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Old 17th November 2012, 08:40 AM   #7
HansMustermann
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Actually, here's an even simple explanation for cruel human sacrifices.

Before I start, regardless of what you may think they may have started as, they are continued long past the point where there is any memory of ancient medical procedures or anything.

Now that's even skipping over the fact that no iron age civilization would have had the technology for open heart surgery, to inspire sacrificing people by cutting through their sternum and cutting their heart out. Or that sacrifices like being made to jump in a pit full of spears or such have no medical parallels. Or I'm drawing blanks about what medical procedure would involve burning someone alive in a wooden cage, like at least one Roman general was sacrificed to Tyr by the germanic invaders. Or exactly what medical procedure would involve burning a baby alive as sacrifice. Or exactly what kind of medical procedure would involve flaying a woman alive and a priest wearing her skin? Etc. But ok, let's skip over that.

The more important fact is that by the time we met for example the Aztecs, who turned human sacrifices into a whole assembly-line operation, they know of no such thing. Their legends point out at some priest doing that for the first time during a migration. Ok, the legends may be distorted, but at any rate they keep on doing it for no other reason than that the priests say so.

What is the explanation for THAT? Why do they continue?

My hypothesis or conjecture, is that just like the burning campaign by the Inquisition against the conversos who don't know their place, or how the witch-hunts destroyed any woman profession like midwife, it's just a terror campaign against the population. It's the easiest way to keep the population in line. As long as the priests are the ones who decide who gets the honour of being killed next, nobody has the guts to speak against the priests. Or the very few who do, see above, get sacrificed.

It's basically no different from the Romans using crucifixion to keep the slaves terrorized and in line, or the severe beatings and lynchings used in the American south to keep the slaves terrorized and in line.
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Last edited by HansMustermann; 17th November 2012 at 08:42 AM.
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