can be menacing, and at the same time amazing. Sheer observation of the cycles of nature will undoubtedly lead to the amazing conception that life is a cycle that repeats itself over and over again. A plant, for example, the maize, is born from a seed, grows, bears fruit, and dies when it is harvested, only to be reborn again when the seed is planted. The same happens with animals: they are born, grow, reproduce, and die to sustain life.

Many older, more primitive religions were based on imitation and representation of natural events. Considering the difficulty of earning the daily sustenance, it is only natural that the most important rituals had to do with the cycles controlling the making of food. Most agrarian cultures, at one point or another, will begin associating the natural phenomena to deities that can control them, and thus we can always find a god or goddess responsible of bringing rain, a god or goddess responsible of bringing fertility to the soil, and so on.

When the religions grow more complex, the original pantheon is enriched by new features, this time not only related to natural cycles, but to supernatural events, and we begin to see gods or goddesses endowed with more complex powers and responsibilities.

And this brings me back to the topic of human sacrifice. Once you get the notion that a primitive religion is basically a series of rites of magic by imitation, and that the rituals are meant to symbolize the desired events the priests want to achieve, by imitating them, it is easy to make the connections. So, if, say, a plant grows, dies, and is reborn through burial, then it might be possible to represent this cycle by means of burying an offering.

This might be an over-simplified approach, but all in all it can be used to explain the origins of ritual human sacrifices. Now, why sacrifice a human being? Well, it's easy. If one wants to coerce, or bribe a deity to give humanity the gifts of the natural powers he / she controls, it is only natural to offer him something valuable, that can be appealing to his eyes. Perhaps he would be content to receive, say, the first fruits or the first stalks of corn or wheat; or, if this is a hunter / gatherer society, perhaps the mana deity will demand the first animal hunted, or a combination of plants and animals. Anyway; humans will always offer valuable things to the deities in an attempt to coerce them to grant them their favors.

It is only logical that, under some circumstances, humans might consider that offering plants or animals would not be enough to coerce their deities, and then they'll begin looking for something more valuable to offer; and what can be more valuable than one of their kind?

There are many variations of the rite of human sacrifice, but all in all it looks for the same goal: to coerce the gods. In some cases, the victim was the king himself, who was sacrificed when he became too old to continue representing the gods; in other cases, they would offer brave warriors, or beautiful virgins, or the most tender children. In all these cases the victims are considered valuable, precious to their kind.

When do people stop offering humans in sacrifice? When the religions evolve, and the body of knowledge of the group evolves, and it can explain the natural phenomena in terms of relations and interactions between the elements, instead of the will of voluble intangible beings. In Christianity, for example, Jesus' passion is considered the ultimate sacrifice, the sacrifice that ends the need to make any more sacrifices. In Judaism, this milestone event is the akkeidah, the binding of Isaac, when Abraham was first ordered to offer his firstborn in sacrifice, and was stopped by God when he had his son bound to the altar and was about to slice his throat. This same tradition exists in Islamism, and most, if not all the other major modern religions have milestone events in their tradition that mark the transition between the offering of real victims to another, more modern form of cult.

Hope all this rambling made sense. ^^

[Afrasiyab]

well, Jesus ! i am shocked that you are asking this. hello! jesus 'sacrificed' himself for christians, at least this is what christians believe. and ;

christians still think that they owe Jesus. what kind of a conception is this ?

sacrifice of jesus is honoured by christians. are you christian cptJACK?

[Mike2000]

...christians still think that they owe Jesus. what kind of a conception is this ?

Simple. It's called faith.

But we are not discussing what us Christians believe in. We're discussing the origins of human sacrifice in general, and that is not something exclusive of a certain group or culture. What's more, there's evidence that it was originated well before we humans started recording our history.

[Afrasiyab]

ouw Mike, you did not understand what i meant.

it's faith - then why cptJack is interrogating it ? controversiaL : )

faith is sth that you would not interrogate or discuss. as far as i know, that's what belief is in Turkey .

whatever - .

[Mike2000]

Yeah, but faith doesn't mean one has to blind himself to other, new knowledge. If we did so, we wouldn't have such wonderful advancements in medicine, for example; there was a time when it was considered a crime of faith to dissect a body, and yet, without those illegal and often dangerous procedures, our modern medicine would have taken centuries longer to develop. Or remember Galillei's work; his postulates, based on direct observation, were considered heresy because they were against the current dogma.

Faith is not against science or knowledge, on the contrary: the more one knows of the world we live in, the better we can understand our faith, whathever denomination we give to it. :) And the better we can understand our world, too. There's a saying here that says, "he who doesn't know history, is condemned to relive it", meaning that it is only through knowledge that we can evolve and improve the way we live and work as a society, instead of staying stuck with the same ideas and perhaps misconceptions from generation to generation, which is what happened to us Christians during the Middle Ages.

Now, back in topic, the question about human sacrifice is a very interesting one, when you analyze it under the light of social sciences; just wonder, how, in this world, somebody would think any god would enjoy being offered a human life? How did the sacrifices evolve? How were they performed, and by whom? Who attended? Who were the victims? What was the ritual involved? What was the procedure, if I may use that word? What did they do to the victim after the sacrifice? And last, but not least, why did they stop making human sacrifices? Those are the questions we were wondering. :)

[Melisende]

I think the reason was man wanted to become "civilized" and viewed human sacrifice as a barbaric customs of heathens and "inhuman" folk.

So, to distinguish "himself" (generic term) from such lower class beings, man (again generic, no offense guys) decided to "raise" himself above such practices.

[Mike2000]

Yeah, that can be one possible explanation. But then the next question would be, what changes he made to become more civilized than those cultures that still practiced human sacrifices.

Down here, in Mexico, archaeologists and ethnologists have ventured many theories over the years regarding the reasons why prehispanic cultures in general, and the Aztec in particular, practiced human sacrifices in such large numbers. There's a very interesting thread about this in other part of this forum, but in short some of the theories say that human sacrifices were performed either as a means to obtain food (particularly in places with protein-poor diets), as a way to keep the population growth under control, or as a means to terrorize the enemies or the lower subjects of society in order to make them obey. Of course, we also have the religious explanation, that says that the gods required human blood or energy ("mana") to continue living; or that the humans could coerce / bribe the gods to give them their favors (rain, food, protection on the battle field or before a long voyage, protection for a newly built structure, etc) by offering them a sacrifice beforehand; and finally, we have the adivinatory rituals, where people thought they could know the will of the gods, or see future events, etc., by means of a sacrifice.

I guess than, in most of these cases, when human culture evolved enough to grasp the notion that nature follows its curse without needing human intervention, it is no longer necessary to offer human sacrifices to natural events that would nevertheless happen.

Now, of particular interest, the last human sacrifice recorded in modern times took place in South America in 1960, and was performed as an extreme measure and a last attempt to appease the effects of a natural disaster of enormous magnitude: the 1960 earthquake that shook Chile and caused big tsunamis all over the southern part of the continent. Needless to say, this sacrifice did little to stop the tidal waves from entering the towns, and it was not performed by the whole of society, but by a small group of very scared people. Again, we have the same scenario: some extreme, extraordinarily rare natural event that people can't explain; after all, it was well before the Internet era, and people in rural areas in Central and South America would hardly have a way of knowing that a big eartquake just shook Chile. And even though they knew it, it is very unlikely that most people knew that this could cause tidal waves. In any case, this event caused a very intense, primal fear and people did whatever they thought could help to restore the balance to nature. Some went to church and prayed until it finished, some others fled away, and a small group of people reversed to ancient traditions.

You can read more about this here: http://www.widdershins.org/vol1iss3/l04.htm

[throughthepastdarkly]

Melisende- read the main question before posting. He's asking about how it came about, not how it was transcended.

Afrasiyab- you're obviously just baiting an argument about religion.

Cap'n Jack- Think about it. A neighboring tribe (or empire) to you is known for cutting people's chests open and actually tearing a human's beating heart out with their bare hands before kicking them down the temple steps from the top. In the Aztecs' case, it's clearly a very effective instrument of intimidation. The Aztec's neighbors hated them (and thus supported Cortes after he arrived) but paid their tribute regularly so the efficacy of the intimidation can be known.
They even sacrificed over 80,000 captives in 4 days' time. (>20k a day?). This makes the Nazis look sort of soft.
Given that you're part of a middling mesoamerican tribe, would you pay what tribute they demand or risk incurring the wrath of these monsters?

[Barthalamue]

Sacrifice was something that my civilizations took place in because they believed that the killing of human life to the gods was something that would impress them. Ofcourse this was wrong, the gods created humans so why would they want humans sacrificing themselves to them. The Aztecs took place in human sacrifice thousands of times.

[coyotelaughs]

As a small note, have you considered that if you believe,as many religions do that all individuals will be reborn and death is just one part of the cycle that will continue again and again. If you look at it from that perspective the sacrifice of an individual is not such a monumentaly horredous thing. Since that person will be reborn and start a new. You have not permanatly "killed" anything you have chance hassened that individuals rebirth.

[Kronos]

Human sacrifice, human blood would be believed to appease the gods, to ensure good crops and generally good issues for the year, as well as way to establish power over the enemies and also the subordinates in cultures like the Mayan or the Aztec.

Human sacrifice, human blood would be a sight of delight, pure cruelty of the masses as in the case of the Roman arenas. The bithday feasts of an emperor could be a motive to sacrifice over 2000 souls to the lions in the coliseum.

[Historian_X]

What conditions lead to the establishment of religions whitch partook in human sacrifice?

Is it more so the religion or, is it the civilisation and it's culture? Also are you looking at this from a purely ritualistic view?

[Richard Stanbery]

Well, ( I hear the thunder of hooves comming to ride me down on this one) if we look at common threads of coincidence here, we might get an idea of how this type of thing might have spread. Perhaps some of the human sacrifice cults have an ancient "mother religion" tie in?

Let us look at the Ba'al cult of the Phoenicians. These were great mariners, and wherever they went to and established trade contacts, thier religion seemed to go as well. Im thinking that the phoenicians sent shamen (priests) to establish this blood religion (or a form of it) in the lands that they traded with as a control means. Using religion as a control theme is nothing new, so why not?

Ireland has historical ties to the Phoenicians, as do the Celts of ancient Western Europe, and other places. And we just happen to see the rise of a priest class in Ireland and other Celtic lands (druids) which practice this type of thing.

Local variations of the religion would have been quite acceptable to the Phoenicians, as it was the control that they were after, not the practice itself. Just as variations on socialist themes was OK with Moscow during the Cold War, as long as thier client state was firmly dancing to Moscows tune. I would be the same here.

Ba'al is just a word that means overlord. There were actually several dieties that were worshiped. If this blood culture wanted to worship a jaguar instead of some other idol, then why not? As long as the basic fundamentals of the religion were observed in such a way as to keep the populace under the priest control.

But we see a startling chain of similarities with the several human sacrifice religions of the ancient world. Wherever Phoenician ships had the capability to sail, and the populations were succeptable to cuture warfare, then we see the human sacrifice religion start to spring up. Why? How are there common threads to these various religions that would point back to Phoenician influence?

The use of shamen and thier roles on society not only as keepers of the calendars, the oversight of the rituals, and also of the laws.

Tracking of the sirius and venus star system as per calendar markers

Human sacrifice

Fertility rituals based on celestial movements as opposed to seasonal climate initiatives

Chiefs and other high ranking men could have thier households and concubines killed to "take with them" into the afterlife as part of thier belief system. From Egypt, Scithia, Meso-American, Celtic, all the same twist on retainer sacrifice.

And some, if not all, seemed to just love child sacrifice

There was also the curious link with sacrifical victims being burned, from the Molok ritual of the Levant, to the Wicker man of Ireland, and the burning at the stake customs of the former Celtic lands in Europe. I dont know if burning at the stake was common in Meso-America.

Just to name a few things, there we go.

Now, Im not saying anything definitive here, as it has been a long, long time since these things went out of style in these lands. But a coincidence is one thing. A chain of coincidences that all stem from the same central theme (and tie in with it) is no longer a series of unrelated coincidences. At some point, they form a chain of fact.

And let us just say, that if there was a tie in all of these things, it might have spread from West to East? Or East to West. We just dont know. Heck...the dark past was a long, long time ago. Much has been lost, and we must grope in the dark looking for clues and trails of coincidences sometimes, for it is all that we have.

I am still trying to decide if there is enough evidence to say that this chain exists yet, but I do think that it is interesting. Do you not?

[galteeman]

Richard Stanbery where did you get the info on human sacrifice in Ireland?, I know of no evidence of this practice in ancient Ireland. The only evidence I know of Wickermen is from Julius Ceasar's writings and he says it happened in Gaul (and some think he made that up).
The Aztecs and their neighbours used to eat body parts, arms and legs I think, of the sacrifice victims so mabye that was a good reason for the practice, a source of meat.

[Richard Stanbery]

Galteeman. We Americans often have a dim view of our European past, and we have to take information from wherever we find it to come to some understanding of who we are and where we come from. In short, we often dont know these things.

Sometimes we get good info, sometimes bad, and so we must ask. Here is one example of the info I found on this, as I struggle to understand it.
http://ciaranparker.com/category/halloween-human-sacrifice-celtic-religion/

http://books.google.com/books?id=0tPjVJF8roYC&pg=PA32&lpg=PA32&dq=ancient+irish+celt+human+sacrifice&source=bl&ots=r1DdUc9SDH&sig=Gmfx3H_z4ZDT2BZVlbgaRNoXu8k&hl=en&ei=n5v2SY63LeCMtgefgcHtDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2#PPA33,M1

It seems to have something to do with Samhain? Even PBS says that it happened, but only in time of great need. So, there is room for us Americans to be justifyably convinced that it happened. We struggle to understand these things.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/ancientireland/religion.html

So, Samhain...a bloody mess at times? (One of my own ancestors was Mary Katherine Kyle from Ulster). So, who am I to throw stones?

[galteeman]

Richard heres what I know about this, (I am not an expert). The thing with sacrifice in ancient Ireland is that I don't think anyone really knows exactly what went on. There have been bodies found in bogs with ties as if they had been ritually strangled and strange cuts which some speculate as sacrifices but they may have been simple executions. The reference to sacrifice and Crom Cruach isn't that much to go on as it was written in the 12th century which is a long time after he was supposed to have been worshiped.
I don't know if we can ever say that the practice existed for certain unless evidence turns up in the archaeology. Even though it would seem likely that a primitive society would do it, it is really speculation.

[Estonian]

I don't necessarily believe sacrifice was evil in anyway. It was part of the religion or belief back then and was very common. People mainly did it in order to please the Gods. For example, sacrificing to the God of Harvests to have a successful Harvest that season

[Sugadaddy774]

Evil? No

Misguided? Definitely

While it's easy to see how the practice of human sacrifice came about one still cannot help but feel like these people were slaughtering countless persons for not.

[mister]

I believe that this savage ritual was born from pure evil. It is even observed on Belatine today (albeit without humans sacrificed).
I dont agree with the pure evil thing you just said.

[Kronos]

As well not intrinsically evil, but as Sugadaddy774 posted, misguided.
The idea of bloody sacrifice is to old. By some cultures animal's blood was enough to fullfill the requirements; in some other cultures human's blood would be of higher value - thus more effective.
Good that in some points mentalities have changed to the present day!

[barlier]

* Sacrifice upon the death of a king, high priest or great leader; the sacrifices were to serve or accompany the deceased leader in the next life. Mongols, Scythians and various Mesoamerican chiefs could take most of their household, including servants and concubines, with them to the next world. This is sometimes called a "retainer sacrifice," as the leader's retainers would be sacrificed along with their master. You can add the first kings of Dynastic Egypt on that list.
1. It is attested that some were burried with their servants (eg. king Aha). Very quickly this servants have been replaced by figurines called ushabti/shabti/shawabti
2. It is also suggested by egyptologists the Heb-Sed festival was instituted to replace a ritual of murdering a king who had reached an age or condition when judged unable to continue to rule.
A good book on these two topics is Early Dynastic Egypt by Toby Wilkinson. According to this writer (p.240), the practice of retainer sacrifice seems to have died with Qaa, a short-lived and no doubt wasteful experiment in absolute power.

Some members eager to justify the OT want to see with these facts an evidence for human sacrifices in Ancient Egypt. AFAIK there is no evidence of ritual murders of children and/or virgins to appease an angry god.

[crossroadclarence]

barlier: AFAIK there is no evidence of ritual murders of children and/or virgins to appease an angry god.

Whatever the "reason", (ease a passage to the underworld. whatever) there was ritual sacrifice as these professionals have shown:

Well....I think you better tell professionals that they are wrong and you are right, then barlier, about human/child sacrifice in Egypt:

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0504/feature7/index.html

and a Belgian Eqyptologist , Jacques Kinnaer

http://www.ancient-egypt.org/index.html

[barlier]

Kings Aha and Qaa who started and ended the 1st Dynasty (3000-2890 BCE according to Ian Shaw) are part of the Early Dynastic period (3000-2686 BCE) which precedes the Old Kingdom one (2686-2160 BCE). It should be noted that some egyptologists identify Aha with the legendary Menes.

[Naomasa298]

The original question was interesting, but I note this thread has been a little coloured by perceptions of human sacrifice.

Look at it objectively. Human sacrifice has generally been done to appease a higher power, be that the god of the harvest, the god of fertility, your recently deceased pharaoh/emperor or otherwise. When you sacrifice to the gods, you are making a valuable offering. It's not a method of culling the population, otherwise you would sacrifice the weakest, oldest members of society. No, you have to offer up the best - strong warriors, fair maidens, priests. Nothing less would appease the gods. When the sacrifice comes from the same community, it is a sacrifice of one person to appease the anger of the gods, so that everyone else might survive.

Human sacrifice rituals tend to be bloody, because a lot of it involves the spilling of blood, the very substance of life. The Aztecs sacrificed captives to make the sun rise. Certain tribes of native Americans spilled the blood of a maiden to make the harvest grow. I recall reading about evidence of child sacrifice in the Minoan civilisation towards its end, possibly to try and ward off the disaster that was befalling them.

[HadleyH]

;) :D ~~~~~~~~~~~~

http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g290/mikisu/sran487l.jpg

[Pedro]

Reasons for human sacrifice

The reason for human sacrifice is suggested in its definition: ritual sacrifice involves offering human lives to dieties to as payment for favorable interventions in an event of special importance, to forestall unfavorable events, or to purchase disclosures about the physical world. Human sacrifice has been practiced on a number of different occasions and in many different cultures. These include:

* Sacrifice by Indian adherents of Tantrism who believe that human sacrifices to the gods can change their fortune.
* Sacrifice to accompany the dedication of a new building like a temple or bridge. Chinese legends hold that thousands of people were entombed in the Great Wall of China, though they were not.
* Sacrifice in Aztec and Mayan cultures to the god of fertility to assure good corn harvest.
* Sacrifice of his daughter by a victorious Biblical general Jephthah who considered it a quid pro quo for a monumental victory.
* Sacrifice upon the death of a king, high priest or great leader; the sacrifices were to serve or accompany the deceased leader in the next life. Mongols, Scythians and various Mesoamerican chiefs could take most of their household, including servants and concubines, with them to the next world. This is sometimes called a "retainer sacrifice," as the leader's retainers would be sacrificed along with their master.
* Sacrifice by ritual combat. Etruscans organized gladiator fights in funerals because they believed that "important men required a blood sacrifice in order to survive in the afterlife." Aztecs also killed prisoners in ritual combats.
* Sacrifice for divination; a priest would try to predict the future from the body parts of a slain prisoner or slave. According to Strabo, Celts stabbed a victim with a sword and divined the future from his death spasms.
* Sacrifice in times of natural disaster. Droughts, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, etc. were seen as a sign of anger or displeasure of gods and sacrifices were made to appease the divine ire. Cretans tried to stop the destruction of their island this way.
Nice post!

[okamido]

It should be noted that some egyptologists identify Aha with the legendary Menes.

Not 5 minutes ago was I reading the same thing. With a search into King Scorpion, Menes name keeps coming up as Scorpion, with Aha and Narmer as possible royal names.

[crossroadclarence]

Nice post!Yes: although old-abe's post is almost 4 years old (where did he go?) it covers many bases...except human sacrifices by the Egyptians to supply him with servants etc in the afterlife as explained here:

Outside, situated around the enclosure's walls, were six open graves. In a final act of devotion, or coercion, six people were poisoned and buried along with wine and food to take into the afterlife. One was a child of just four or five, perhaps the king's beloved son or daughter, who was expensively furnished with ivory bracelets and tiny lapis beads.

The procession then walked westward into the setting sun, crossing sand dunes and moving up a dry riverbed to a remote cemetery at the base of a high desert plateau. Here Aha's three-chambered tomb was stockpiled with provisions for a lavish life in eternity. There were large cuts of ox meat, freshly killed waterbirds, loaves of bread, cheese, dried figs, jars of beer, and dozens of wine vessels, each bearing Aha's official seal. Beside his tomb more than 30 graves were laid out in three neat rows. As the ceremony climaxed, several lions were slain and placed in a separate burial pit. As Aha's body was lowered into a brick-lined burial chamber, a select group of loyal courtiers and servants also took poison and joined their king in the next world.from http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0504/feature7/text2.html

[barlier]

Menes name keeps coming up as Scorpion, with Aha and Narmer as possible royal names.Off-topic, Menes is Meny in Egyptian and means someone. Marie-Ange Bonhême in Pharaon les Secrets du Pouvoir see this Meny as a forgotten king who became the prototype of the ideal king. The name first appeared on a XVIII dyn. scarab between the cartouches of Hatchepsut and Thutmose III (Source : Dominique Valbelle, Histoire de l'Etat pharaonique).

It's quite strange that a mass suicide at the time of the Horus Aha is called a sacrifice, a word the same people would not used for the sad event of November 1978 in Guyana. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown

[Bismarck]

The Honourable Elijah Mohammed came very close to being prosecuted for human sacrifice by the FBI in Chicago of the 1930's. I think he made a plea bargain that saw the more serious charges dropped in exchange for a guilty plea on the lesser charges. It was following this incident that the Nation of Islam's so-called Prophet - Wallace Fard Mohammed - disappeared from the records.

[Naomasa298]

The practise of using human body parts (particularly from albinos) in countries like Tanzania is still current, despite attempts by the authorities to crack down. It's not human sacrifice per se, but invariably results in the death of the "doner" of the body part(s).

[steve53]

I haven't read all of these posts, but a damn good book on the subject is by (Robert?) Edgarton, called "Sick societies: The Myth of Primitive Harmony". Popular anthropology has been sanitized by the politically correct, non-judgmental crowd. Edgarton lays it all out there. Great book. Did you know rthat as late as the 18so's a central Texas indian tribe, the Tonkawa, practiced cannibalism? They didn't even attach any ritual or religious significance to it. when they were hungry, they raided a rival tribal site! People know that the Aztecs practiced human sacrifice, but did you know that they ATE the victims they cut the hearts out of? The Siti ceremony in Indian is also well-described.
Edgarton's point is that certain rituals and practices of primitive societies are clearly maladaptive, and serve no purpose- to the point of self-destruction.

[Budd_Dwyer]

I've just finished writing an essay, well I say just finished, handed it in a few weeks back. It was analysing the role of sacrifice (using the example of the Aztecs) outside of a religious context, focusing on its impacts upon social stratifications.
To sum it up, the jist of the part of the essay relevant to this discussion was:
The emphasis in sacrificial rites was always on elites with in society; those who held the power i.e. priests and kings. Those atop of the social ladder were, therefore, irreplaceable as intermediaries between the divine and the mortal.
Furthermore, the sheer size and scale of the rites (performed atop the 20 metre high structures like the Templo Mayar), placed even further emphasis on those orchestrating the ceremony.
So perhaps it was far more than a barbaric performance with the intent of keeping the gods sweet, and in reality was a bloody effective political tool. (pun intended on the bloody) :)

[steve53]

Ever wonder why the steps of the sacrificial temples were so steep in both Aztec and Mayan cultures? When the priests finished the killing, the body could be pushed off the top platform and be assured of tumbling all the way to the bottom. There, the body was quickly cut up.

[Lawnmowerman]

Ever wonder why the steps of the sacrificial temples were so steep in both Aztec and Mayan cultures? When the priests finished the killing, the body could be pushed off the top platform and be assured of tumbling all the way to the bottom. There, the body was quickly cut up.
So was Mad Mel's Apocalypso reasonable accurate in this regard???

I believe the whole film to be quite accurate but i know nothing about Mayan/Aztec rituals

[Sargon of Akkad]

I believe the whole film to be quite accurate but i know nothing about Mayan/Aztec rituals

Probably because it didn't involve the English.

Oh, Mad Mel is a fantastic name for him. Two thumbs up! :D

[Budd_Dwyer]

So was Mad Mel's Apocalypso reasonable accurate in this regard???

I believe the whole film to be quite accurate but i know nothing about Mayan/Aztec rituals

The film was pretty biased (well, it's a Mel Gibson film, so that's a given). The costumes however, as well as many aspects of the ritual, are surprisingly accurate.
But...Mel beautifully stereotypes all the Aztec people as savages, as they cheered when the bodies tumbled down the stairs, for example. And on top of this - again typical of Gibson - represents Christianity as the shining light of civilisation, which reaches the Mesoamerican shores and saves the Aztec peoples from their own barbaric ways.

[steve53]

I never saw the movie. Got my info from Edgarton's book "The Myth of Primitive Harmony".

[Lawnmowerman]

And on top of this - again typical of Gibson - represents Christianity as the shining light of civilisation, which reaches the Mesoamerican shores and saves the Aztec peoples from their own barbaric ways.


Who whoa hang on, you are not the first person, i've heard make this mistake. At absolutly no piont in that movie do the Christians do anything, infact they play no part at all in saving the main character, the men chasing him simply stop in amazment at the arrival of Cortez????

I believe that Mad Mel used there arrival to signify the end of an era, and not as some Christian saviours. Infact I believe the very last words in the film from go something like this

Wife "Who are they"
Husband "I don't care and i don't want to find out"

[Bismarck]

Yes, Lawnmowerman is right. I dont know how anyone can see 'bias' in the film. He (Mel) simply tells a story.

[Salah ad-Din]

And in what other movies does Mel Gibson portray Christianity as the "shining light of civilization"?

[Budd_Dwyer]

I'm not sure how you can avoid the bias in this film.
Check this review: your forum won't let me post links...so google: Ardren, Traci. (2006) Is "Apocalypto" Pornography? Which is an article in Archaeology magazine.

[Matius]

Ritual sacrifices and human sacrifices are difficult for peopel in modern society to accept and deem "normal".

But i think it was just in the days before people had alot of money, and a lot of possessions, they saw no other way to "give" something to their deities than to se a human or animal sacrifice.

Humans would have been preferred to animal, as people commonly believe that a human life is worth most of all.