Human sacrifice was practiced in many ancient cultures. Victims were ritually killed in a manner that was supposed to please or appease gods or spirits. On very rare occasions human sacrifices still occur today.

Reasons for human sacrifice include:

• Sacrifice to accompany the dedication of a new building like a temple or bridge. Chinese legends hold that thousands of people were entombed in the Great Wall of China, though they were not.
• Sacrifice upon the death of a king, high priest or great leader; the sacrifices were to serve or accompany the deceased leader in the next life. Mongols, Scythians and various Mesoamerican chiefs could take most of their household, including servants and concubines, with them to the next world. This is sometimes called a "retainer sacrifice," as the leader's retainers would be sacrificed along with their master.
• Sacrifice for divination; a priest would try to predict the future from the body parts of a slain prisoner or slave. According to Strabo, Celts stabbed a victim with a sword and divined the future from his death spasms.
• Sacrifice in times of natural disaster. Droughts, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, etc. were seen as a sign of anger or displeasure of gods and sacrifices were made to appease the divine ire. Cretans tried to stop the destruction of their island this way.
• Ritual combat: the victim was killed in a nominally fair fight against a warrior.

Human sacrifices were made in the Bronze Age Celtic religions in Europe, and in rituals related to worship of Norse gods (most modern Ásatrú and Druid groups do not condone such practices). However, because most of the information comes from outside sources (Greeks and Romans for Celts and medieval Christians for Norsemen) who may have had ulterior propaganda motives, contemporary historians consider them suspect.

Sacrifice in the classical world

Ancient Greeks practiced human sacrifice; references exist to sacrifice of maidens to Artemis.

According to Roman sources, Phoenicians and Carthaginians sacrificed infants to their gods; since Carthaginians were rivals to Roman power in the Mediterranean, this information is also sometimes considered suspect. However, the bones of numerous infants have been found in Carthaginian archaeological sites in modern times.

Early Romans practiced various forms of human sacrifice in their first centuries; from Etruscans (or, according to other sources, Sabellians), they adopted the original form of gladiatorial combat where the victim was slain in a ritual battle. During the early republic, 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 was an escaped slave who became priest of the goddess Diana at Nemi by killing his predecessor. Prisoners of war and Vestal virgins were buried alive as offerings to Manes and Di Inferi (gods of the underworld). Archaeologists have found sacrificial victims buried in building foundations. Ordinarily, deceased Romans were cremated rather than buried. Captured enemy leaders, after the victorious general's triumph, would be ritually strangled in front of a statue of Mars, the war god.

Religious practices changed over the centuries. According to Pliny the Elder, human sacrifice was abolished by a senatorial decree in 97 BCE. Most of the rituals turned to animal sacrifice like taurobolium or became merely symbolic. A Roman general might bury a statue of his likeness to thank the gods for victory. Cicero refers to a sacrifice of rush puppets in the Vestal ritual that might have originally included sacrifice of old men. When the Roman Empire expanded, Romans stopped human sacrifices as barbaric.

Sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible

The Hebrew Bible generally condemns human sacrifice. In Genesis 22 there is a story about the binding of Isaac. In this story, God tests Abraham by asking him to present his son, Isaac, as a sacrifice on Mount Moriah. No reason is given within the text. Abraham agrees to this command without arguing. According to the text, God does not want Abraham to actually sacrifice his son; it states from the beginning that this is only a test of obedience. The story ends with God stopping Abraham at the last minute and making Isaac's

Some scholars have suggested this story's origin was a remembrance of an era when human sacrifice was abolished in favor of animal sacrifice. Another theory well accepted by theologians is that this was a foreshadowing of the death of Christ, whom was God's only son given as a sacrifice for the cleansing of humanities curse of sin. It has even been suggested by some that the site chosen to sacrifice Isaac, Mount Moriah, was indeed the Golgotha of Christ's crucifixion. However no archeological or historical evidence is yet known that supports this assertation.

One instance of human sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible that is often overlooked is the sacrifice of Jephthah's daughter in Judges chapter 11. Jephthah is victorious in battle against the children of Ammon and vows to sacrifice to God whatsoever comes to greet him at the door when he returns home. 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. That he actually does sacrifice her is shown in verse 11:39 "And it came to pass at the end of two months, that she returned unto her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had vowed". This example seems to be the exception rather than the rule, however, as the verse continues "And she was a virgin. From this comes the Israelite custom that each year the young women of Israel go out for four days to commemorate the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite.". The lamentations that were offered annually in remembrance of this act frame it as the atrocity it was, and accentuate the grievousness of such a rash action.

Many passages in the Hebrew Bible state that human sacrifice was a great abomination; these practices were associated with the worship of foreign gods, and were forbidden.The practice of "banning" an enemy town in war by killing all its inhabitants - or, variously, only the people but not the animals; only the males; or only the adults - was commanded in several places. Where commanded, the act was subsequently considered an act admissible by God, as the banning was given as a judgement on a populance. It has been argued that this was in itself a form of religious human sacrifice which was condoned by the very God who ultimately condemned the act. This would indeed pose a serious dichotomy if it was indeed to have been the case. Historically however, the use of religious sacrifice by early Hebrews was for the purpose of atoning for grievances and sins that had been committed by an individual or a populace. As the payment of sin had to be death, an animal (having met a strenuous criteria of perfection) was given up as a literal payment for this debt. It was of the utmost importance that this animal was ritualistically clean and perfect, as only a perfect sacrifice of innocent blood could counteract the curse of death that came with sin. As this is the only acceptable sacrificial practice accepted by Judaism, it is highly unlikely that the wholesale slaughter of unclean gentiles would be seen as anything resembling a sacrifice. Rather it is usually put forward in biblical scripture as mentioned above, as a judgment visited upon a populace and carried out by the Hebrews.

For example, King Saul was removed from the kingship for not rigorously carrying out this procedure when ordered by Samuel the prophet. 1 Samuel 15 (NIV): "Samuel said to Saul, "I am the one the LORD sent to anoint you king over his people Israel; so listen now to the message from the LORD. This is what the LORD Almighty says: 'I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.' "Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and modern historians' views on this subject can be found in the article on the near sacrifice of Isaac.

Celtic sacrifice

As written in Roman sources, Celtic Druids engaged extensively

Different gods reportedly required different kind of sacrifices. Victims meant for Esus were hanged, those meant for Taranis immolated and those for Teutates drowned. Some, like the Lindow Man, may have gone to their deaths willingly.

Viking Age sacrifice

According to Norse mythology, Odin hanged himself from the world-tree Yggdrasil for nine nights to attain divine wisdom. Medieval Christian sources refer to Norsemen sacrificing prisoners by hanging them from trees, but the true extent of this behavior is unclear.

Norse warriors were sometimes buried with slave girls with the belief that the women would become their wives in Valhalla. A detailed eyewitness account of such a burial was given by Ahmad ibn Fadlan as part of his account of an embassy to the Volga Bulgars in 921. In his description of the funeral of a Scandinavian chieftain, a slave girl volunteers to die with her master. After ten days of festivities, she is stabbed to death by an old woman (a sort of priestess who is referred to as 'Angel of Death', see Völva) and burnt together with the deceased in his boat (see ship burial, Oseberg).

Adam von Bremen recorded human sacrifices to Odin in 11th century Sweden, at the Temple at Uppsala, a tradition which is confirmed by Gesta Danorum and the Norse sagas. According to the Ynglinga saga, king Domalde was sacrificed there in the hope to bring greater future harvests and the total domination of all future wars till the end of it all to his people. The same saga also relates that Domalde's descendant king Aun sacrificed nine of his own sons to Odin in exchange for longer life, until the Swedes stopped him from sacrificing his last son, Egil. See also Blót.

Heidrek in the Hervarar saga agrees to the sacrifice of his son in exchange for the command over a fourth of the men of Reidgotaland. With these, he seizes the entire kingdom and prevents the sacrifice of his son, dedicating those fallen in his rebellion to Odin instead.

Chinese sacrifice

The ancient Chinese are known to have made sacrifices of young men and women to river deities, and to have buried slaves alive with their owners upon death as part of a funeral service. This was especially prevalent during the Shang and Zhou Dynasties.

Mesoamerican sacrifice

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

Aztec:

• The Aztecs were particularly noted for practicing human sacrifice on a large scale; an offering to Huitzilopochtli would be made to restore the blood he lost, as the sun was engaged in a daily battle. This would prevent the end of the world that could happen on each cycle of 52 years. The dedication of the great temple at Tenochtitlán was reported by the Aztecs as marked with the sacrifice of more than 84,000 prisoners, but this number may have been war propaganda by the Aztecs themselves (see the article on the Aztecs.)

• Sacrifices to Xipe Totec 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 female victims. Tlaloc would require weeping male children.

• Aztecs engaged in warfare - the so-called Flowery Wars - with the intent of capturing prisoners for sacrifice. There are multiple accounts of captured conquistadores being sacrificed during the wars of the Spanish conquest of Mexico, although only Bernal Diaz actually claimed to be a witness.

• Aztecs sometimes killed the more aristocratic captives, noted for their bravery in ritual combat: the victim, wearing only a loincloth, was chained to the floor, given a mock weapon and a shield, and died fighting against a fully armored jaguar knight or warrior (see Flowery Wars).

• Tezcatlipoca required a voluntary sacrifice. Each year a youth was offered to him as a victim. For a year he would be honored as a god on earth, and then he would be sacrified.

Maya

• According to Spanish sources, as well as frescoes and sculptures from the city of Tajin, the original form of the Mesoamerican game ulama included sacrifice of the entire losing team. Tlachti, the Aztec version of the game, did not involve sacrifice.

Inca

• A number of presumably sacrificial victims have been discovered in the Inca regions of South America. , the victims seem to have been left to die by cold, in the top of the mountains.

Modern human sacrifice

Human sacrifice, in the context of religious ritual, still occurs in some traditional religions, for example in muti killings in eastern Africa. Human sacrifice is no longer officially condoned in any country, and such cases are regarded as murder.

Some people in India are adherents of a religion called Tantrism (not to be confused with Tantric Buddhism); most either use animal sacrifice or symbolic effigies, but a very small percent of them still engage in real human sacrifice:

After a rash of similar killings in the area -- according to an unofficial tally in the English-language Hindustan Times, there have been 25 human sacrifices in western Uttar Pradesh in the last six months alone -- police have cracked down against tantriks, jailing four and forcing scores of others to close their businesses and pull their ads from newspapers and television stations. The killings and the stern official response have focused renewed attention on tantrism, an amalgam of mystical practices that grew out of Hinduism. (In India, case links mysticism, murder - John Lancaster, Washington Post, 11/29/2003)

Even groups of the richest and most powerful people in the world still gather for an annual mock human sacrifice of an effigy at the Bohemian Club in California.

In Western cultures no human sacrifice occurs beyond murders committed by serial killers or the largely unsubstantiated Satanic ritual abuse. One such ritual murder occurred in 1999 in Hyvinkää, Finland, as a young man was slowly tortured to death and his body parts eaten in a sacrificial rite; the three cultists were sentenced to prison. It is also claimed that Varg Vikernes murdered 1993 a rival black metal musician Øystein Aarseth in Norway as a sacrificial murder to Odin (though the evidence as presented in sources like Lords of Chaos by Michael Moynihan and Didrik Søderlind seem to indicate that it was actually a combination of one-upmanship and a crime of passion, revisionistically presented as human sacrifice by Vikernes himself.) Modern occultists consider such sacrifices unnecessary, or use them only in the symbolic form where the volunteer "sacrifice" is not actually killed.

Some people have tried to extend the use of sacrifice-related terminology. A few writers have written that war--so often charged with religious and nationalistic symbols--is a form of human sacrifice. Abortion, also a politically charged topic, has been called an act of human sacrifice to the god of convenience. Russell Means has referred to capital punishment as a sacrifice to the god of vengeance.

Modern Muslim terrorist suicide bombers as well as Japanese kamikaze pilots can also be claimed to be examples of human (self-)sacrifice.

The most prominent example in recent times was undertaken by the Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc.

Historically prominent human sacrifices include:

• Lindow Man in the United Kingdom
• Tollund Man in Denmark (from the article: At first, Tollund Man was believed to be a rich man who had been ritually sacrificed, but recent analysis suggests that he may simply have been a criminal who was hanged and buried in the peat bog.)

Ending of human sacrifice

The ending of human sacrifice has usually occurred as a result of the questioning of traditional systems of belief which arises through culture contact, or rapid social change.

• In the Ancient Near East, human sacrifice was supressed throughout the Persian Empire, partly as a consequence of the spread of Zoroastrianism, which taught that human sacrifice was a sign of Ahriman, not of the Wise Lord Ahura Mazda.
• Carthaginian human sacrifice came to an end with the Punic Wars with Rome, whilst Roman Gladatorial Games came to an end once the Roman Empire adopted Christianity.
• Human sacrifice amongst the Aztecs and other American peoples came to an end with the invasion of the Spanish Conquistadores and the imposition of Christianity.
• The suppression of human sacrifice to Kali, practiced by the Thuggee in India, was a direct result of the British Raj.

Books:

• Dying for the Gods, Miranda Aldhouse Green; Trafalgar Square; (September 1, 2001) ISBN 0752419404

See also

• Cannibalism

Sacrificio humano Sacrifice humain Mensenoffer