S3 E2: Sacrificial Legacies: The History Of Human Sacrifice

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Hi everyone and welcome back to the dark history podcast where we explore the darkest parts of human history. hope everyone is well I’m Rob your host as always. Welcome to season 3 episode 2, Sacrificial Legacies: The history of Human sacrifice. Human sacrifice, the ritual killing of a person as an offering to a god or deity, has been practiced by various civilizations throughout history. From the ancient Aztecs and Mayans to the Celtic druids and Norse Vikings, the act of sacrificing humans has been a prominent feature in religious beliefs and practices.
 So, how did human sacrifice come about and why did civilizations partake in such a barbaric act? To answer this question, we must first go back in time to the early stages of human development.

  Before we start I want to thank our sponsors for this episode Smart Labels but more about them later.

            So without further ado please turn off those lights sit back and relax next to the fire for more dark history.

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Being a human sacrifice is a terrifying concept that has been practiced by many ancient civilizations. It is the ultimate sacrifice, where an individual is offered as a gift to appease the gods or supernatural forces. Throughout history, human sacrifice has been a part of various religious and cultural beliefs, and while it may seem barbaric to us now, for those who were chosen, it was considered a great honor.
                        To fully understand what it would be like to be a human sacrifice, one must step into the shoes of the chosen one. For a few minute close your eyes and imagine you are in the rainforests of the Mayan empire,  The first feeling that would consumes you is the prickling fear washing over your body. The weight of knowing that your life is going to be taken, and there is no way out of it. The terror of the unknown and the realization that your death would be a public spectacle begins to paralyze you.

        As the sweat begins to roll down your back, there may also be a sense of confusion and disbelief. It is human nature to want to survive, and the idea of willingly giving up your life can be difficult to comprehend. You question why you were selected or what you did to the gods to deserve such a fate. You begin to struggle with the concept of being a sacrifice, wondering if your death would truly bring any benefits or appease the gods.

       As the days and weeks follow the preparations for your ceremonial death go move quickly. Your emotions swing from fear, acceptance, anger and pride. You've been separated from your loved ones for sometime and are undergo rituals and ceremonies, which involve fasting, cleansing, and dressing in special garments. This preparation have added to the fear and anxiety of your final existsnce, but its also serve as a way to make peace with your impending death.

      Today is the day the sacrifice, you are paraded through the streets, faces pass by in a blur as your legs become heavy with the fear until you reach the ritual place. You are surrounded by thousands of people, all there to witness their final moments. Your emotions are churning around in your head, from fear and sadness to pride and honor.m, but ultimately there is no turning back.

     As you take your turn to lay bare-chested on the alter, the uncontrollable fear of the unknown washes over your body, you begin to sweat as your heart begins to race, as tears roll down your cheeks for your love ones, the priest finishes his prayers and raises his dagger into the air. As he brings it down you catch a glimpse of the blade gleaming in the sun, time moves slowly, as the crowd begin to roar, an suddenly your a snapped out of your dazed as a Sharpe searing pain erupts from your chest. Your warm sticky life force that is your bloody covers your torso as the fear and pain begin to slip away and your eyes close.

Hi everyone and welcome back to the dark history podcast where we explore the darkest parts of human history. hope everyone is well I’m Rob your host as always. Welcome to season 3 episode 2, Sacrificial Legacies: The history of Human sacrifice. Human sacrifice, the ritual killing of a person as an offering to a god or deity, has been practiced by various civilizations throughout history. From the ancient Aztecs and Mayans to the Celtic druids and Norse Vikings, the act of sacrificing humans has been a prominent feature in religious beliefs and practices.
 So, how did human sacrifice come about and why did civilizations partake in such a barbaric act? To answer this question, we must first go back in time to the early stages of human development.

  Before we start I want to thank our sponsors for this episode Smart Labels but more about them later.

            So without further ado please turn off those lights sit back and relax next to the fire for more dark history.

The earliest evidence of human sacrifice dates back to 8000 BCE in ancient Mesopotamia. It was believed that the gods required human blood to appease them and ensure a good harvest and protection from enemies. 

                            Successful agricultural cities had already emerged in the Near East by the Neolithic, some protected behind stone walls. Jericho is the best known of these cities but other similar settlements existed along the coast of the Levant extending north into Asia Minor and west to the Tigrisand Euphrates rivers. Most of the land was arid and the religious culture of the entire region centered on fertility and rain. Many of the religious rituals, including human sacrifice, had an agricultural focus. Blood was mixed with soil to improve its fertility.

      Retainer sacrifice was practised within the royal tombs of ancient Mesopotamia. Courtiers, guards, musicians, handmaidens, and grooms were presumed to have committed ritual suicide by taking poison. A 2009 examination of skulls from the royal cemetery at Ur, discovered in Iraq in the 1920s, appears to support a more grisly interpretation of human sacrifices associated with elite burials in ancient Mesopotamia than had previously been recognized. Palace attendants, as part of royal mortuary ritual, were not dosed with poison to meet death serenely. Instead, they were put to death by having a sharp instrument, such as a pike, driven into their heads.

         Moving further west to ancient Egypt There may be evidence of retainer sacrifice in the early dynastic period at Abydos, when on the death of a King he would be accompanied by 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 tombs.

Servants of both royalty and high court officials were slain to accompany their masters into the next world. The number of retainers buried surrounding the king's tomb was much greater than those of high court officials, however, again suggesting the greater importance of the pharaoh. For example, King Djer had 318 retainer sacrifices buried in his tomb, and 269 retainer sacrifices buried in enclosures surrounding his tomb.

             According to Roman and Greek sources, Phoenicians and Carthaginians sacrificed infants to their gods. The bones of numerous infants have been found in Carthaginian archaeological sites in modern times, but their cause of death remain controversial. In a single child cemetery called the "Tophet" by archaeologists, an estimated 20,000 urns were deposited.

       The Bible asserts that children were sacrificed at a place called the tophet or roasting place to the god Moloch.

     More References in the Bible point to an awareness of and disdain 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. The Bible then recounts that, following the King's sacrifice, "There was great indignation against Israel" and that the Israelites had to raise their siege of the Moabite capital and go away. This verse had perplexed many later Jewish and Christian commentators, who tried to explain what the impact of the Moabite King's sacrifice was, to make those under siege emboldened while disheartening the Israelites, make God angry at the Israelites or the Israelites fear his anger. Whatever the explanation, evidently at the time of writing, such an act of sacrificing the firstborn son and heir, while prohibited by Israelites, was considered as an emergency measure in the Ancient Near East, to be performed in exceptional cases where divine favor was desperately needed.

Moving from more ancient times and the near East, to the time of the Celts and into Europe.

     The Celts were a group of European tribes that inhabited present-day Ireland, Great Britain, and parts of Western Europe. They believed in a polytheistic religion and performed human sacrifice as a way to communicate with their gods and ask for their favor.

       the Celts did not have a ritualistic or systematic way of sacrificing humans. Instead, they believed that the gods and the spirits of their ancestors lived in the trees and that their blood was needed to keep them strong and thriving. As a result, ancient Celts would sacrifice hum need to ans, often prisoners of war, by hanging them from trees and piercing them with arrows.

     According to Julius Caesar and Strabo wrote that the Gauls burnt animal and human sacrifices in a large wickerwork figure, known as a wicker man, and said the human victims were usually criminals; while Posidonius wrote that druids who oversaw human sacrifices foretold the future by watching the death throes of the victims.     The Celts practiced human sacrifice extensively. Funerary rites involved the burning of retainers who were imprisoned in giant wicker men set on fire to join their master in the afterlife. There were many different ritual killing methods for each of the gods. Offerings to Teutatis were drowned, victims meant for Erus were hanged and flogged to death, while those meant for Taranis were burnt. Ritual decapitation was also commonplace. However, it is important to note that descriptions of all of these sources originate from the Greco-Romans, who may have exaggerated the practices to further the image of Celts being barbarous savages.

           There is some archaeological evidence of human sacrifice among Celtic peoples, although it is rare. Ritual beheading and headhunting was a major religious and cultural practice that has found copious support in the archaeological record, including the numerous skulls found in Londinium's River Walbrook and the twelve headless corpses at the Gaulish sanctuary of Gournay-sur-Aronde.

Several ancient Irish bog bodies have been interpreted as kings who were ritually killed, presumably after serious crop failures or other disasters. Some were deposited in bogs on territorial boundaries or near royal inauguration sites, and some were found to have eaten a ceremonial last meal.

        The Germanic peoples, including the Scandinavians, had similar rites. After the Battle of Teutoberg Forest, Roman commanders were sacrificed to Mars, as many Germans had adopted Roman beliefs. This included suspending the severed arms of their victims from tree branches.

       The Norse also adopted forms of retainer sacrifice, killing slaves to accompany their masters to Valhalla. According to the monk Adémar de Chabannes, the founder of the principality of Normandy, Rollo, practiced human sacrifice in honor of the Norse gods despite having been baptized and converting to Christianity.

      Now Archaeological evidence suggests that the practice of sacrificing humans by the Vikings did exist in some form or another from around the 8th century onward. However, there is debate among experts over how widespread such sacrifices were within Viking culture and whether they were part of religious rituals or merely a tool for political power. Some sources claim that human sacrifice was only used in extreme cases of failed harvests or when someone had broken an oath with the gods. Others believe that sacrificial victims were chosen from defeated enemies or criminals and then used in public ceremonies to attempt to curry favor with Odin, Thor, Loki, Freyja, and other Norse deities.

       But One account by Ahmad ibn Fadlan in 922 claims Varangian warriors were sometimes buried with enslaved women, in the belief they would become their wives in Valhalla. He describes the funeralof a Varangian chieftain, in which a slave girl volunteered to be buried with him. After ten days of festivities, she was given an intoxicating drink, stabbed to death by a priestess, and burnt together with the dead chieftain in his boat.

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As we move again across the globe to Asia the evidence of human sacrifice is quite prevalent.

    The history of human sacrifice in China may extend as early as 2300 BCE. Excavations of the ancient fortress city of Shimao in the northern part of modern Shaanxi province revealed 80 skulls ritually buried underneath the city's eastern wall. Forensic analysis indicates the victims were all teenage girls.

         The ancient Chinese are known to have made drowned sacrifices of men and women to the river god Hebo. They also 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. During the Warring States period, Ximen Bao of Wei outlawed human sacrificial practices to the river god. 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  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.

   In Japan and other asian countries Hitobashira was practiced. A person was buried alive under or near large-scale buildings like dams, bridges and castles, as a prayer to Shinto gods. It was believed this would protect the building from being destroyed by natural disasters such as floods or by enemy attacks. Hitobashira can also refer to workers who were buried alive under inhumane conditions.

      Like in Japan, Human sacrifice was practiced in Tibet prior to the arrival of Buddhism in the 7th century. Historical practices such as burying bodies under the cornerstones of houses may have been practiced during the medieval era, but few concrete instances have been recorded or verified.

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 which is still to this day dyed partially red to symbolize sacrifice.

               Nevertheless, there is some evidence that outside of orthodox Buddhism, there were practices of tantric human sacrifice which survived throughout the medieval period, and possibly into modern times.The 15th century Blue Annals reports that in the 13th century so-called "18 robber-monks" slaughtered men and women in their ceremonies.

In West Africa JuJu Human sacrifice is still practiced today. 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, in what is now Benin, and in the small independent states in what is now southern Nigeria.

         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 Ashanti region of modern-day Ghana, capital punishment was usually tied to sacrificing the guilty party to the gods. These practices continued well into the 19th Century. In the northern parts of the continent, the spread of Islam put an end to tribal beliefs of ritual human sacrifice.

         The Leopard men were a West African secret society active into the mid-1900s that practised cannibalism. It was believed that the ritual cannibalism would strengthen both members of the society and their entire tribe. In Tanganyika, the Lion men committed an estimated 200 murders in a single three-month period.

      Even in the Canary islands which are now a part of modern day Spain, the Guanches who were the ancient inhabitants of these islands, performed both animal and human sacrifices. 

        During the summer solstice in Tenerife children were sacrificed by being thrown from a cliff into the sea.These children were brought from various parts of the island for the purpose of sacrifice. Likewise, when an aboriginal king died his subjects should also assume the sea, along with the embalmers who embalmed the Guanche mummies.

         In Gran Canaria, bones of children were found mixed with those of lambs and goat kids and on Tenerife, amphorae have been found with the remains of children inside. This suggests a different kind of ritual infanticide from those who were thrown off the cliffs.

Some of the most famous forms of ancient human sacrifice were performed by various Pre-Columbiancivilizations in the Americas that included the sacrifice of prisoners as well as voluntary sacrifice.

          The Mixtec players of the Mesoamerican ballgame 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", who was considered a great ball player and who won several cities this way, was eventually sacrificed, because he attempted to go beyond lineage-governing practices, and to create an empire.

     The Maya held the belief that cenotes or limestone sinkholes were portals to the underworld and sacrificed human beings and tossed them down the cenote to please the water god Chaac. The most notable example of this is the "Sacred Cenote" at Chichén Itzá.. Extensive excavations have recovered the remains of 42 individuals, half of them under twenty years old.

     Of particular note concerning human sacrifice is the culture of the Aztecs, where human sacrifice was de jure. The Aztecs believed their god Huitzilopochtli required human blood to fight the moon every night so that the sun would rise again in the morning.

    Sacrifices to Huitzilopochtli involved marching the victim to the temple at the top of a steep pyramid, the steps slippery with blood. Thrown over a blood-soaked altar, their arms and legs were held in place facing the sky. The priest would then use a sacrificial dagger made from obsidian glass and cut the hearts out of the victim’s chest. The body was then thrown down the steep steps. Finally, their heads were removed from their corpses and added to a skull rack called a tzompantli which displayed the skulls of all the victims.

The Aztecs also used human sacrifice to instill control through fear over the subjects over which they held dominion, as the Aztec empire existed as a loose federation with the city of Tenochtitlan as the center of control. Every year the “Flower Wars” were fought in which opposing combatants representing all the Aztec territories would compete on the battlefield in taking as many captives as possible. These captives would suffer the gruesome fate of being sacrificed to one of the many gods, while the captors would be rewarded for their prowess.

        Captives weren’t the only ones sacrificed. Families from all walks of life would offer up one of their own to earn favor from the gods. Of particular note is the offering of infants and children to the rain god Tlaloc.

         Children sacrificed to Tlaloc suffered an even more painful fate. It was believed that Tlaloc required the tears of children in order to bring rain to the crops, so the victims were made to suffer the most excruciating torture before having their hearts removed from their chests. Chief among these practices was the ripping out of fingernails.

     In addition to all the sacrificial slaughter, the Aztecs also practiced cannibalism and wore the flayed skin of their victims. Towards the end times of their empire, when Tenochtitlan was besieged by a coalition of their subjects who had had enough (spurred on and enjoined by the Spanish conquistadores), the Aztecs were sacrificing many thousands each day. One claim states that Aztec priests took the lives of 80,000 victims in one day. While this may be an exaggeration, it does explain why the population of the empire in the latter years was in serious decline.

Moving further south into peru The Incas also practiced human sacrifice, especially at great festivals or royal funerals where retainers died to accompany the dead into the next life.[126] The Moche sacrificed teenagers en masse, as archaeologist Steve Bourget found when he uncovered the bones of 42 male adolescents in 1995.

  . As many as 4,000 servants, court officials, favorites, and concubines were killed upon the death of the Inca Huayna Capac in 1527, for example.[129] A number of mummies of sacrificed children have been recovered in the Inca regions of South America, an ancient practice known as qhapaq hucha. The Incas performed child sacrifices during or after important events, such as the death of the emperor or during a famine. 

Thank you for taking the time out of your day to listen to this long and dark episode.

     Yeah, that was rather heavy I really really dislike talking about children, but it happened, quite regularly unfortunately and Youd be forgiven for thinking that this archaic practice has never happened since but Youd be wrong. As we know this world is rather dark and there have been cases in modern time. 

      In 1963, a small cult in Nuevo Leon, Mexico, founded by two brothers, Santos and Cayetano Hernández, committed between 8 and 12 murders during bloody rituals that included drinking human blood.

     In January 2008, Milton Blahyi of Liberia confessed to being part of human sacrifices which "included the killing of an innocent child and plucking out the heart, which was divided into pieces for people to eat.

    A story I've mentioned before in the first season happened On March 22, 2014, a group of motorcycle taxi drivers discovered the Ibadan forest of horror, a dilapidated building believed to been used for human trafficking and ritual sacrifice located in Soka forest in Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria.

    Even in western country its happens, in Italy On 6 June 2000, three teenage girls lured a Catholic sister, Maria Laura Mainetti, out of her convent in Chiavenna, Sondrio, and stabbed her to death in a satanic sacrifice. Even here in the Uk its happened In June 2005, a claimed that boys from Africa were being trafficked to the UK for human sacrifice. It noted that children were beaten and murdered after being labelled as witches by pastors in an Angolan community in London.

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