Human sacrifice - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Human sacrifice is the act of killing one or more human beings as part of a religious ritual (ritual killing). Its typology closely parallels the various practices of ritual slaughter

Ritual slaughter

Ritual slaughter is the practice of slaughtering livestock for meat in a ritual manner. Ritual slaughter involves a prescribed method of slaughtering an animal for food production purposes...

of animals (animal sacrifice

Animal sacrifice

Animal sacrifice is the ritual killing of an animal as part of a religion. It is practised by many religions as a means of appeasing a god or gods or changing the course of nature...

) and of religious sacrifice

Sacrifice

Sacrifice is the offering of food, objects or the lives of animals or people to God or the gods as an act of propitiation or worship.While sacrifice often implies ritual killing, the term offering can be used for bloodless sacrifices of cereal food or artifacts...

in general. Human sacrifice has been practised in various culture

Culture

Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...

s throughout history. Victims were typically ritually killed in a manner that was supposed to please or appease gods

Deity

A deity is a recognized preternatural or supernatural immortal being, who may be thought of as holy, divine, or sacred, held in high regard, and respected by believers....

, spirits or the deceased, for example as a propitiatory offering, or as a retainer sacrifice when the King's servants are killed in order for them to continue to serve their master in the next life. Closely related practices found in some tribal societies are cannibalism

Cannibalism

Cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy...

and headhunting

Headhunting

Headhunting is the practice of taking a person's head after killing them. Headhunting was practised in historic times in parts of China, India, Nigeria, Nuristan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Borneo, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Japan, Micronesia, Melanesia, New Zealand, and the Amazon Basin, as...

. By the Iron Age

Iron Age

The Iron Age is the archaeological period generally occurring after the Bronze Age, marked by the prevalent use of iron. The early period of the age is characterized by the widespread use of iron or steel. The adoption of such material coincided with other changes in society, including differing...

, with the associated developments in religion (the Axial Age

Axial Age

German philosopher Karl Jaspers coined the term the axial age or axial period to describe the period from 800 to 200 BC, during which, according to Jaspers, similar revolutionary thinking appeared in India, China and the Occident...

), human sacrifice was becoming less common throughout the Old World

Old World

The Old World consists of those parts of the world known to classical antiquity and the European Middle Ages. It is used in the context of, and contrast with, the "New World" ....

, and came to be widely looked down upon as barbaric already in pre-modern times (Classical Antiquity

Classical antiquity

Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...

). Blood libel

Blood libel

Blood libel is a false accusation or claim that religious minorities, usually Jews, murder children to use their blood in certain aspects of their religious rituals and holidays...

is a false charge of ritual killing.

Even if not explicitly connected with religion, infliction of capital punishment

Capital punishment

Capital punishment, the death penalty, or execution is the sentence of death upon a person by the state as a punishment for an offence. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences. The term capital originates from the Latin capitalis, literally...

has been described as a form of ritual human sacrifice. Death by burning

Execution by burning

Death by burning is death brought about by combustion. As a form of capital punishment, burning has a long history as a method in crimes such as treason, heresy, and witchcraft....

historically has aspects of both human sacrifice (Wicker Man

Wicker Man

A wicker man was a large wicker statue of a human used by the ancient Druids for human sacrifice by burning it in effigy, according to Julius Caesar in his Commentarii de Bello Gallico...

, Tophet

Tophet

Tophet or Topheth is believed to be a location in Jerusalem, in the Valley of Hinnom, where the Canaanites sacrificed children to the god Moloch by burning them alive. The Hebrew Bible also mentions what appears to be child sacrifice practiced at a place called the Tophet by the Canaanites,...

) and capital punishment (Brazen bull

Brazen bull

The brazen bull, bronze bull, or Sicilian bull, was a torture and execution device designed in ancient Greece. Its inventor, metal worker Perillos of Athens, proposed it to Phalaris, the tyrant of Akragas, Sicily, as a new means of executing criminals. The bull was made entirely of bronze, hollow,...

, tunica molesta
Tunica molesta
A tunica molesta was a shirt impregnated with flammable substances such as naphtha, used to execute people by burning in ancient Rome. The Roman emperor Nero executed some Christians in this way, according to Seneca....

). Detractors of the death penalty

Capital punishment debate

The use of capital punishment, frequently known as the death penalty, is highly controversial.-Retribution:Supporters of the death penalty argued that death penalty is morally justified when applied in murder especially with aggravating elements such as multiple homicide, child murder, torture...

may consider all forms of capital punishment as secularised variants of human sacrifice. Similarly, lynching

Lynching

Lynching is an extrajudicial execution carried out by a mob, often by hanging, but also by burning at the stake or shooting, in order to punish an alleged transgressor, or to intimidate, control, or otherwise manipulate a population of people. It is related to other means of social control that...

, pogrom

Pogrom

A pogrom is a form of violent riot, a mob attack directed against a minority group, and characterized by killings and destruction of their homes and properties, businesses, and religious centres...

s and genocide

Genocide

Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...

s are sometimes interpreted as human sacrifice following Theodor W. Adorno

Theodor W. Adorno

Theodor W. Adorno was a German sociologist, philosopher, and musicologist known for his critical theory of society....

.

In modern times, even the once ubiquitous practice of animal sacrifice has virtually disappeared from all major religions (or has been re-cast in terms of ritual slaughter), and human sacrifice has become extremely rare. Most religions condemn the practice, and present-day secular laws treat it as murder

Murder

Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...

. In the context of a society which condemns human sacrifice, the term ritual murder is used.

Similar killings for the purpose of ritual are still occasionally seen, with reports from the 2000s from Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa as a geographical term refers to the area of the African continent which lies south of the Sahara. A political definition of Sub-Saharan Africa, instead, covers all African countries which are fully or partially located south of the Sahara...

(muti killings

Medicine murder

A Medicine murder is the killing of a human being in order to excise body parts to use as medicine. It is not human sacrifice in a religious sense because the motivation is not the death of human, but the creation of an item or items from their corpus for use in traditional healing...

), but also isolated cases in the immigrant African diaspora in Europe. In India, Sati

Sati (practice)

For other uses, see Sati .Satī was a religious funeral practice among some Indian communities in which a recently widowed woman either voluntarily or by use of force and coercion would have immolated herself on her husband’s funeral pyre...

, the immolation of a widow on her husband's funeral pyre, continued well into the 19th century, but in current practice has become very rare.

Evolution and context

The idea of human sacrifice has its roots in deep prehistory, in the evolution of human behaviour

Behavioral modernity

Behavioral modernity is a term used in anthropology, archeology and sociology to refer to a set of traits that distinguish present day humans and their recent ancestors from both living primates and other extinct hominid lineages. It is the point at which Homo sapiens began to demonstrate a...

. Mythologically, it is closely connected, or even fundamentally identical with animal sacrifice. Walter Burkert

Walter Burkert

Walter Burkert is a German scholar of Greek mythology and cult.An emeritus professor of classics at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, he also has taught in the United Kingdom and the United States...

has argued for such a fundamental identity of animal and human sacrifice in the connection of a hunting hypothesis

Hunting hypothesis

In paleoanthropology, the hunting hypothesis is the hypothesis that human evolution was primarily influenced by the activity of hunting for relatively large and fast animals, and that the activity of hunting distinguished human ancestors from other primates....

which traces the emergence of human religious behaviour to the beginning of behavioural modernity in the Upper Paleolithic

Upper Paleolithic

The Upper Paleolithic is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age as it is understood in Europe, Africa and Asia. Very broadly it dates to between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago, roughly coinciding with the appearance of behavioral modernity and before the advent of...

(roughly 50,000 years ago).

There has been a lot of debate on the primacy of myth vs. ritual, and the presence of a myth of human sacrifice should not be taken as necessarily implying the historical existence of the actual practice: human sacrifice may be taken as the re-enactment of an older myth, or conversely a myth can be taken as a memory of an earlier practice of human sacrifice. Theistic rationalisations of human sacrifice may involve the idea of offering to deities as payment for favourable interventions in an event of special importance, to forestall unfavourable events, or to purchase disclosures about the physical world.

Human sacrifice has been practised on a number of different occasions and in many different cultures. The various rationales behind human sacrifice are the same that motivate religious sacrifice in general. Human sacrifice is intended to bring good fortune and to pacify the gods, for example in the context of the dedication of a completed building like a temple or bridge. There is a Chinese legend that there are thousands of people entombed in the Great Wall of China

Great Wall of China

The Great Wall of China is a series of stone and earthen fortifications in northern China, built originally to protect the northern borders of the Chinese Empire against intrusions by various nomadic groups...

. In ancient Japan, legends talk about Hitobashira ("human pillar"), in which maidens were buried alive

Premature burial

Premature burial, also known as live burial, burial alive, or vivisepulture, means to be buried while still alive. Animals or humans may be buried alive accidentally or intentionally...

at the base or near some constructions as a prayer to ensure the buildings against disasters or enemy attacks. For the re-consecration of Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan in 1487, the Aztecs reported that they killed about 80,400 prisoners over the course of four days. According to Ross Hassig

Ross Hassig

Ross Hassig is an American historical anthropologist specializing in Mesoamerican studies, particularly the Aztec culture. His focus is often on the description of practical infrastructure in Mesoamerican societies...

, author of Aztec Warfare, "between 10,000 and 80,400 persons" were sacrificed in the ceremony.

Human sacrifice can also have the intention of winning the gods' favour in warfare. In Homeric legend, Iphigeneia

Iphigeneia

Iphigenia is a daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra in Greek mythology. In Attic accounts, her name means "strong-born", "born to strength", or "she who causes the birth of strong offspring."-Post-Homeric Greek myth:...

was to be sacrificed by her father Agamemnon

Agamemnon

In Greek mythology, Agamemnon was the son of King Atreus and Queen Aerope of Mycenae, the brother of Menelaus, the husband of Clytemnestra, and the father of Electra and Orestes. Mythical legends make him the king of Mycenae or Argos, thought to be different names for the same area...

for success in the Trojan War

Trojan War

In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, the king of Sparta. The war is among the most important events in Greek mythology and was narrated in many works of Greek literature, including the Iliad...

. According to the Bible

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

, Jephthah vowed to sacrifice his daughter, though it is not said whether he went through with it or not(Judges

Book of Judges

The Book of Judges is the seventh book of the Hebrew bible and the Christian Old Testament. Its title describes its contents: it contains the history of Biblical judges, divinely inspired prophets whose direct knowledge of Yahweh allows them to act as decision-makers for the Israelites, as...

11). Another motivation for human sacrifice is burial

Burial

Burial is the act of placing a person or object into the ground. This is accomplished by excavating a pit or trench, placing an object in it, and covering it over.-History:...

: in some notions of an afterlife

Afterlife

The afterlife is the belief that a part of, or essence of, or soul of an individual, which carries with it and confers personal identity, survives the death of the body of this world and this lifetime, by natural or supernatural means, in contrast to the belief in eternal...

, the deceased will benefit from victims killed at his funeral. Mongols

Mongols

Mongols ) are a Central-East Asian ethnic group that lives mainly in the countries of Mongolia, China, and Russia. In China, ethnic Mongols can be found mainly in the central north region of China such as Inner Mongolia...

, Scythians, early Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

ians and various Mesoamerica

Mesoamerica

Mesoamerica is a region and culture area in the Americas, extending approximately from central Mexico to Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, within which a number of pre-Columbian societies flourished before the Spanish colonization of the Americas in the 15th and...

n 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, so that they could continue to serve him in the afterlife.

Another purpose is divination

Divination

Divination is the attempt to gain insight into a question or situation by way of an occultic standardized process or ritual...

from the body parts of the victim. According to Strabo

Strabo

Strabo, also written Strabon was a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher.-Life:Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus , a city which he said was situated the approximate equivalent of 75 km from the Black Sea...

, Celt

Celt

The Celts were a diverse group of tribal societies in Iron Age and Roman-era Europe who spoke Celtic languages.The earliest archaeological culture commonly accepted as Celtic, or rather Proto-Celtic, was the central European Hallstatt culture , named for the rich grave finds in Hallstatt, Austria....

s stabbed a victim with a sword and divined the future from his death spasms.

Headhunting

Headhunting

is the practice of taking the head of a killed adversary, for ceremonial or magical purposes, or for reasons of prestige. It was found in many pre-modern tribal societies.

Human sacrifice may be a ritual practised in a stable society, and may even be conductive to enhance societal bonds (see Sociology of religion

Sociology of religion

The sociology of religion concerns the role of religion in society: practices, historical backgrounds, developments and universal themes. There is particular emphasis on the recurring role of religion in all societies and throughout recorded history...

), both by creating a bond

Human bonding

Human bonding is the process of development of a close, interpersonal relationship. It most commonly takes place between family members or friends, but can also develop among groups such as sporting teams and whenever people spend time together...

unifying the sacrificing community, and in combining human sacrifice and capital punishment

Capital punishment

, by removing individuals that have a negative effect on societal stability (criminals, religious heretics, foreign slaves or prisoners of war). But outside of civil religion

Civil religion

The intended meaning of the term civil religion often varies according to whether one is a sociologist of religion or a professional political commentator...

, human sacrifice may also result in outbursts of "blood frenzy" and mass killings

Mass murder

Mass murder is the act of murdering a large number of people , typically at the same time or over a relatively short period of time. According to the FBI, mass murder is defined as four or more murders occurring during a particular event with no cooling-off period between the murders...

that destabilise society. Thus, the Thuggee

Thuggee

Thuggee is the term for a particular kind of murder and robbery of travellers in South Asia and particularly in India.They are sometimes called Phansigar i.e...

cult that plagued India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

was devoted to Kali

Kali

' , also known as ' , is the Hindu goddess associated with power, shakti. The name Kali comes from kāla, which means black, time, death, lord of death, Shiva. Kali means "the black one". Since Shiva is called Kāla - the eternal time, Kālī, his consort, also means "Time" or "Death" . Hence, Kāli is...

, the goddess of death and destruction. According to the Guinness Book of Records the Thuggee cult was responsible for approximately 2 million deaths. The bursts of capital punishment during European witch-hunts, or during the French Revolutionary Reign of Terror

Reign of Terror

The Reign of Terror , also known simply as The Terror , was a period of violence that occurred after the onset of the French Revolution, incited by conflict between rival political factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of "enemies of...

show similar sociological patterns (see also Moral panic

Moral panic

A moral panic is the intensity of feeling expressed in a population about an issue that appears to threaten the social order. According to Stanley Cohen, author of Folk Devils and Moral Panics and credited creator of the term, a moral panic occurs when "[a] condition, episode, person or group of...

).

Many cultures show traces of prehistoric human sacrifice in their mythologies, but have ceased to practise them before the onset of historical records. The story of Abraham

Abraham

Abraham , whose birth name was Abram, is the eponym of the Abrahamic religions, among which are Judaism, Christianity and Islam...

and Isaac

Isaac

Isaac as described in the Hebrew Bible, was the only son Abraham had with his wife Sarah, and was the father of Jacob and Esau. Isaac was one of the three patriarchs of the Israelites...

(Genesis 22) is an example of a myth explaining the abolition of human sacrifice. Similarly, the Vedic Purushamedha

Purushamedha

Purushamedha is a Vedic yajna described in the Yajurveda . The verse describes people from all classes and of all descriptions tied to the stake and offered to Prajapati....

, literally "human sacrifice", is already a purely symbolic act in its earliest attestation. According to Pliny the Elder, human sacrifice in Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

was abolished by a senatorial decree in 97 BCE, although by this time the practice had already become so rare that the decree was mostly a symbolic act. Human sacrifice once abolished is typically replaced by either animal sacrifice, or by the "mock-sacrifice" of effigies

Effigy

An effigy is a representation of a person, especially in the form of sculpture or some other three-dimensional form.The term is usually associated with full-length figures of a deceased person depicted in stone or wood on church monuments. These most often lie supine with hands together in prayer,...

, such as the Argei

Argei

Argei may refer to:* Argei , ritual figures in ancient Roman religion, and also their shrines* Argei - olive oil manufacturer...

in ancient Rome.

Ancient Near East

Ancient Egypt

There may be evidence of retainer sacrifice in the early dynastic period at Abydos

Abydos, Egypt

Abydos is one of the most ancient cities of Upper Egypt, and also of the eight Upper Nome, of which it was the capital city. It is located about 11 kilometres west of the Nile at latitude 26° 10' N, near the modern Egyptian towns of el-'Araba el Madfuna and al-Balyana...

, when on the death of a King he would be accompanied with servants, and possibly high officials, who would continue to serve him in eternal life. The skeletons that were found had no obvious signs of trauma, leading to speculation that the giving up of life to serve the King may have been a voluntary act, possibly carried out in a drug induced state. At about 2800 BCE any possible evidence of such practices disappeared, though echoes are perhaps to be seen in the burial of statues of servants in Old Kingdom

Old Kingdom

Old Kingdom is the name given to the period in the 3rd millennium BC when Egypt attained its first continuous peak of civilization in complexity and achievement – the first of three so-called "Kingdom" periods, which mark the high points of civilization in the lower Nile Valley .The term itself was...

tombs.

Mesopotamia

Retainer sacrifice was practised within the royal tombs of ancient Mesopotamia. Courtiers, guards, musicians, handmaidens and grooms died, presumed to have taken poison. A new examination of skulls from the royal cemetery at Ur, discovered in Iraq almost a century ago, appears to support a more grisly interpretation than before of human sacrifices associated with elite burials in ancient Mesopotamia, archaeologists say. Palace attendants, as part of royal mortuary ritual, were not dosed with poison to meet a rather serene death. Instead, a sharp instrument, a pike perhaps, was driven into their heads.

Levant

References in the Bible

Bible

point to an awareness of human sacrifice in the history of ancient near-eastern practice. During a battle with the Israelites the king of Moab gives his firstborn son and heir as a whole burnt offering (olah, as used of the Temple sacrifice) (2 Kings 3:27).

In Genesis 22 as well as the Qur'an, there is a story about Abraham's binding of Isaac

Binding of Isaac

The Binding of Isaac Akedah or Akeidat Yitzchak in Hebrew and Dhabih in Arabic, is a story from the Hebrew Bible in which God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, on Mount Moriah...

, although in the Qur'an the name of the son is not mentioned and assumed to be Ismail

Ishmael

Ishmael is a figure in the Hebrew Bible and the Qur'an, and was Abraham's first born child according to Jews, Christians and Muslims. Ishmael was born of Abraham's marriage to Sarah's handmaiden Hagar...

. In the Bible's version of the story, God

God

God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....

tests Abraham

Abraham

Abraham , whose birth name was Abram, is the eponym of the Abrahamic religions, among which are Judaism, Christianity and Islam...

by asking him to present his son, Isaac

Isaac

Isaac as described in the Hebrew Bible, was the only son Abraham had with his wife Sarah, and was the father of Jacob and Esau. Isaac was one of the three patriarchs of the Israelites...

, as a sacrifice on Mount Moriah

Moriah

Moriah is the name given to a mountain range by the Book of Genesis, in which context it is giv. the location of the sacrifice of Isaac. Traditionally Moriah has been interpreted as the name of the specific mountain at which this occurred, rather than just the name of the range...

. No reason is given within the text. Abraham agrees to this command without arguing. The story ends with an angel

Angel

Angels are mythical beings often depicted as messengers of God in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles along with the Quran. The English word angel is derived from the Greek ἄγγελος, a translation of in the Hebrew Bible ; a similar term, ملائكة , is used in the Qur'an...

stopping Abraham at the last minute and making Isaac's sacrifice unnecessary by providing a ram, caught in some nearby bushes, to be sacrificed instead. Many Bible scholars have suggested this story's origin was a remembrance of an era when human sacrifice was abolished in favour of animal sacrifice.

Another instance of human sacrifice mentioned in the Bible is the sacrifice of Jephthah's daughter in Judges 11. Jephthah vows to sacrifice to God whatsoever comes to greet him at the door when he returns home if he is victorious. The vow is stated in Judges 11:31 as "Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering." When he returns from battle, his virgin daughter runs out to greet him. According to the commentators of the rabbinic Jewish tradition, Jepthah's daughter was not sacrificed, but was forbidden to marry and remained a spinster her entire life, fulfilling the vow that she would be devoted to the Lord.

Phoenicia

According to Roman and Greek sources, Phoenicia

Phoenicia

Phoenicia , was an ancient civilization in Canaan which covered most of the western, coastal part of the Fertile Crescent. Several major Phoenician cities were built on the coastline of the Mediterranean. It was an enterprising maritime trading culture that spread across the Mediterranean from 1550...

ns and Carthaginians

Carthage

Carthage , implying it was a 'new Tyre') is a major urban centre that has existed for nearly 3,000 years on the Gulf of Tunis, developing from a Phoenician colony of the 1st millennium BC...

sacrificed infants to their gods. The bones of numerous infants have been found in Carthaginian archaeological sites in modern times but the subject of child sacrifice

Child sacrifice

Child sacrifice is the ritualistic killing of children in order to please, propitiate or force a god or supernatural beings in order to achieve a desired result...

is controversial. In a single child cemetery called the Tophet by archaeologists, an estimated 20,000 urns were deposited.

Plutarch

Plutarch

Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...

(ca. 46–120 CE) mentions the practice, as do Tertullian

Tertullian

Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, anglicised as Tertullian , was a prolific early Christian author from Carthage in the Roman province of Africa. He is the first Christian author to produce an extensive corpus of Latin Christian literature. He also was a notable early Christian apologist and...

, Orosius, Diodorus Siculus and Philo

Philo

Philo , known also as Philo of Alexandria , Philo Judaeus, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, Yedidia, "Philon", and Philo the Jew, was a Hellenistic Jewish Biblical philosopher born in Alexandria....

. Livy

Livy

Titus Livius — known as Livy in English — was a Roman historian who wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people. Ab Urbe Condita Libri, "Chapters from the Foundation of the City," covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome well before the traditional foundation in 753 BC...

and Polybius

Polybius

Polybius , Greek ) was a Greek historian of the Hellenistic Period noted for his work, The Histories, which covered the period of 220–146 BC in detail. The work describes in part the rise of the Roman Republic and its gradual domination over Greece...

do not. The Bible asserts that children were sacrificed at a place called the Tophet

Tophet

("roasting place") to the god Moloch

Moloch

Moloch — also rendered as Molech, Molekh, Molok, Molek, Molock, or Moloc — is the name of an ancient Semitic god...

. According to Diodorus Siculus

Diodorus Siculus

Diodorus Siculus was a Greek historian who flourished between 60 and 30 BC. According to Diodorus' own work, he was born at Agyrium in Sicily . With one exception, antiquity affords no further information about Diodorus' life and doings beyond what is to be found in his own work, Bibliotheca...

' account

Bibliotheca historica

Bibliotheca historica , is a work of universal history by Diodorus Siculus. It consisted of forty books, which were divided into three sections. The first six books are geographical in theme, and describe the history and culture of Egypt , of Mesopotamia, India, Scythia, and Arabia , of North...

of the Carthagians:
Plutarch, however claims that the children were already dead at the time, having been killed by their parents, whose consent—as well as that of the children—was required; Tertullian explains the acquiescence of the children as a product of their youthful trustfulness.

The accuracy of such stories is disputed by some modern historians and archaeologists.

Neolithic Europe

There is archaeological evidence of human sacrifice in Neolithic

Neolithic Europe

Neolithic Europe refers to a prehistoric period in which Neolithic technology was present in Europe. This corresponds roughly to a time between 7000 BC and c. 1700 BC...

to Eneolithic Europe. Retainer sacrifices seem to have been common in early Indo-European religion. For example, the Luhansk sacrificial site shows evidence of human sacrifice in the Yamna culture

Yamna culture

The Yamna culture is a late copper age/early Bronze Age culture of the Southern Bug/Dniester/Ural region , dating to the 36th–23rd centuries BC...

Greco-Roman antiquity

Allusions to human sacrifice are found in classical mythology. The deus ex machina
Deus ex machina
A deus ex machina is a plot device whereby a seemingly inextricable problem is suddenly and abruptly solved with the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability, or object.-Linguistic considerations:...

salvation in some versions of Iphigeneia

Iphigeneia

(who was about to be sacrificed by her father Agamemnon

Agamemnon

) and her replacement with a deer by the goddess Artemis

Artemis

Artemis was one of the most widely venerated of the Ancient Greek deities. Her Roman equivalent is Diana. Some scholars believe that the name and indeed the goddess herself was originally pre-Greek. Homer refers to her as Artemis Agrotera, Potnia Theron: "Artemis of the wildland, Mistress of Animals"...

, may be a vestigial memory of the abandonment and discrediting of the practice of human sacrifice among the Greeks in favour of animal sacrifice. Many scholars have suggested a possible analogy with the story of Isaac

Isaac

Isaac as described in the Hebrew Bible, was the only son Abraham had with his wife Sarah, and was the father of Jacob and Esau. Isaac was one of the three patriarchs of the Israelites...

's attempted sacrifice by his father Abraham

Abraham

Abraham , whose birth name was Abram, is the eponym of the Abrahamic religions, among which are Judaism, Christianity and Islam...

in the Bible, which was also stopped at the last minute (though it had first been encouraged) by divine intervention.

The Romans practised various forms of human sacrifice; from Etruscans (or, according to other sources, Sabellians

Sabellians

Sabellians is a collective ethnonym for a group of Italic peoples or tribes inhabiting central and southern Italy at the time of the rise of Rome. The name was first applied by Niebuhr and encompassed the Sabines, Marsi, Marrucini and Vestini. Pliny in one passage says the Samnites were also...

), they adopted the original form of gladiator

Gladiator

A gladiator was an armed combatant who entertained audiences in the Roman Republic and Roman Empire in violent confrontations with other gladiators, wild animals, and condemned criminals. Some gladiators were volunteers who risked their legal and social standing and their lives by appearing in the...

ial combat where the victim was slain in a ritual battle. During the early republic

Roman Republic

The Roman Republic was the period of the ancient Roman civilization where the government operated as a republic. It began with the overthrow of the Roman monarchy, traditionally dated around 508 BC, and its replacement by a government headed by two consuls, elected annually by the citizens and...

, criminals who had broken their oaths or defrauded others were sometimes "given to the gods" (that is, executed as a human sacrifice). The Rex Nemorensis
Rex Nemorensis
The rex Nemorensis was a priest of the goddess Diana at Aricia in Italy, by the shores of Lake Nemi, where she was known as Diana Nemorensis. The priesthood played a major role in the mythography of J.G...

was an escaped slave who became priest of the goddess Diana at Nemi

Nemi

Nemi is a town and comune in the province of Rome , in the Alban Hills overlooking Lake Nemi, a volcanic crater lake. It is 6 km NW of Velletri and about 30 km southeast of Rome....

by killing his predecessor. Prisoners of war

Prisoner of war

A prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...

were buried alive as offerings to Manes

Manes

In ancient Roman religion, the Manes or Di Manes are chthonic deities sometimes thought to represent the souls of deceased loved ones. They were associated with the Lares, Genii, and Di Penates as deities that pertained to domestic, local, and personal cult...

and Di Inferi (gods of the underworld). Archaeologists have found sacrificial victims buried in building foundations. Ordinarily, deceased Romans were cremated

Cremation

Cremation is the process of reducing bodies to basic chemical compounds such as gasses and bone fragments. This is accomplished through high-temperature burning, vaporization and oxidation....

rather than buried. Captured enemy leaders, after the victorious general's triumph

Roman triumph

The Roman triumph was a civil ceremony and religious rite of ancient Rome, held to publicly celebrate and sanctify the military achievement of an army commander who had won great military successes, or originally and traditionally, one who had successfully completed a foreign war. In Republican...

, would be ritually strangled in front of a statue of Mars

Mars (mythology)

Mars was the Roman god of war and also an agricultural guardian, a combination characteristic of early Rome. He was second in importance only to Jupiter, and he was the most prominent of the military gods worshipped by the Roman legions...

, the war god. Dionysius of Halicarnassus

Dionysius of Halicarnassus

Dionysius of Halicarnassus was a Greek historian and teacher of rhetoric, who flourished during the reign of Caesar Augustus. His literary style was Attistic — imitating Classical Attic Greek in its prime.-Life:...

refers to a sacrifice of Argei

Argei (dolls)

The rituals of the Argei were ancient religious observances in ancient Rome that took place on March 16 and 17 and again on May 14 or 15. By the time of Augustus, the meaning of these rituals had become obscure even to those who practiced them...

in the Vestal

Vesta (mythology)

Vesta was the virgin goddess of the hearth, home, and family in Roman religion. Vesta's presence was symbolized by the sacred fire that burned at her hearth and temples...

ritual that might have originally included sacrifice of old men. According to Pliny the Elder

Pliny the Elder

Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...

, human sacrifice was formally banned during the consulship

Roman consul

A consul served in the highest elected political office of the Roman Republic.Each year, two consuls were elected together, to serve for a one-year term. Each consul was given veto power over his colleague and the officials would alternate each month...

of Publius Licinius Crassus

Publius Licinius Crassus Dives

Publius Licinius Crassus Dives was a member of the respected and prominent Crassi branch of the plebeian gens Licinia as well as the father of the famed Marcus Licinius Crassus...

and Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus

Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus (consul 97 BC)

Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus was a consul of the Roman Republic in 97 BC. He had been praetor by 100 BC. His consular colleague was Publius Licinius Crassus. During their consulship, the senate passed a decree banning human sacrifice. Despite the fame of the gens Cornelia and his attainment of Rome's...

in 97 BCE, although by this time it was so rare that the decree was largely symbolic. Most of the rituals turned to animal sacrifice

Animal sacrifice

Animal sacrifice is the ritual killing of an animal as part of a religion. It is practised by many religions as a means of appeasing a god or gods or changing the course of nature...

like taurobolium
Taurobolium
In the Roman empire of the 2nd to 4th centuries, taurobolium referred to practices involving the sacrifice of a bull, which after mid-2nd century became connected with the worship of the Great Mother of the Gods; though not previously limited to her cultus, after 159 CE all private taurobolia...

or became merely symbolic. A Roman general might bury a statue of his likeness to thank the gods for victory. However, activities with a ritual origin and similarities to human sacrifice, such as the gladiatorial games and some forms of execution, continued for many years, and grew in popularity.

Celts

According to Roman sources, Celt

Celt

ic Druids engaged extensively in human sacrifice. According to Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar

Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....

, the slaves and dependents of Gauls

Gauls

The Gauls were a Celtic people living in Gaul, the region roughly corresponding to what is now France, Belgium, Switzerland and Northern Italy, from the Iron Age through the Roman period. They mostly spoke the Continental Celtic language called Gaulish....

of rank would be burnt along with the body of their master as part of his funerary rites. He also describes how they built wicker figures that were filled with living humans and then burned. It is known that druids at least supervised sacrifices of some kind. According to Cassius Dio, Boudica

Boudica

Boudica , also known as Boadicea and known in Welsh as "Buddug" was queen of the British Iceni tribe who led an uprising against the occupying forces of the Roman Empire....

's forces impaled Roman captives during her rebellion against the Roman occupation, to the accompaniment of revelry and sacrifices in the sacred groves of Andate. Different gods reportedly required different kinds of sacrifices. Victims meant for Esus

Esus

Esus or Hesus was a Gaulish god known from two monumental statues and a line in Lucan's Bellum civile.-Imagery:The two statues on which his name appears are the Pillar of the Boatmen from among the Parisii and a pillar from Trier among the Treveri. In both of these, Esus is portrayed cutting...

were hanged

Hanging

Hanging is the lethal suspension of a person by a ligature. The Oxford English Dictionary states that hanging in this sense is "specifically to put to death by suspension by the neck", though it formerly also referred to crucifixion and death by impalement in which the body would remain...

, those meant for Taranis

Taranis

In Celtic mythology Taranis was the god of thunder worshipped essentially in Gaul, the British Isles, but also in the Rhineland and Danube regions amongst others, and mentioned, along with Esus and Toutatis as part of a sacred triad, by the Roman poet Lucan in his epic poem Pharsalia as a Celtic...

immolated and those for Teutates drowned. Some, like the Lindow Man

Lindow man

Lindow Man, also known as Lindow II and as Pete Marsh, is the preserved bog body of a man discovered in a peat bog at Lindow Moss near Wilmslow in Cheshire, North West England. The body was found on 1 August 1984 by commercial peat-cutters...

, may have gone to their deaths willingly.

Archaeological evidence from the British Isles

British Isles

The British Isles are a group of islands off the northwest coast of continental Europe that include the islands of Great Britain and Ireland and over six thousand smaller isles. There are two sovereign states located on the islands: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and...

seems to indicate that human sacrifice may have been practised, over times long pre-dating any contact with Rome. Human remains have been found at the foundations of structures from the Neolithic time to the Roman era, with injuries and in positions that argue for their being foundation sacrifices.

Skeletons belonging to as many as 150 people and dating back to about the time of the Roman

Roman Empire

The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....

conquest were discovered in Alveston

Alveston

Alveston is a commuter village of roughly 3000 people about south of Thornbury, South Gloucestershire and approximately north of Bristol, England. Alveston is twinned with Courville sur Eure, France. It has two hotels, a variety of small shops, several parks and fields, two churches and a...

, England. Druids may have killed the victims in a single event.

Ritualised decapitation survives in the archaeological record such as the example of 12 headless corpses at the French late Iron Age

Iron Age

sanctuary of Gournay-sur-Aronde

Gournay-sur-Aronde

Gournay-sur-Aronde is a small village in northern France. It is designated municipally as a commune within the département of Oise.Gournay-sur-Aronde is best known for a Late Iron Age sanctuary that dates back to the 4th century BCE, and was burned and levelled at the end of the 1st century BCE. ...

Germanic peoples

Human sacrifice was not a particularly common occurrence among the Germanic peoples, being resorted to in exceptional situations arising from crises of an environmental (crop failure, drought, famine) or social (war) nature, often thought to derive at least in part from the failure of the king to establish and/or maintain prosperity and peace (árs ok friðar) in the lands entrusted to him. In later Scandinavian practice, human sacrifice appears to have become more institutionalised, and was repeated as part of a larger sacrifice on a periodic basis (according to Adam of Bremen every nine years).

Evidence of Germanic

Germanic paganism

Germanic paganism refers to the theology and religious practices of the Germanic peoples of north-western Europe from the Iron Age until their Christianization during the Medieval period...

practices of human sacrifice predating the Viking Age

Viking Age

Viking Age is the term for the period in European history, especially Northern European and Scandinavian history, spanning the late 8th to 11th centuries. Scandinavian Vikings explored Europe by its oceans and rivers through trade and warfare. The Vikings also reached Iceland, Greenland,...

depend on archaeology and on a few scattered accounts in Greco-Roman ethnography. For example, Tacitus

Tacitus

Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire. The surviving portions of his two major works—the Annals and the Histories—examine the reigns of the Roman Emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and those who reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors...

reports Germanic human sacrifice to (what he interprets as) Mercury, and to Isis

Isis

Isis or in original more likely Aset is a goddess in Ancient Egyptian religious beliefs, whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. She was worshipped as the ideal mother and wife as well as the matron of nature and magic...

specifically among the Suebians. Jordanes

Jordanes

Jordanes, also written Jordanis or Jornandes, was a 6th century Roman bureaucrat, who turned his hand to history later in life....

reports how the Goths

Goths

The Goths were an East Germanic tribe of Scandinavian origin whose two branches, the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths, played an important role in the fall of the Roman Empire and the emergence of Medieval Europe....

sacrificed prisoners of war to Mars, suspending the severed arms of the victims from the branches of trees.

By the 10th century, Germanic paganism had become restricted to Scandinavia

Norse paganism

Norse paganism is the religious traditions of the Norsemen, a Germanic people living in the Nordic countries. Norse paganism is therefore a subset of Germanic paganism, which was practiced in the lands inhabited by the Germanic tribes across most of Northern and Central Europe in the Viking Age...

. One account by Ahmad ibn Fadlan

Ahmad ibn Fadlan

Ahmad ibn Fadlān ibn al-Abbās ibn Rāšid ibn Hammād was a 10th century Arab traveler, famous for his account of his travels as a member of an embassy of the Arab Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad to the king of the Volga Bulgars...

as part of his account of an embassy to the Volga Bulgars in 921 claims that Norse warriors were sometimes buried with enslaved women with the belief that these women would become their wives in Valhalla

Valhalla

In Norse mythology, Valhalla is a majestic, enormous hall located in Asgard, ruled over by the god Odin. Chosen by Odin, half of those that die in combat travel to Valhalla upon death, led by valkyries, while the other half go to the goddess Freyja's field Fólkvangr...

. In his description of the funeral of a Scandinavia

Scandinavia

Scandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...

n chieftain

Tribal chief

A tribal chief is the leader of a tribal society or chiefdom. Tribal societies with social stratification under a single leader emerged in the Neolithic period out of earlier tribal structures with little stratification, and they remained prevalent throughout the Iron Age.In the case of ...

, a slave volunteers to die with a Norseman. After ten days of festivities, she is stabbed to death by an old woman, a sort of priestess who is referred to as Völva

Völva

A vǫlva or völva is a shamanic seeress in Norse paganism, and a recurring motif in Norse mythology....

or "Angel of Death", and burnt together with the deceased in his boat

Ship burial

A ship burial or boat grave is a burial in which a ship or boat is used either as a container for the dead and the grave goods, or as a part of the grave goods itself. If the ship is very small, it is called a boat grave...

. This practice is evidenced archaeologically, with many male warrior burials (such as the ship burial at Balladoole on the Isle of Man, or that at Oseberg in Norway) also containing female remains with signs of trauma.

According to Adémar de Chabannes

Adémar de Chabannes

Adémar de Chabannes was an eleventh-century French monk, a historian who wrote the first annals to have been compiled in Aquitaine since Late Antiquity, a musical composer and a successful literary forger....

, just before his death in 932 or 933 Rollo

Rollo

Rollo has multiple meanings. It may mean:a first name*Rollo Armstrong, member of British dance act Faithless* Rollo May, American psychologist...

(founder and first ruler of the Viking principality of Normandy

Duchy of Normandy

The Duchy of Normandy stems from various Danish, Norwegian, Hiberno-Norse, Orkney Viking and Anglo-Danish invasions of France in the 9th century...

) practised human sacrifices to appease the pagan gods, and at the same time made gifts to the churches in Normandy

Normandy

Normandy is a geographical region corresponding to the former Duchy of Normandy. It is in France.The continental territory covers 30,627 km² and forms the preponderant part of Normandy and roughly 5% of the territory of France. It is divided for administrative purposes into two régions:...

.

Adam von Bremen recorded human sacrifices to Odin

Odin

Odin is a major god in Norse mythology and the ruler of Asgard. Homologous with the Anglo-Saxon "Wōden" and the Old High German "Wotan", the name is descended from Proto-Germanic "*Wodanaz" or "*Wōđanaz"....

in 11th-century Sweden, at the Temple at Uppsala

Temple at Uppsala

The Temple at Uppsala was a religious center in Norse paganism once located at what is now Gamla Uppsala , Sweden attested in Adam of Bremen's 11th century work Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum and in Heimskringla, written by Snorri Sturluson in the 13th century...

, a tradition which is confirmed by Gesta Danorum
Gesta Danorum
Gesta Danorum is a patriotic work of Danish history, by the 12th century author Saxo Grammaticus . It is the most ambitious literary undertaking of medieval Denmark and is an essential source for the nation's early history...

and the Norse saga

Norse saga

The sagas are stories about ancient Scandinavian and Germanic history, about early Viking voyages, the battles that took place during the voyages, about migration to Iceland and of feuds between Icelandic families...

s. According to the Ynglinga saga

Ynglinga saga

Ynglinga saga is a legendary saga, originally written in Old Norse by the Icelandic poet Snorri Sturluson about 1225. It was first translated into English and published in 1844....

, king Domalde

Domalde

In Norse mythology, Domalde, Dómaldi or Dómaldr was a Swedish king of the House of Ynglings, cursed by his stepmother, according to Snorri Sturluson, with ósgæssa, "ill-luck". He was the son of Visbur....

was sacrificed there in the hope of bringing greater future harvests and the total domination of all future wars. The same saga also relates that Domalde's descendant king Aun

Aun

Ane, On, One, Auchun or Aun the Old , English: Edwin, was a mythical Swedish king of the House of Yngling, the ancestors of Norway's first king, Harald Fairhair...

sacrificed nine of his own sons to Odin in exchange for longer life, until the Swedes stopped him from sacrificing his last son, Egil.

Heidrek

Heidrek

Heidrek or Heiðrekr was one of the main characters in the cycle about the magic sword Tyrfing. He appears in the Hervarar saga, and probably also in Widsith, line 115, as Heathoric together with his sons Angantyr and Hlöð , and Hlöð's mother Sifka...

in the Hervarar saga

Hervarar saga

Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks is a legendary saga from the 13th century combining matter from several older sagas. It is a valuable saga for several different reasons beside its literary qualities. It contains traditions of wars between Goths and Huns, from the 4th century, and the last part is used as...

agrees to the sacrifice of his son in exchange for the command over a fourth of the men of Reidgotaland

Reidgotaland

Reidgotaland, Hreidgotaland or Hreiðgotaland was a land in Scandinavian sagas as well as in the pre-Viking English Widsith, which usually referred to the land of the Goths...

. With these, he seizes the entire kingdom and prevents the sacrifice of his son, dedicating those fallen in his rebellion to Odin instead.

Slavic people

According to sixth century Byzantine emperor Mauricius's Strategikon wrote of the Slavs:
In the 10th century, Persian explorer Ahmad ibn Rustah

Ahmad ibn Rustah

Ibn Rustah was a 10th century Persian explorer and geographer born in Rosta district, Isfahan, Persia....

described funerary rights for the Rus included the sacrifice of a young female slave. Leo the Deacon

Leo the Deacon

Leo the Deacon was a Byzantine Roman historian and chronicler.He was born around 950 at Kaloe in Asia Minor, and was educated in Constantinople, where he became a deacon in the imperial palace. While in Constantinople he wrote a history covering the reigns of Romanus II, Nicepheros II, John...

describes prisoner sacrifice by the Rus lead by Sviatoslav

Sviatoslav I of Kiev

Sviatoslav I Igorevich ; , also spelled Svyatoslav, was a prince of Rus...

during the Russo-Byzantine War "in accordance with their ancestral custom."

According to the 12th century Russian Primary Chronicle

Primary Chronicle

The Primary Chronicle , Ruthenian Primary Chronicle or Russian Primary Chronicle, is a history of Kievan Rus' from about 850 to 1110, originally compiled in Kiev about 1113.- Three editions :...

, prisoners of war were sacrificed to Perun

Perun

In Slavic mythology, Perun is the highest god of the pantheon and the god of thunder and lightning. His other attributes were the fire, mountains, the oak, iris, eagle, firmament , horses and carts, weapons and war...

, the Slavic god of war. Sacrifices to pagan gods, along with paganism itself, were banned after the Baptism of Rus by Prince Vladimir I

Vladimir I of Kiev

Vladimir Sviatoslavich the Great Old East Slavic: Володимѣръ Свѧтославичь Old Norse as Valdamarr Sveinaldsson, , Vladimir, , Volodymyr, was a grand prince of Kiev, ruler of Kievan Rus' in .Vladimir's father was the prince Sviatoslav of the Rurik dynasty...

in the 980s.

Archeological findings indicate that the practice may have been widespread, at least among slaves, judging from mass graves containing the cremated fragments of a number of different people.

China

The ancient Chinese

History of China

Chinese civilization originated in various regional centers along both the Yellow River and the Yangtze River valleys in the Neolithic era, but the Yellow River is said to be the Cradle of Chinese Civilization. With thousands of years of continuous history, China is one of the world's oldest...

are known to have made sacrifices of young men and women to river deities, and to have buried slaves

Slavery in China

Slavery in China has taken various forms throughout history. Never as absolute as its Muslim or European models, Chinese slavery still often viewed its objects as "half-man, half-thing"...

alive with their owners upon death as part of a funeral

Funeral

A funeral is a ceremony for celebrating, sanctifying, or remembering the life of a person who has died. Funerary customs comprise the complex of beliefs and practices used by a culture to remember the dead, from interment itself, to various monuments, prayers, and rituals undertaken in their honor...

service. This was especially prevalent during the Shang

Shang Dynasty

The Shang Dynasty or Yin Dynasty was, according to traditional sources, the second Chinese dynasty, after the Xia. They ruled in the northeastern regions of the area known as "China proper" in the Yellow River valley...

and Zhou

Zhou Dynasty

The Zhou Dynasty was a Chinese dynasty that followed the Shang Dynasty and preceded the Qin Dynasty. Although the Zhou Dynasty lasted longer than any other dynasty in Chinese history, the actual political and military control of China by the Ji family lasted only until 771 BC, a period known as...

Dynasties. During the Warring States period, Ximen Bao

Ximen Bao

Ximen Bao was an ancient Chinese government minister and court advisor to Marquis Wen of Wei during the Warring States period of China. He was known as an early rationalist, who had the State of Wei abolish by law the inhumane practice of sacrificing people to river deities...

of Wei

Wei (state)

The State of Wei was a Zhou Dynasty vassal state during the Warring States Period of Chinese history. Its territory lay between the states of Qin and Qi and included parts of modern day Henan, Hebei, Shanxi and Shandong...

demonstrated to the villagers that sacrifice to river deities was actually a ploy by crooked priests to pocket money. In Chinese lore, Ximen Bao is regarded as a folk hero who pointed out the absurdity of human sacrifice.

The sacrifice of a high-ranking male's slaves, concubines or servants upon his death (called Xun Zang 殉葬 or more specifically Sheng Xun 生殉) was a more common form. The stated purpose was to provide companionship for the dead in the afterlife. In earlier times the victims were either killed or buried alive, while later they were usually forced to commit suicide.

Funeral human sacrifice was abolished by the Qin Dynasty

Qin Dynasty

The Qin Dynasty was the first imperial dynasty of China, lasting from 221 to 207 BC. The Qin state derived its name from its heartland of Qin, in modern-day Shaanxi. The strength of the Qin state was greatly increased by the legalist reforms of Shang Yang in the 4th century BC, during the Warring...

in 384 BCE. Afterwards it became relatively rare throughout the central parts of China. However, the Hongwu Emperor

Hongwu Emperor

The Hongwu Emperor , known variably by his given name Zhu Yuanzhang and by his temple name Taizu of Ming , was the founder and first emperor of the Ming Dynasty of China...

of the Ming Dynasty

Ming Dynasty

The Ming Dynasty, also Empire of the Great Ming, was the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty. The Ming, "one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history", was the last dynasty in China ruled by ethnic...

revived it in 1395 when his second son died and two of the prince's concubines were sacrificed. In 1464, the Zhengtong Emperor

Zhengtong Emperor

Zhu Qizhen was an emperor of the Ming Dynasty. He ruled as the Zhengtong Emperor from 1435 to 1449, and as the Tianshun Emperor from 1457 to 1464....

in his will forbade the practice for Ming emperors and princes.

Human sacrifice was also practised by the Manchus. Following Nurhaci

Nurhaci

Nurhaci was an important Jurchen chieftain who rose to prominence in the late sixteenth century in what is today Northeastern China...

's death, his wife, Lady Abahai

Lady Abahai

Lady Abahai was the primary consort of Nurhaci, founder of the Qing Dynasty. She bore Nurhaci three sons - Ajige, Dorgon, and Dodo. She was erroneously identified with Nurhaci's son and successor, Hong Taiji, in earlier sources....

, and his two lesser consorts committed suicide. During the Qing Dynasty

Qing Dynasty

The Qing Dynasty was the last dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912 with a brief, abortive restoration in 1917. It was preceded by the Ming Dynasty and followed by the Republic of China....

, sacrifice of slaves was banned by the Kangxi Emperor

Kangxi Emperor

The Kangxi Emperor ; Manchu: elhe taifin hūwangdi ; Mongolian: Энх-Амгалан хаан, 4 May 1654 –20 December 1722) was the fourth emperor of the Qing Dynasty, the first to be born on Chinese soil south of the Pass and the second Qing emperor to rule over China proper, from 1661 to 1722.Kangxi's...

in 1673.

Tibet

Human sacrifice, including cannibalism

Cannibalism

Cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy...

, was thought practiced in Tibet

Tibet

Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...

prior to the arrival of Buddhism

Tibetan Buddhism

Tibetan Buddhism is the body of Buddhist religious doctrine and institutions characteristic of Tibet and certain regions of the Himalayas, including northern Nepal, Bhutan, and India . It is the state religion of Bhutan...

in the 7th century.

The prevalence of human sacrifice in medieval Buddhist Tibet is less clear. The Lamas, as professing Buddhists, could not condone blood sacrifices, and they replaced the human victims with effigies made from dough. This replacement of human victims with effigies is attributed to Padmasambhava

Padmasambhava

Padmasambhava ; Mongolian ловон Бадмажунай, lovon Badmajunai, , Means The Lotus-Born, was a sage guru from Oddiyāna who is said to have transmitted Vajrayana Buddhism to Bhutan and Tibet and neighbouring countries in the 8th century...

, a Tibetan saint of the mid 8th century, in Tibetan tradition.

Nevertheless, there is some evidence that outside of lamaism, there were practices of tantric

Tantra

Tantra , anglicised tantricism or tantrism or tantram, is the name scholars give to an inter-religious spiritual movement that arose in medieval India, expressed in scriptures ....

human sacrifice which survived throughout the medieval period, and possibly into modern times.
The 15th-century Blue Annals

Blue Annals

The Blue Annals completed in 1476, authored by Gö Lotsāwa Zhönnu Pel , is a Tibetan historical survey with a marked 'ecumenical' view, focusing upon the dissemination of various sectarian spiritual traditions throughout Tibet.An English translation by George de Roerich with help from Gendun...

, a seminal document of Tibetan Buddhism

Tibetan Buddhism

, reports upon how in Tibet the so-called "18 robber-monks" slaughtered men and women for their tantric

Tantra

Tantra , anglicised tantricism or tantrism or tantram, is the name scholars give to an inter-religious spiritual movement that arose in medieval India, expressed in scriptures ....

ceremonies.
Such practices of human sacrifice as there was in medieval Tibet was mostly replaced by animal sacrifice, or the self-infliction of wounds in religious ritual, by the 20th century. A systematic survey of evidence for human sacrifice in 20th-century Tibet turns up three instances:

a British traveller in 1915 was told that in previous times, babies had been sacrificed at a Gyantse
Gyantse
Gyantse is a town located in Gyangzê County, Shigatse Prefecture. It was historically considered the third largest and most prominent town in the Tibet region , but there are now at least ten larger Tibetan cities.-Location:The town is strategically located in the Nyang River Valley on the ancient...

monastery.
Charles Alfred Bell
Charles Alfred Bell
Sir Charles Alfred Bell K.C.I.E. , born in Calcutta, was a British-Indian tibetologist. He was educated at Winchester College. After joining the Indian Civil Service, he was appointed Political Officer in Sikkim in 1908...

reports the finding of the remains of an eight-year-old boy and a girl of the same age in stupa on the Bhutan-Tibet border in which were apparently ritually killed.
American anthropologist Robert Ekvall in the 1950s reported some instances of human sacrifice in remote areas of the Himalayas.

Based on this evidence, Grunfeld (1996) concludes that it cannot be ruled out that isolated instances of human sacrifice did survive in remote areas of Tibet until the mid 20th century, but they must have been rare enough to have left no more traces than the evidence cited above.

India

The earliest evidence for human sacrifice in the Indian subcontinent dates back to the Bronze Age Indus Valley Civilization

Indus Valley Civilization

The Indus Valley Civilization was a Bronze Age civilization that was located in the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent, consisting of what is now mainly modern-day Pakistan and northwest India...

. An Indus seal from Harappa

Harappa

Harappa is an archaeological site in Punjab, northeast Pakistan, about west of Sahiwal. The site takes its name from a modern village located near the former course of the Ravi River. The current village of Harappa is from the ancient site. Although modern Harappa has a train station left from...

depicts an upside-down nude female figure with legs outspread and a plant issuing from the womb. The reverse side of the seal depicts a man holding a sickle and a woman seated on the ground in a posture of prayer. Many scholars interpret this scene as a human sacrifice in honor of the Mother-Goddess.

Regarding possible Vedic

Vedic

Vedic may refer to:* the Vedas, the oldest preserved Indic texts** Vedic Sanskrit, the language of these texts** Vedic period, during which these texts were produced** Vedic pantheon of gods mentioned in Vedas/vedic period...

mention of human sacrifice, the prevailing 19th-century view, associated above all with Henry Colebrooke, was that human sacrifice had little scriptural warrant, and did not actually take place. Those verses which referred to purushamedha
Purushamedha
Purushamedha is a Vedic yajna described in the Yajurveda . The verse describes people from all classes and of all descriptions tied to the stake and offered to Prajapati....

were meant to be read symbolically or as a "priestly fantasy". However, Rajendralal Mitra

Rajendralal Mitra

Rajendralal Mitra was the first modern Indologist of Indian origin, and was a key figure in the Bengal Renaissance. He was pioneer in scientific study of history and contributed substantially in the field of archaeology. Eminent Historian Professor R.S...

published a defence of the thesis that human sacrifice, as had been practised in Bengal

Bengal

Bengal is a historical and geographical region in the northeast region of the Indian Subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal. Today, it is mainly divided between the sovereign land of People's Republic of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal, although some regions of the previous...

, was a continuation of traditions dating back to Vedic periods. Hermann Oldenberg

Hermann Oldenberg

Hermann Oldenberg was a German scholar of Indology, and Professor at Kiel and Göttingen .His 1881 study on Buddhism, entitled Buddha: Sein Leben, seine Lehre, seine Gemeinde, based on Pāli texts, popularized Buddhism and have remained continuously in print since their first publication. With T. W...

held to Colebrooke's view; but Jan Gonda

Jan Gonda

Jan Gonda, a celebrated Orientalist and Indologist, was born in Gouda in the Netherlands on 14 April 1905 and died in Utrecht on 28 July 1991. He studied with Willem Caland at Rijksuniversiteit, Utrecht and from 1932 held positions at Utrecht and Leiden.Gonda is recognized as one of the twentieth...

underlined its disputed status.

Human and animal sacrifice became less common during the post-Vedic period, as ahimsa (non-violence) became part of mainstream religious thought. This may correspond to the impact of Sramanic religions such as Buddhism and Jainism. The Chandogya Upanishad (3.17.4) includes ahimsa in its list of virtues.

It was agreed even by Colebrooke, however, that by the Puranic period—at least at the time of the writing of the Kalika-Purana

Kalika-Purana

The Kalika Purana is a Hindu religious text, considered as one of the 18 Upapuranas. The extant text contains 98 chapters with over 9000 stanzas and is the only work of the series dedicated to the worship of the goddess Kali her manifold forms such as Girija, Devi, Bhadrakali, and Mahamaya...

, human sacrifice was accepted. The Kalika Purana was composed in Northeast India in the 11th century. The text states that blood sacrifice is only permitted when the country is in danger and war is expected. According to the text, the performer of a sacrifice will obtain victory over his enemies. In the medieval period, it became increasingly common. In the 7th century, Banabhatta

Banabhatta

Bāṇabhaṭṭa , also known as Bāṇa, was a Sanskrit scholar and poet of India. He was the Asthana Kavi in the court of King Harshavardhana, who reigned in the years c. 606–647 CE in north India...

, in a description of the dedication of a temple of Chandi

Chandi

Chandi or Chandika is the supreme Goddess of Devi Mahatmya also known as Chandi or Durga Sapthashati. Chandi is described as the Supreme reality who is a combination of Mahakali, Maha Lakshmi and Maha Saraswati...

ka, describes a series of human sacrifices; similarly, in the 9th century, Haribhadra

Haribhadra (Seng-ge Bzang-po)

Haribhadra was an 8th-century Buddhist philosopher, and a disciple of Shantarakshita, an early Indian Buddhist missionary to Tibet. Haribhadra's commentary on the Abhisamayalankara was one of the most influential of the twenty-one Indian commentaries on that text, perhaps because of its author's...

describes the sacrifices to Chandika in Orissa

Orissa

Orissa , officially Odisha since Nov 2011, is a state of India, located on the east coast of India, by the Bay of Bengal. It is the modern name of the ancient nation of Kalinga, which was invaded by the Maurya Emperor Ashoka in 261 BC. The modern state of Orissa was established on 1 April...

. It was "more common" in South India

South India

South India is the area encompassing India's states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu as well as the union territories of Lakshadweep and Pondicherry, occupying 19.31% of India's area...

. The town of Kuknur

Kuknur

Kuknur is in Yalaburga taluk in Koppal District, is a small town. is located about 40 km from Hospet and 7 km from Mahadeva Temple , Kuknur is renowned for its temples of the Rastrakutas and Chalukyas times, of these the Navalinga group of temples is famous.-History:Kuknur town was an...

in North Karnataka there exists an ancient Kali

Kali

temple, built around the 8-9th century AD, which has a history of human sacrifices.

Human sacrifices were carried out in connection with the worship of Shakti

Shakti

Shakti from Sanskrit shak - "to be able," meaning sacred force or empowerment, is the primordial cosmic energy and represents the dynamic forces that are thought to move through the entire universe in Hinduism. Shakti is the concept, or personification, of divine feminine creative power, sometimes...

until approximately the early modern period, and in Bengal

Bengal

perhaps as late as the early 19th century. Although not accepted by larger section of Hindu culture, certain tantric

Tantra

Tantra , anglicised tantricism or tantrism or tantram, is the name scholars give to an inter-religious spiritual movement that arose in medieval India, expressed in scriptures ....

cults performed human sacrifice until around the same time, both actual and symbolic; it was a highly ritualised act, and on occasion took many months to complete.

Verse 19 of the Karpuradistotram (Hymn to Kali

Kali

) lists humans as one of the species that are acceptable for sacrifice to the goddess. However, in 1922, Sir John George Woodroffe published a commentary on the Karpuradistotram by the Kaula commentator Swami Vimalananda. In it, he writes that the sacrificial animals listed in verse 19 are merely symbols for the six enemies

Arishadvargas

In Hindu theology, Arishadvarga are the six passions of mind or desire: kama , krodha , lobh , moha , mada or ahankar and matsarya ; the negative characteristics of which prevent man from attaining moksha or salvation...

, with "man" representing pride. He also states that the age of material sacrifice had long since passed away.

The Khonds

Khonds

Khonds, or Kandhs are an aboriginal tribe of India, inhabiting the tributary states of Orissa and Srikakulam, in the Visakhapatnam districts of Andhra Pradesh. Their main divisions are into Kutia, or hill Khonds and plain-dwelling Khonds; the landowners are known as Raj Khonds. They are hunter...

, an aboriginal tribe

Adivasi

Adivasi is an umbrella term for a heterogeneous set of ethnic and tribal groups claimed to be the aboriginal population of India. They comprise a substantial indigenous minority of the population of India...

of India, inhabiting the tributary states of Orissa

Orissa

and Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh , is one of the 28 states of India, situated on the southeastern coast of India. It is India's fourth largest state by area and fifth largest by population. Its capital and largest city by population is Hyderabad.The total GDP of Andhra Pradesh is $100 billion and is ranked third...

, became notorious, on the British occupation of their district about 1835, from the prevalence and cruelty of the human sacrifices they practised.

The Deori community has a notable culture and tradition which is a hidden treasure for the sociologists. The Deoris represent the class “priest”-a section of the whole Chutia community (now in Assam, India). In the first two decades of 13th century, before arrival of the Ahom

Ahom

The Ahoms, who ruled Assam for six centuries are the descendants of ethnic Tai people who accompanied the Tai prince Sukaphaa into Assam. And for this reason people of this community call themselves the Tai-Ahom. Sukaphaa established the Ahom kingdom and the Ahom dynasty ruled and expanded the...

. Deori's use to make a Narbali (human sacrifice) in terms to win the war, battle and to prevent the villagers from the evil atmosphere like floods, drought etc. This practice make them pure owing to satisfy the supreme Goddess. Only the class of Patorganya people were eligible for sacrificing.

Pacific

In Ancient Hawaii

Ancient Hawaii

Ancient Hawaii refers to the period of Hawaiian human history preceding the unification of the Kingdom of Hawaii by Kamehameha the Great in 1810. After being first settled by Polynesian long-distance navigators sometime between AD 300–800, a unique culture developed. Diversified agroforestry and...

, a luakini

Luakini

In ancient Hawai'i, a luakini temple, or luakini heiau, was a Native Hawaiian sacred place where human and animal blood sacrifices were offered....

temple, or luakini heiau

Heiau

A heiau is a Hawaiian temple. Many types of heiau existed, including heiau to treat the sick , offer first fruits, offer first catch, start rain, stop rain, increase the population, ensure health of the nation, achieve success in distant voyaging, reach peace, and achieve success in war . Only the...

, was a Native Hawaiian sacred place where human and animal blood sacrifices were offered. Kauwa, the outcast or slave class, were often used as human sacrifices at the luakini heiau. They are believed to have been war captives, or the descendents of war captives. They were not the only sacrifices; law-breakers of all castes or defeated political opponents were also acceptable as victims.

Pre-Columbian Americas

Some of the most famous forms of ancient human sacrifice were performed by various Pre-Columbian

Pre-Columbian

The pre-Columbian era incorporates all period subdivisions in the history and prehistory of the Americas before the appearance of significant European influences on the American continents, spanning the time of the original settlement in the Upper Paleolithic period to European colonization during...

civilizations in the Americas

Americas

The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...

that included the sacrifice of prisoners as well as voluntary sacrifice. Friar Marcus de Nica (1539) writing of the "Chichimeca

Chichimeca

Chichimeca was the name that the Nahua peoples of Mexico generically applied to a wide range of semi-nomadic peoples who inhabited the north of modern-day Mexico and southwestern United States, and carried the same sense as the European term "barbarian"...

s": that from time to time "they of this valley cast lots whose luck (honour) it shall be to be sacrificed, and they make him great cheer, on whom the lot falls, and with great joy they crown him with flowers upon a bed prepared in the said ditch all full of flowers and sweet herbs, on which they lay him along, and lay great store of dry wood on both sides of him, and set it on fire on either part, and so he dies" and "that the victim took great pleasure" in being sacrificed.

North America

The Mixtec

Mixtec

The Mixtec are indigenous Mesoamerican peoples inhabiting the Mexican states of Oaxaca, Guerrero and Puebla in a region known as La Mixteca. The Mixtecan languages form an important branch of the Otomanguean language family....

players of the Mesoamerican ballgame

Mesoamerican ballgame

The Mesoamerican ballgame or Tlatchtli in Náhuatl was a sport with ritual associations played since 1,000 B.C. by the pre-Columbian peoples of Ancient Mexico and Central America...

were sacrificed when the game was used to resolve a dispute between cities. The rulers would play a game instead of going to battle. The losing ruler would be sacrificed. The ruler "Eight Deer" was considered a great ball player and won several cities this way, until he lost a ball game and was sacrificed.

Maya

The Maya held the belief that cenote

Cenote

A cenote is a deep natural pit, or sinkhole, characteristic of Mexico and Central America, resulting from the collapse of limestone bedrock that exposes groundwater underneath...

s or limestone sinkholes were portals to the underworld and sacrificed human beings and tossed them down the cenote to please the water god Chaac

Chaac

Chaac is the name of the Maya rain deity. With his lightning axe, Chaac strikes the clouds and produces thunder and rain. Chaac corresponds to Tlaloc among the Aztecs.-Rain deities and rain makers:...

. The most notable example of this is the "Sacred Cenote

Sacred Cenote

The Sacred Cenote refers to a noted cenote at the pre-Columbian Maya archaeological site of Chichen Itza, in the northern Yucatán Peninsula...

" at Chichén Itzá

Chichen Itza

Chichen Itza is a large pre-Columbian archaeological site built by the Maya civilization located in the northern center of the Yucatán Peninsula, in the Municipality of Tinúm, Yucatán state, present-day Mexico....

where extensive excavations have recovered the remains of 42 individuals, half of them under twenty years old.

Only in the Post-Classic era did this practice become as frequent as in central Mexico. In the Post-Classic period, the victims and the altar are represented as daubed in a hue now known as Maya Blue

Maya Blue

Maya Blue is a unique bright azure blue pigment manufactured by cultures of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, such as the Maya and Aztec.-Manufacture:...

, obtained from the añil

Añil

Indigofera suffruticosa, commonly known as Anil, Guatemalan indigo, Small-leaved indigo , West Indian indigo, and Wild indigo, is a flowering plant in the pea family, Fabaceae...

plant and the clay mineral palygorskite

Palygorskite

Palygorskite or attapulgite is a magnesium aluminium phyllosilicate with formula 2Si4O10·4 which occurs in a type of clay soil common to the Southeastern United States. It is one of the types of fuller's earth.-Name:...

Aztec

The Aztec

Aztec

The Aztec people were certain ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, a period referred to as the late post-classic period in Mesoamerican chronology.Aztec is the...

s were particularly noted for practicing human sacrifice on a large scale; an offering to Huitzilopochtli

Huitzilopochtli

In Aztec mythology, Huitzilopochtli, also spelled Uitzilopochtli , was a god of war, a sun god, and the patron of the city of Tenochtitlan. He was also the national god of the Mexicas of Tenochtitlan.- Genealogy :...

would be made to restore the blood he lost, as the sun was engaged in a daily battle. Human sacrifices would prevent the end of the world that could happen on each cycle of 52 years. In the 1487 re-consecration of the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan

Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan

The ' was one of the main temples of the Aztecs in their capital city of Tenochtitlan, which is now Mexico City. Its architectural style belongs to the late Postclassic period of Mesoamerica...

some estimate that 80,400 prisoners were sacrificed though numbers are difficult to quantify as all obtainable Aztec texts were destroyed by Christian missionaries during the period 1528–1548.

According to Ross Hassig

Ross Hassig

, author of Aztec Warfare, "between 10,000 and 80,400 people" were sacrificed in the ceremony. The old reports of numbers sacrificed for special feasts have been described as "unbelievably high" by some authors and that on cautious reckoning, based on reliable evidence, the numbers would have been in the hundreds for yearly feasts in Tenochtitlan. The real number of sacrificed victims during the 1487 consecration is unknown.

Michael Harner, in his 1997 article The Enigma of Aztec Sacrifice, estimates the number of persons sacrificed in central Mexico in the 15th century as high as 250,000 per year. Fernando de Alva Cortés Ixtlilxochitl

Fernando de Alva Cortés Ixtlilxochitl

Fernando de Alva Cortés Ixtlilxóchitl was a Novohispanic historian.-Life:A Castizo born between 1568 and 1580, Alva Cortés Ixtlilxóchitl was a direct descendant of Ixtlilxochitl I and Ixtlilxochitl II, who had been tlatoque of Texcoco...

, a Mexica descendant and the author of Codex Ixtlilxochitl, claimed that one in five children of the Mexica subjects was killed annually. Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson is an American military historian, columnist, political essayist and former classics professor, notable as a scholar of ancient warfare. He has been a commentator on modern warfare and contemporary politics for National Review and other media outlets...

argues that an estimate by Carlos Zumárraga of 20,000 per annum is more plausible. Other scholars believe that, since the Aztecs always tried to intimidate their enemies, it is more likely that they could have inflated the number as a propaganda

Propaganda

Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....

tool.

Tlaloc

Tlaloc

Tlaloc was an important deity in Aztec religion, a god of rain, fertility, and water. He was a beneficent god who gave life and sustenance, but he was also feared for his ability to send hail, thunder and lightning, and for being the lord of the powerful element of water. In Aztec iconography he...

would require weeping boys in the first months of the Aztec calendar

Aztec calendar

The Aztec calendar is the calendar system that was used by the Aztecs as well as other Pre-Columbian peoples of central Mexico. It is one of the Mesoamerican calendars, sharing the basic structure of calendars from throughout ancient Mesoamerica....

to be ritually murdered.
Sacrifices to Xipe Totec

Xipe Totec

In Aztec mythology and religion, Xipe Totec was a life-death-rebirth deity, god of agriculture, vegetation, the east, disease, spring, goldsmiths, silversmiths and the seasons. Xipe Totec was also known by the alternative names Tlatlauhca, Tlatlauhqui Tezcatlipoca and Youalahuan...

were bound to a post and shot full of arrows. The dead victim would be skinned and a priest would use the skin. Earth mother Teteoinnan required flayed

Flaying

Flaying is the removal of skin from the body. Generally, an attempt is made to keep the removed portion of skin intact.-Scope:An animal may be flayed in preparation for human consumption, or for its hide or fur; this is more commonly called skinning....

female victims.

US / Canada

The Pawnee practised an annual Morning Star Ceremony

Pawnee mythology

Pawnee mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the Pawnee concerning their gods and heroes. The Pawnee are a federally recognized tribe of Native Americans, originally located on the Great Plains along tributaries of the Missouri River. They spoke a Caddoan language.-Beliefs and...

, which included the sacrifice of a young girl. Though the ritual continued, the sacrifice was discontinued in the 19th century. The Iroquois

Iroquois

The Iroquois , also known as the Haudenosaunee or the "People of the Longhouse", are an association of several tribes of indigenous people of North America...

are said to have occasionally sent a maiden to the Great Spirit.

The Southern Cult or Mound Builders, of the Southeastern United States may have also practised human sacrifice, as some artifacts have been interpreted as depicting such acts. Early European explorers reported witnessing mass human sacrifices.

The torture of war captives by the tribes of the Eastern Woodlands cultural region also seems to have had sacrificial motivations. See Captives in American Indian Wars

Captives in American Indian Wars

Treatment applied to captives in the American Indian Wars was specific to the local culture of each tribe. Captive adults might be killed, while children were, most of time, kept alive and adopted...

South America

In common with all known Bronze Age

Bronze Age

The Bronze Age is a period characterized by the use of copper and its alloy bronze as the chief hard materials in the manufacture of some implements and weapons. Chronologically, it stands between the Stone Age and Iron Age...

civilisations the Incas practised human sacrifice, especially at great festivals or royal funerals where retainers died to accompany the dead into the next life. The Moche

Moche

'The Moche civilization flourished in northern Peru from about 100 AD to 800 AD, during the Regional Development Epoch. While this issue is the subject of some debate, many scholars contend that the Moche were not politically organized as a monolithic empire or state...

of Northern Peru

Peru

Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....

sacrificed teenagers en masse, as archaeologist Steve Bourget found when he uncovered the bones of 42 male adolescents in 1995.

The study of the images seen in Moche art has enabled researchers to reconstruct the culture's most important ceremonial sequence, which began with ritual combat and culminated in the sacrifice of those defeated in battle. Dressed in fine clothes and adornments, armed warriors faced each other in ritual combat. In this hand-to-hand encounter the aim was to remove the opponent's headdress rather than kill him. The object of the combat was the provision of victims for sacrifice. The vanquished were stripped and bound, after which they were led in procession to the place of sacrifice. The captives are portrayed as strong and sexually potent. In the temple, the priests and priestesses would prepare the victims for sacrifice. The sacrificial methods employed varied, but at least one of the victims would be bled to death. His blood was offered to the principal deities in order to please and placate them.

The Inca of Peru also made human sacrifices. As many as 4,000 servants, court officials, favorites, and concubines were killed upon the death of the Inca Huayna Capac

Huayna Capac

Huayna Capac was the eleventh Sapa Inca of the Inca Empire and sixth of the Hanan dynasty. He was the successor to Tupac Inca Yupanqui.-Name:In Quechua, his name is spelled Wayna Qhapaq, and in Southern Quechua, it is Vaina Ghapakh...

in 1527, for example. A number of mummies of sacrificed children have been recovered in the Inca regions of South America

South America

South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...

, an ancient practice known as capacocha. The Incas performed child sacrifices during or after important events, such as the death of the Sapa Inca (emperor) or during a famine

Famine

A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including crop failure, overpopulation, or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompanied or followed by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality. Every continent in the world has...

West Africa

Human sacrifice was common in West African states up to and during the 19th century. The Annual customs of Dahomey was the most notorious example, but sacrifices were carried out all along the West African coast and further inland. Sacrifices were particularly common after the death of a King or Queen, and there are many recorded cases of hundreds or even thousands of slaves being sacrificed at such events. Sacrifices were particularly common in Dahomey

Dahomey

Dahomey was a country in west Africa in what is now the Republic of Benin. The Kingdom of Dahomey was a powerful west African state that was founded in the seventeenth century and survived until 1894. From 1894 until 1960 Dahomey was a part of French West Africa. The independent Republic of Dahomey...

, in the Benin Empire

Benin Empire

The Benin Empire was a pre-colonial African state in what is now modern Nigeria. It is not to be confused with the modern-day country called Benin, formerly called Dahomey.-Origin:...

, in what is now Ghana

Ghana

Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...

, and in the small independent states in what is now southern Nigeria

Nigeria

Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...

. According to R. J. Rummel

R. J. Rummel

Rudolph Joseph Rummel is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Hawaii. He has spent his career assembling data on collective violence and war with a view toward helping their resolution or elimination...

, "Just consider the Grand Custom in Dahomey: When a ruler died, hundreds, sometimes even thousands, of prisoners would be slain. In one of these ceremonies in 1727, as many as 4,000 were reported killed. In addition, Dahomey had an Annual Custom during which 500 prisoners were sacrificed."

In the northern parts of West Africa, human sacrifice had become rare early as Islam became more established in these areas such as the Hausa States. Human sacrifice was officially banned in the remainder of West African states only by coercion, or in some cases annexation

Annexation

Annexation is the de jure incorporation of some territory into another geo-political entity . Usually, it is implied that the territory and population being annexed is the smaller, more peripheral, and weaker of the two merging entities, barring physical size...

, by either the British or French. An important step was the British coercing the powerful Egbo

Egbo

Ekpe, also known as Egbo , is a secret society flourishing chiefly among the Efiks of the Cross River State, the Oron, of Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria, Igbos in Abia State, as well as Southeastern Nigerians Igbo/Efik/Oron in the diaspora, such as in Cuba. The society is still active at the beginning of...

secret society to oppose human sacrifice in 1850. This society was powerful in a large number of states in what is now south-eastern Nigeria

Nigeria

. Nonetheless, human sacrifice continued, normally in secret, until West Africa came under firm colonial control.

The Leopard men were a West African secret society active into mid-1900s that practised cannibalism

Cannibalism

Cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy...

. In theory, the ritual cannibalism would strengthen both members of the society as well as their entire tribe. In Tanganyika

Tanganyika

Tanganyika , later formally the Republic of Tanganyika, was a sovereign state in East Africa from 1961 to 1964. It was situated between the Indian Ocean and the African Great Lakes of Lake Victoria, Lake Malawi and Lake Tanganyika...

, the Lion men committed an estimated 200 murders in a single three-month period.

Judaism

Current religious thinking views the Akedah
Binding of Isaac
The Binding of Isaac Akedah or Akeidat Yitzchak in Hebrew and Dhabih in Arabic, is a story from the Hebrew Bible in which God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, on Mount Moriah...

as central to the replacement of human sacrifice; while some Talmudic scholars assert the replacement was the sacrifice of animals at the Temple—using Exodus 13:2–12f; 22:28f; 34:19f; Numeri 3:1ff; 18:15; Deuteronomy 15:19—others view that as superseded by the symbolic pars-pro-toto
Pars pro toto
Pars pro toto is Latin for "a part for the whole" where the name of a portion of an object or concept represents the entire object or context....

sacrifice of circumcision

Circumcision

Male circumcision is the surgical removal of some or all of the foreskin from the penis. The word "circumcision" comes from Latin and ....

. Leviticus 20:2 and Deuteronomy 18:10 specifically outlaw the giving of children to Moloch

Moloch

Moloch — also rendered as Molech, Molekh, Molok, Molek, Molock, or Moloc — is the name of an ancient Semitic god...

, making it punishable by stoning; the Tanakh

Tanakh

The Tanakh is a name used in Judaism for the canon of the Hebrew Bible. The Tanakh is also known as the Masoretic Text or the Miqra. The name is an acronym formed from the initial Hebrew letters of the Masoretic Text's three traditional subdivisions: The Torah , Nevi'im and Ketuvim —hence...

subsequently denounces human sacrifice as barbaric customs of Baal

Baal

Baʿal is a Northwest Semitic title and honorific meaning "master" or "lord" that is used for various gods who were patrons of cities in the Levant and Asia Minor, cognate to Akkadian Bēlu...

worshippers (e.g. Psalms 106:37ff).

Judges chapter 11 contains a story in which a Judge named Jephthah makes a vow to God to sacrifice the first thing that comes out of the door of his house in exchange for God's help with a military battle against the Ammonites. Much to his dismay, his only daughter greeted him upon his triumphant return. Judges 11:39 states that Jephthah kept his vow. According to the commentators of the rabbinic Jewish tradition, Jepthah's daughter was not sacrificed, but was forbidden to marry and remained a spinster her entire life, fulfilling the vow that she would be devoted to the Lord. The 1st-century CE Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, however, understood this to mean that Jephthah burned his daughter on Yahweh's altar, whilst pseudo-Philo

Pseudo-Philo

Pseudo-Philo is the name commonly used for a Jewish pseudepigraphical work in Latin, so called because it was transmitted along with Latin translations of the works of Philo of Alexandria but is very obviously not written by Philo...

, late first century CE, wrote that Jephthah offered his daughter as a burnt offering because he could find no sage in Israel who would cancel his vow.

Christianity

In the Christian religion the belief developed that the story of Isaac's binding

Binding of Isaac

The Binding of Isaac Akedah or Akeidat Yitzchak in Hebrew and Dhabih in Arabic, is a story from the Hebrew Bible in which God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, on Mount Moriah...

and of Jepthah's virgin daughter were foreshadowing for the sacrifice of Jesus

Jesus

Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...

, whose sacrifice and resurrection allowed the sins of mankind to be washed away. There is a tradition that the site of the binding of Isaac

Binding of Isaac

The Binding of Isaac Akedah or Akeidat Yitzchak in Hebrew and Dhabih in Arabic, is a story from the Hebrew Bible in which God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, on Mount Moriah...

, Moriah

Moriah

, was also the city of Jesus's future crucifixion.

The beliefs of most denominations of Christianity hinge upon the substitutionary atonement

Substitutionary atonement

Technically speaking, substitutionary atonement is the name given to a number of Christian models of the atonement that all regard Jesus as dying as a substitute for others, "instead of" them...

of the sacrifice of Jesus, which is necessary for access to paradise in the afterlife. In these belief systems each individual person must participate in, and/or receive the benefits of, this sacrifice for the atonement of their sins. Early Christian sources explicitly described this event as a sacrificial offering, with Jesus in the role of both priest

Priest

A priest is a person authorized to perform the sacred rites of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particular, rites of sacrifice to, and propitiation of, a deity or deities...

and victim, although starting with the Enlightenment

Age of Enlightenment

The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...

, some writers, such as John Locke

John Locke

John Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...

, have disputed the model of Jesus' death as a propitiatory sacrifice. Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christians believe that this sacrifice is made present, notwithstanding the limitations of place and time, in the sacrament

Sacrament

A sacrament is a sacred rite recognized as of particular importance and significance. There are various views on the existence and meaning of such rites.-General definitions and terms:...

of the Eucharist

Eucharist

The Eucharist , also called Holy Communion, the Sacrament of the Altar, the Blessed Sacrament, the Lord's Supper, and other names, is a Christian sacrament or ordinance...

. In this faith tradition, bread and wine, offered in a liturgical

Liturgy

Liturgy is either the customary public worship done by a specific religious group, according to its particular traditions or a more precise term that distinguishes between those religious groups who believe their ritual requires the "people" to do the "work" of responding to the priest, and those...

ritual, transforms

Transubstantiation

In Roman Catholic theology, transubstantiation means the change, in the Eucharist, of the substance of wheat bread and grape wine into the substance of the Body and Blood, respectively, of Jesus, while all that is accessible to the senses remains as before.The Eastern Orthodox...

into the "Real Presence

Real Presence

Real Presence is a term used in various Christian traditions to express belief that in the Eucharist, Jesus Christ is really present in what was previously just bread and wine, and not merely present in symbol, a figure of speech , or by his power .Not all Christian traditions accept this dogma...

," i.e. the literal Body and Blood of Jesus Christ while retaining the appearance of bread and wine. Receiving (i.e. eating and drinking) the Eucharist is a central part of the religious life of Catholic and Orthodox Christians. Many Protestant traditions do not share the belief in the Real Presence but otherwise are varied; for example, they may believe that in the bread and wine, Christ is present only spiritually, not in the sense of a change in substance (Methodism

Methodism

Methodism is a movement of Protestant Christianity represented by a number of denominations and organizations, claiming a total of approximately seventy million adherents worldwide. The movement traces its roots to John Wesley's evangelistic revival movement within Anglicanism. His younger brother...

) or that the bread and wine of communion are a merely symbolic reminder (Baptist

Baptist

Baptists comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers , and that it must be done by immersion...

faith). Although early Christians in the Roman Empire were accused of being cannibals, practices such as human sacrifice were abhorrent to them.

Islam

The Qur'an

Qur'an

The Quran , also transliterated Qur'an, Koran, Alcoran, Qur’ān, Coran, Kuran, and al-Qur’ān, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God . It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language...

strongly condemns human sacrifice, as a "grave error and sinful act" and an "ignorant, foolish act of those that have gone astray", and speaks of how the "heathens were deluded by their deities to kill their own children".

Eastern religions

Many traditions of Eastern religions (Buddhism

Buddhism

Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...

and Jainism

Jainism

Jainism is an Indian religion that prescribes a path of non-violence towards all living beings. Its philosophy and practice emphasize the necessity of self-effort to move the soul towards divine consciousness and liberation. Any soul that has conquered its own inner enemies and achieved the state...

) embrace the doctrine of ahimsa
Ahimsa
Ahimsa is a term meaning to do no harm . The word is derived from the Sanskrit root hims – to strike; himsa is injury or harm, a-himsa is the opposite of this, i.e. non harming or nonviolence. It is an important tenet of the Indian religions...

(non-violence) which imposes vegetarianism

Vegetarianism

Vegetarianism encompasses the practice of following plant-based diets , with or without the inclusion of dairy products or eggs, and with the exclusion of meat...

and outlaws animal as well as human sacrifice.

In the case of Buddhism, both bhikkhus (monks) and bhikkhunis (nuns) were forbidden to take life in any form as part of the monastic code

Vinaya

The Vinaya is the regulatory framework for the Buddhist monastic community, or sangha, based in the canonical texts called Vinaya Pitaka. The teachings of the Buddha, or Buddhadharma can be divided into two broad categories: 'Dharma' or doctrine, and 'Vinaya', or discipline...

, while non-violence was promoted among laity through encouragement of the Five Precepts. Across the Buddhist world both meat and alcohol are strongly discouraged as offerings to a Buddhist altar, with the former being synonymous with sacrifice, and the latter a violation of the Five Precepts.

In Hinduism

Hinduism

Hinduism is the predominant and indigenous religious tradition of the Indian Subcontinent. Hinduism is known to its followers as , amongst many other expressions...

, the principle of ahimsa was prescribed as early as in the Maurya period Manu Smrti. The same text, however, also exempts religious sacrifice from the notion of "violence" since the victim of the sacrifice was taken to benefit from the act as it would be reborn in a higher position.

In modern Hinduism slaughter according to the rituals permitted in the Puranic scriptures has virtually disappeared. In the 19th and 20th centuries, prominent figures of Indian spirituality such as Swami Vivekananda

Swami Vivekananda

Swami Vivekananda , born Narendranath Dutta , was the chief disciple of the 19th century mystic Ramakrishna Paramahansa and the founder of the Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission...

, Ramana Maharshi

Ramana Maharshi

Sri Ramana Maharshi , born Venkataraman Iyer, was a Hindu spiritual master . He was born to a Tamil-speaking Brahmin family in Tiruchuzhi, Tamil Nadu. After experiencing at age 16 what he later described as liberation , he left home for Arunachala, a mountain considered sacred by Hindus...

, Swami Sivananda

Swami Sivananda

Swami Sivananda Saraswati was a Hindu spiritual teacher and a proponent of Yoga and Vedanta. Sivananda was born Kuppuswami in Pattamadai, in the Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu. He studied medicine and served in Malaya as a physician for several years before taking up monasticism...

and A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami emphasised the importance of ahimsa.

Blood libel

Allegations of human sacrifice have been made against the Jews

Jews

The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...

generally in the form of accusations of child cannibalism

Child cannibalism

Child cannibalism or fetal cannibalism describes the act of eating a child or fetus. Accounts, especially modern ones, are often dismissed as rumours or urban legends. However, there have been some media stories pursuing incidents involving the consumption of children and fetuses...

or desecrating the eucharist

Eucharist

The Eucharist , also called Holy Communion, the Sacrament of the Altar, the Blessed Sacrament, the Lord's Supper, and other names, is a Christian sacrament or ordinance...

. Groups that have had such accusations leveled against them include blood libel against the Jews by Apion

Apion

Apion , Graeco-Egyptian grammarian, sophist and commentator on Homer, was born at the Siwa Oasis, and flourished in the first half of the 1st century AD....

in the 30s CE, Christians in the Roman empire

Persecution of early Christians in the Roman Empire

The Persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire is the religious persecution of Christians as a consequence of professing their faith. It began during the Ministry of Jesus and continued intermittently over a period of about three centuries until the time of Constantine when Christianity was...

later allegations of a Jewish conspiracy and the witch hunts

Witch trials in Early Modern Europe

The Witch trials in the Early Modern period were a period of witch hunts between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, when across Early Modern Europe, and to some extent in the European colonies in North America, there was a widespread hysteria that malevolent Satanic witches were operating as...

of the 16th and 17th centuries. In the 20th century, blood libel accusations re-emerged as part of the satanic ritual abuse

Satanic ritual abuse

Satanic ritual abuse refers to the abuse of a person or animal in a ritual setting or manner...

moral panic.

The People's Republic of China

People's Republic of China

China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...

as well as Chinese nationalist

Chinese nationalist

Chinese nationalist can refer to:* Chinese nationalism* Kuomintang - Chinese Nationalist Party in Taiwan....

s in the Republic of China

Republic of China

The Republic of China , commonly known as Taiwan , is a unitary sovereign state located in East Asia. Originally based in mainland China, the Republic of China currently governs the island of Taiwan , which forms over 99% of its current territory, as well as Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu and other minor...

in their effort to discredit Tibetan lamaism make frequent and emphatic reference to the historical human sacrifice in Tibet, portraying the 1950 People's Liberation Army invasion of Tibet

People's Liberation Army invasion of Tibet (1950–1951)

The Incorporation of Tibet into the People's Republic of China was the process by which the People's Republic of China gained control of the area comprising the present-day Tibetan Autonomous Region...

as an act of humanitarian intervention.
According to Chinese sources, in the year 1948, 21 individuals were murdered by state sacrificial priests from Lhasa as part of a ritual of enemy destruction, because their organs were required as magical ingredients.
The Tibetan Revolutions Museum established by the Chinese in Lhasa has numerous morbid ritual objects on display to illustrate these claims.
In Taiwan, Li Ao

Li Ao

Li Ao , is a writer, social commentator, historian, and independent politician in the Republic of China .He is considered by many to be one of the most important modern Chinese essayists today, although critics have termed him an intellectual narcissist...

in his TV talk show om 2006 claimed that the Dalai Lama had commanded human sacrifices, asking his followers to "tear out human skin" for "some religious ceremony".
Most of the human remains that the Chinese exhibit as gruesome evidence of Tibetan human sacrifice are in fact body parts of people who died of natural causes which were collected after sky burial

Sky burial

Sky burial, or ritual dissection, is a funerary practice in Tibet, wherein a human corpse was incised in certain locations and placed on a mountaintop, exposing it to the elements and animals – especially to predatory birds. The locations of preparation and sky burial are understood in the...

and preserved as relics.

India

Human sacrifice is illegal in India. But a few cases do occur in remote and underdeveloped regions of the country, where modernity has not penetrated well and tribal/semi-tribal groups adhere to cultural practices as they did over the course of millennia. According to the Hindustan Times, there was an incident of human sacrifice in western Uttar Pradesh

Uttar Pradesh

Uttar Pradesh abbreviation U.P. , is a state located in the northern part of India. With a population of over 200 million people, it is India's most populous state, as well as the world's most populous sub-national entity...

in 2003. Similarly, police in Khurja

Khurja

Khurja is a city in the Bulandshahr district in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. It is situated around 85 km from Delhi...

reported "dozens of sacrifices" in the period of half a year in 2006.

The Supreme Court of India

Supreme Court of India

The Supreme Court of India is the highest judicial forum and final court of appeal as established by Part V, Chapter IV of the Constitution of India...

habitually issues the death penalty to those found guilty of practising human sacrifice.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Human sacrifice, in the context of religious ritual, still occurs in other traditional religions, for example in muti

Muti

Muti is a term for traditional medicine in Southern Africa as far north as Lake Tanganyika. The word muti is derived from the Zulu word for tree, of which the root is -thi...

killings in Eastern Africa. Human sacrifice is no longer officially condoned in any country, and such cases are regarded as murder.

In January, 2008, Milton Blahyi of Liberia

Liberia

Liberia , officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Sierra Leone on the west, Guinea on the north and Côte d'Ivoire on the east. Liberia's coastline is composed of mostly mangrove forests while the more sparsely populated inland consists of forests that open...

confessed being part of human sacrifices which "included the killing of an innocent child and plucking out the heart, which was divided into pieces for us to eat." He fought versus Charles Taylor's militia.

In August 2004, a muti killing took place in Ireland; the headless corpse of a Malawi

Malawi

The Republic of Malawi is a landlocked country in southeast Africa that was formerly known as Nyasaland. It is bordered by Zambia to the northwest, Tanzania to the northeast, and Mozambique on the east, south and west. The country is separated from Tanzania and Mozambique by Lake Malawi. Its size...

woman was found near Piltown

Piltown

Piltown, historically known as Ballypoyle , is a small village in County Kilkenny, Ireland. It lies on the R698 regional road, which was the N24 national primary road before the locality was bypassed in 2002....

, County Kilkenny

County Kilkenny

County Kilkenny is a county in Ireland. It is part of the South-East Region and is also located in the province of Leinster. It is named after the city of Kilkenny. The territory of the county was the core part of the ancient Irish Kingdom of Osraige which in turn was the core of the Diocese of...

Chile

A 1989 book by investigative journalist Patrick Tierney documents a modern ritual human sacrifice during the devastating earthquake and tsunami of 1960 by a Machi

Machi (Shaman)

A machi is a traditional healer and religious leader in the Mapuche culture of Chile and Argentina. Machis play significant roles in Mapuche religion. Women are more commonly machis than men.-Description:...

of the Mapuche

Mapuche

The Mapuche are a group of indigenous inhabitants of south-central Chile and southwestern Argentina. They constitute a wide-ranging ethnicity composed of various groups who shared a common social, religious and economic structure, as well as a common linguistic heritage. Their influence extended...

in the Lago Budi

Budi Lake

Budi Lake is a tidal brackish water lake located near the coast of Araucanía Region, southern Chile. The lake is part of the boundaries between Saavedra and Teodoro Schmidt commune....

community.

The victim, 5-year-old José Luis Painecur, had his arms and legs removed by Juan Pañán and Juan José Paincur (the victim's grandfather), and was stuck into the sand of the beach like a stake. The waters of the Pacific Ocean

Pacific Ocean

The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...

then carried the body out to sea. The sacrifice was rumoured to be at the behest of local machi, Juana Namuncurá Añen. The two men were charged with the crime and confessed, but later recanted. They were released after two years. A judge ruled that those involved in these events had "acted without free will, driven by an irresistible natural force of ancestral tradition."

The story is also mentioned in a Time magazine article from that year, although with much less detail.

Ritual murder

Ritual killings perpetrated by individuals or small groups within a society that denounces them as simple murder are difficult to classify as either "human sacrifice" or mere pathological homicide because they lack the societal integration of sacrifice

Sacrifice

proper.

The instances closest to "ritual killing" in the criminal history of modern society would be pathological serial killers such as the Zodiac Killer

Zodiac Killer

The Zodiac Killer was a serial killer who operated in Northern California in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The killer's identity remains unknown. The Zodiac murdered victims in Benicia, Vallejo, Lake Berryessa and San Francisco between December 1968 and October 1969. Four men and three women...

, and mass suicide

Mass suicide

- Examples :Mass suicide sometimes occurs in religious or cultic settings. Defeated groups may resort to mass suicide rather than being captured. Suicide pacts are a form of mass suicide unconnected to cults or war that are sometimes planned or carried out by small groups of frustrated people...

s with doomsday cult

Doomsday cult

Doomsday cult is an expression used to describe groups who believe in Apocalypticism and Millenarianism, and can refer both to groups that prophesy catastrophe and destruction, and to those that attempt to bring it about...

background, such as the Peoples Temple

Peoples Temple

Peoples Temple was a religious organization founded in 1955 by Jim Jones that, by the mid-1970s, included over a dozen locations in California including its headquarters in San Francisco...

, Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God

Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God

The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God was a breakaway religious movement from the Roman Catholic Church founded by Credonia Mwerinde, Joseph Kibweteere and Bee Tait in Uganda. It was formed in the late 1980s after Mwerinde, a brewer of banana beer, and Kibweteere, a...

, Order of the Solar Temple

Order of the Solar Temple

The Order of the Solar Temple also known as Ordre du Temple Solaire in French, and the International Chivalric Organization of the Solar Tradition or simply as The Solar Temple was a secret society based upon the modern myth of the continuing existence of the Knights Templar...

or Heaven's Gate incidents. Other examples include the "Matamoros killings" attributed to Mexican cult leader Adolfo Constanzo

Adolfo Constanzo

Adolfo de Jesús Constanzo was an American serial killer, drug dealer and cult leader. His nickname was El Padrino de Matamoros .- Early years :...

and the "Superior Universal Alignment" killings in 1990s Brazil.

In fiction

Human sacrifice has a history as a topic in literature, opera, video games, and cinema. A recurrent theme in the Classics

Classics

Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...

, it returns to prominence in European imagination with the Spanish accounts of the Aztec rituals. Derek Hughes in Culture and Sacrifice traces the topic's iterations through the works of Shakespeare, Dryden

John Dryden

John Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden.Walter Scott called him "Glorious John." He was made Poet...

and Voltaire

Voltaire

François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...

, and its central position in the operatic tradition from Mozart to Wagner

Richard Wagner

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

and into 20th century works such as those of D.H. Lawrence.

"The Lottery

The Lottery

"The Lottery" is a short story by Shirley Jackson, first published in the June 26, 1948, issue of The New Yorker. Written the same month it was published, it is ranked today as "one of the most famous short stories in the history of American literature"....

" is a 1948 short story that caused controversy in the United States. The Wicker Man is a 1973 film on the topic.

In Rosemary Sutcliff

Rosemary Sutcliff

Rosemary Sutcliff CBE was a British novelist, and writer for children, best known as a writer of historical fiction and children's literature. Although she was primarily a children's author, the quality and depth of her writing also appeals to adults; Sutcliff herself once commented that she wrote...

's 1977 historical novel Sun Horse, Moon Horse
Sun Horse, Moon Horse
Sun Horse, Moon Horse is a historical novel for children written by Rosemary Sutcliff and published in 1977.It takes place in Bronze Age Britain, telling the tale of a chieftain's son of the Iceni who is caught up in a conflict with the neighboring Attribates, and plays an instrumental part in...

, the main character accepts a duty as a sacrificial king and lays down his life for the redemption of his people, while inaugurating the creation of the Uffington White Horse

Uffington White Horse

The Uffington White Horse is a highly stylised prehistoric hill figure, 110 m long , formed from deep trenches filled with crushed white chalk...

.

The majority of the plot of The Beatles

The Beatles

The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...

' film HELP! deals with a group that practises human sacrifice trying to kill Ringo Starr because he is wearing the sacrificial ring.

In Tintin: Prisoners of the Sun

Prisoners of the Sun

Prisoners of the Sun is the fourteenth of The Adventures of Tintin, a series of classic comic-strip albums written and illustrated by Belgian writer and illustrator Hergé, featuring young reporter Tintin as a hero. It is a continuation of The Seven Crystal Balls, and is one of very few Tintin...

the Inca leader comes close to sacrificing Tintin

Tintin (character)

Tintin is a fictional character in The Adventures of Tintin, the series of classic Belgian comic books written and illustrated by Hergé. Tintin is the protagonist of the series, a reporter and adventurer who travels around the world with his dog Snowy....

, Captain Haddock

Captain Haddock

Captain Archibald Haddock is a fictional character in The Adventures of Tintin, the series of classic Belgian comic books written and illustrated by Hergé...

, and Professor Calculus

Professor Calculus

Professor Cuthbert Calculus is a fictional character in The Adventures of Tintin, the series of classic Belgian comic books written and illustrated by Hergé...

on a pyre to be set alight with parabolic mirrors. This was for Calculus having committed sacrilege for wearing the bracelet of Rascar Capac.

In the 1984 film Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is a 1984 American adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg. It is the second film in the Indiana Jones franchise and prequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark . After arriving in India, Indiana Jones is asked by a desperate village to find a mystical stone...

, high priest Mola Ram sacrifices men by magically removing their heart with one hand and lowering them in boiling lava. One sacrifice is shown, where the heart spontaneously combusts

Spontaneous combustion

Spontaneous combustion is the self-ignition of a mass, for example, a pile of oily rags. Allegedly, humans can also ignite and burn without an obvious cause; this phenomenon is known as spontaneous human combustion....

when the victim hits the lava. In Mel Gibson

Mel Gibson

Mel Colm-Cille Gerard Gibson, AO is an American actor, film director, producer and screenwriter. Born in Peekskill, New York, Gibson moved with his parents to Sydney, Australia when he was 12 years old and later studied acting at the Australian National Institute of Dramatic Art.After appearing in...

's Apocalypto
Apocalypto
Apocalypto is a 2006 American epic action-adventure film directed by Mel Gibson. Set in Yucatan, Mexico, during the declining period of the Maya civilization, Apocalypto depicts the journey of a Mesoamerican tribesman who must escape human sacrifice and rescue his family after the capture and...

, human sacrifice is done to appease the Gods.

In the Dan Brown

Dan Brown

Dan Brown is an American author of thriller fiction, best known for the 2003 bestselling novel, The Da Vinci Code. Brown's novels, which are treasure hunts set in a 24-hour time period, feature the recurring themes of cryptography, keys, symbols, codes, and conspiracy theories...

novel The Lost Symbol, the book's main antagonist

Antagonist

An antagonist is a character, group of characters, or institution, that represents the opposition against which the protagonist must contend...

Mal'akh, prepares himself for the human sacrifice throughout the story, believing that it is his great destiny to lead the forces of evil.

External links

D.L. Ashliman's Human Sacrifice in Legends and Myths

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Evolution and context

Ancient Near East

Ancient Egypt

Mesopotamia

Levant

Phoenicia

Neolithic Europe

Greco-Roman antiquity

Celts

Germanic peoples

Slavic people

China

Tibet

India

Pacific

Pre-Columbian Americas

North America

Maya

Aztec

US / Canada

South America

West Africa

Judaism

Christianity

Islam

Eastern religions

Blood libel

India

Sub-Saharan Africa

Chile

Ritual murder

In fiction

See also

Books

Journal articles

External links