Most people today would consider human sacrifice a kind of ritual murder. We see it as morally ugly.
There is quite a bit of evidence that it was, shockingly, practiced by a wide range of ancient cultures.
Modern scholars tend to be cautious about evidence of human sacrifice. It is such a horrifying and nightmarish practice that it tends to grip the imagination. I read a novel not long ago that vividly described human sacrifice by the Minoans in ancient Crete. However, the evidence that the Minoans practiced human sacrifice is slight. Some of the evidence on Crete may tell us about the practice of some other people who settled in Crete after the Minoans.
One reason for the caution is that allegations of human sacrifice can be weaponized and used as an excuse to vilify or even kill people. Cortez used the reality of Aztec human sacrifice as an…
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James' Ramblings 