In religious traditions throughout the world, there are ceremonies which involve sacrifice, such as killing a goat or a chicken as an offering to the gods. This type of offering is based on an idea of religious reciprocity: by offering an animal which is important to the society, the gods or god will reciprocate by responding favorably to the requests of the people. The sacrifice of animals was a part of the requests for ordinary things, such as good crops or success in war, but for extraordinary things, such as ending a long-term drought or dealing with other disasters, more important sacrifices were needed.
In a number of societies around the world, human sacrifice was incorporated into ceremonies which were intended to save, heal, or transform the society itself. By offering a human sacrifice, the people could appeal to and/or appease the gods and receive their favor in return. For example, among the Vinca culture people living in Croatia 6,500 years ago, a baby of about 15-20 months of age, was sacrificed and buried in a house to insure the growth of the crops by placing life back into the earth.
Among the Chimú at the Peruvian site of Las Llamas, about 140 children between the ages of 5 and 14 were sacrificed at a time when severe weather and flooding was causing major problems. Each child was dragged to the site and then killed with knife blows to the sternum.
In some cases, the people who were sacrificed were captives from different societies, and in other cases they were taken from the local society. Among the Maya, the children who were sacrificed were obtained from kidnapping, from purchasing, and from gifts. In her chapter in Breathing New Life into the Evidence of Death: Contemporary Approaches to Bioarchaeology, Pamela Geller reports:
“…juveniles suffering from poor health, those frailer individuals unlikely to survive past childhood, may have been intentionally selected for sacrifice.”
Writing about human sacrifice as a form of propitiatory murder, Christopher Hitchens, in his book God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, says:
“An offering of a virgin or an infant or a prisoner was assumed to appease the gods: once again, not a very good advertisement for the moral properties of religion.”
In Mexico, Teotihuacan was one of the largest cities in the pre-industrial world. Teotihuacan flourished from about 200 BCE to about 750 CE and includes several large pyramids. The Pyramid of Quetzalcoatl was built in a single episode and was dedicated with the sacrifice of more than 200 individuals. In their book Mexico: From the Olmecs to the Aztecs, Michael Coe and Rex Koontz report about one sacrificial group:
“Young warriors with their hands tied behind their backs had been dispatched in two groups of eighteen individuals (the number of twenty-day months in the year), each group being interred in a large burial pit on the north and south sides of the pyramid.”
There were also sacrificial victims placed at each of the pyramid’s four corners and there were sacrificial victims along the east-west axis of the building. Oxygen-isotope ratio studies done on the remains show the most of those sacrificed did not grow up in Teotihuacan but had lived there for some time. Michael Coe and Rex Koontz note:
“The presence of sacrificial victims from throughout Mesoamerica speaks to the very real political power of the city, even at this early date.”
The mention of human sacrifice for many people brings up an image of the Aztecs of sixteenth century Mexico. With regard to the meaning of the Aztec human sacrifices, Roger Atwood, in an article in Archaeology, writes:
“Scholars now understand that the human sacrifices that once shocked the Spaniards were not conceived as public horror or punishment, but rather as reenactments of Aztec society’s own creation.”
Large scale human sacrifice by the Aztec appears to have started by 1450 CE when there was a crop failure due to bad weather. In his book Ancient Mexico: An Introduction to the Pre-Hispanic Cultures, Frederick Peterson writes:
“The Aztecs thought that Huitzipochtli was angry with them for no feeding him sufficiently. The theory was that their mission of feeding the sun was conferred on them by having been named the chosen people of Huitzipochtli many years before. The most acceptable food for the sun was human hearts and blood—in essence. Unfortunately, in order for the sun to savour the essence, the blood and hearts had to be withdrawn from human bodies.”
The Aztecs felt that the fate of the world rested upon the ceremonies carried out in these temples and that human sacrifice was required if the world was to continue to exist. Frederick Peterson reports:
“They believed that the gods had created many by mixing the bones of men and previous creations with their own blood. It was therefore only fair and just for man to give blood to nourish the gods, who regarded men as the harvest from the seed that they had sown—as the corn kernals of a divine cornfield. Thus man was food for the god.”
In his entry on religious syncretism in the Handbook of Middle American Indians, William Madsen describes human sacrifice among the Aztec this way:
“Aztec war provided sacrificial victims whose blood and hearts were fed to the gods, who were thus enabled to provide men with sun, rain, crops, and all the necessities of life. Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec tribal patron who was also the god of war and sun, required enormous meals of human blood and hearts to give him strength for his daily battle with the forces of darkness. Without such meals, it was feared that Huitzilopochtli might lose his battle and plunge the world into the blackness of night.”
Long before the Aztecs rose to prominence in Mesoamerica, the Olmecs had developed a sophisticated civilization. Like the later Maya and Aztec religions, the Olmecs also engaged in human sacrifice. At Chalcatzingo there are rock carvings showing human sacrifice. In an article in Current World Archaeology, Arnaud Lambert writes:
“The purpose of those ceremonies appears to be twofold: on one level, there is a symbolic link between human sacrifice, rainfall, and agricultural renewal; on another, it appears that the Group B rock carvings acted as permanent visual reminders that reinforced the status of the chiefs of Chalcatzingo by equating the rulers with their powerful alter-egos—a practice known as ‘nagualism.’”
Among the Maya, another ancient Mesoamerican civilization, a kind of human sacrifice was carried out for divination. Frederick Peterson explains:
“Among the Maya, victims of both sexes and various ages were thrown into the Sacred Well of Chichen Itza to receive the prophecy of the rain god as to the rain available for the coming year. A victim was thrown in at dawn; and if he survived until midday, he was hauled out and asked what kind of year the gods had in store for mankind.”
Like other ancient Mesoamerican civilizations, Mayan ceremonial offerings included human sacrifice, but unlike the Aztec religion, human sacrifice was not a major focus of Mayan religious ceremonies. William Madsen reports:
“When the Maya prayed for rain, crops, or health they customarily sacrificed small animals and made offerings of their own blood drawn from various parts of the body, in addition to offerings of food and copal incense. Only in case of community disaster such as a famine were human beings sacrificed to the gods.”
Desperate times sometimes bring about extraordinary ceremonial and religious remedies. Among the Maya in Belize, a period of decreased rainfall began in the early seventh century CE which meant a decrease in the maize crop. In the sacred cave of Chechem Ha (Cave of the Poisonwood Water), which the Maya had used as a ceremonial site since 1100 BCE, ritual activity increased in frequency and the sacrifice of humans became more common. For the Maya, humans had been made from maize, and therefore the sacrifice of humans to the gods was a way of feeding them to bring about the reciprocity of the gods sending rain to the people. Kristin Ohlson, in an article in American Archaeology, writes:
“Many of the sacrificial victims were children, whose tears were thought to summon the rain god.”
The drought did not end and in 950 CE, the Maya sealed the entrance to the cave and abandoned it.
For the general public, the best-known ancient South American civilization is that of the Inka (also spelled Inca) who flourished between about 1438 CE until the Spanish conquest in 1532. During this rather short time period, they established over 100 ceremonial centers on the summits of many of the highest mountains in the area. The Spanish chroniclers of the Inka reported that at these centers offerings were made to the mountain gods: food, incense, alcoholic beverages, textiles, and ceramics. In addition, the Inka offered human sacrifices.
On the high mountain tops, the Inka sacrificed children. Sacrificing the life of a child, according to Inka religion, would bring honor to the parents and a blissful afterlife to the child. The children were selected for sacrifice based on their beauty and purity. In the Capacocha ceremony, children were sacrificed to to the fertility goddess Pachamama which provided abundant harvests in the following year.
Archaeologists have uncovered the mummified bodies of several sacrificed children. At the summit of Llullaillaca (22,109 feet in elevation), archaeologists found an Inka platform, three burials, and several groups of offerings. Isotopic analysis of the hair from one of the mummies (a 15-year-old girl known as the Llullaillaco Maiden) revealed that her diet had changed in the year before she died: during her last year of life her diet was rich in animal protein and maize, foods generally reserved for the elites. This tends to suggest that she had been selected as a sacrifice some time before the actual ritual and had been provided with a special diet. For most of her life she had consumed primarily root crops, vegetables, and quinoa with very little meat. Isotope analysis also showed that she had had a mobile childhood, perhaps with seasonal migrations.
She also had a quid of coca leaves in her mouth. During the last several months of her life, her mind had been in a significantly altered state due to benzoylecgonine, a coca-derived lipid. In his book Unlocking the Past: How Archaeologists Are Rewriting Human History with Ancient DNA, Cambridge University archaeologist Martin Jones writes:
“The maize may have contributed to the altered state: the precise balance of different lipids in her hair is consistent with consumption of alcohol alongside the coca. She was so very high (in mental state as well as in altitude) her dreamy death may have arisen from hyperthermia alone.”
Concerning the two younger children who were found on Llullaillaco, Martin Jones reports:
“Their mitochondrial DNA indicated that the two younger children accompanying her were of different families, but a third isotope measurement, this time of Sulphur, showed that their dietary profiles converged (most likely in the capital city of Cuzco) six months before death, some time after the maiden had been fattened up with meaty food, and not long before they would need to set off on their final trek to the volcano’s summit and ultimate sacrifice.”
With regard to the ceremonies involved in the sacrifice of Inka children, Nathaniel Scharping, in an article in Discover, writes:
“Preparatory rituals could be lengthy and sometimes involved a months-long procession that wound its way from village to village through the empire, each stop an opportunity for the residents to celebrate the sacrificial victim’s passage.”
Some of the Inka human sacrifices centered around the king who was a descendant and earthly manifestation of Inti, the sun god. Bruce Trigger, in his book Understanding Early Civilizations: A Comparative Study, writes:
“Two hundred or more boys and girls were sacrificed throughout the kingdom as part of the royal enthronement rituals. If the king became ill at any point in time, four llamas and four children were killed and large amounts of cloth burned to ensure his recovery.”
Many centuries before the emergence of the Inka Empire in South America, the Moche also engaged in ritual human sacrifice. The realistic art on Moche ceramics show that the gods involved in human sacrifice included the Rayed deity (a warrior priest), a goddess who wore a jester-like headdress, and a bird god. In his entry on Moche culture in The Oxford Companion to Archaeology, Jeffrey Quilter writes:
“The Moche priests who enacted the roles of the gods sacrificed prisoners probably taken in battle. The central ritual act was the drinking of blood taken from the sacrificed victims.”
The Moche site of the Temple of the Moon (Huaca de la Luna) is a stepped pyramid with three platforms with a base that measures 300 meters by 250 meters. There are at least 70 human sacrifices within the huaca: all are adult males with their throats cut. The pathology of the sacrificial victims seems to suggest that they were warriors as they had broken arms and crushed fingers. While this seems to suggest that they were enemy warriors who had attacked the Moche, their DNA tells a different story: the men were related to the people living in the city.
In North America, one of the important Pawnee ceremonies, the Morning Star Ceremony, involved the sacrifice of a young woman. As a part of the ceremony, a captive woman would be tied spread-eagled to a wooden frame and every man and boy in the camp would shoot an arrow into her body. The young woman represented Evening Star and with her death, her soul went to her husband Morning Star who then clothed her with the colors of the dawn. The reunion of Morning Star and Evening Star meant the renewal of growing things on earth. The Morning Star Ceremony was a fertility rite, and from the Pawnee perspective, the young woman was not a victim, but a messenger.
In many areas of Europe—Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Britain, and Ireland—well-preserved bodies have been recovered from bogs. More than 700 bog bodies have been recovered, and the nature of the injuries on many of these bodies strongly suggests that they were ritually murdered. One of the most famous of these bog bodies is the Lindow Man who was found in the Lindow Moss near Manchester, England. He died about 300 BCE and was thrice-killed: he was hit on the head, his throat was cut, and he was strangled by a leather thong around his neck. In their book The Scots: A Genetic Journey, Alistair Moffat and James Wilson describe the sacrifice this way:
“Lindow man’s death was protracted and almost certainly excruciating—there was no evidence that he had been given any drug. Almost certainly surrounded by priests and perhaps a large congregation gathered to witness an event of immense significance, the young man was first poisoned and then beaten. He was hit on the head with an axe but the blow did not kill him. He lived to be garroted and have his throat cut. When the priests placed his naked body in Lindow Moss to drown, it is possible that, even at that moment, he was still alive.”
In Ireland, the bog body known as Clonycavan Man was killed by a series of blows to the head, probably by an ax. There are also suggestions that he was disemboweled. The bog where the body was found would have been on the border between two kingdoms at about 300 BCE.
Another Irish bog body, Oldcroghan Man was killed by a stab wound to his chest. Defense wounds on one arm show that he tried to fight off the fatal assault. He was decapitated, his nipples were cut, and his thorax severed from his abdomen. The cutting of the nipple is highly significant. Sucking a king’s nipples was an ancient Irish form of submission and the mutilation perpetrated on Oldcroghan Man would have rendered him ineligible for kingship. Oldcroghan Man was probably a person of high social rank: his hands show little evidence of hard work and his fingernails were carefully manicured.
With regard to the bog bodies of Oldcroghan Man and Clonycavan Man, archaeologist Eamonn Kelly in his article “Bodies from the Bog: New Insights into Life and Death in Pagan Celtic Ireland,” writes:
“The two men had been ritually killed and may represent fertility offerings associated with sovereignty rites.”
The ritual human sacrifice evidenced by the bog bodies have often been attributed to the Druids. While it is commonly felt that the Druids engaged in human sacrifice, the reasons for this and the religious thought behind it remain obscure, as the Druids relied on oral instruction rather than writing with regard to their religious traditions. Caroline Alexander, in her book Lost Gold of the Dark Ages: War, Treasure, writes:
“This determination to rely on oral instruction accounts in great part for the frustrating lack of documentation of this fascinating and mysterious sect. Today, the Druids are probably the most famous, if misrepresented, relic of native British religion.”
After the Romans left Britain in 410 CE, the island was invaded by Angles and Saxons. According to some reports, when these raiders were about to sail home following a slaving raid, they would offer a sacrifice to their gods by either drowning or crucifying one in ten of their captives.
In northern China, Shimao is a Neolithic stone-walled site which dates to about 2000 BCE. In the center of the site is a pyramid-shaped feature known as the Imperial City Platform (Huang Cheng Tai) which is surrounded by a high wall. At the lower levels beneath the city gate, archaeologists found 80 decapitated human skulls. C.McCall, in a report in Current World Archaeology, writes:
“The heads appear to have been carefully positioned within an oval-shaped mass grave that was aligned south to north, parallel to the gate. Analysis shows these belonged to young females. Evidence of the cut-marks on the bones suggest the women were killed as ritual sacrifices, possibly as part of a ceremony associated with the walls.”
In Africa, the Yoruba also engaged in human sacrifice. Bruce Trigger writes:
“Some victims were venerated and accorded great honours prior to the deaths and were believed to become gods afterwards. Others were assured that their life-forces would be reborn to a higher social position in a subsequent life.”
In making human sacrifices for the king, the king would symbolically offer the victim as a substitute for himself. The bodies of both human and animal sacrifices were generally left to decay.
In summary, while most of today’s religions eschew ritual human sacrifice in their ceremonies, human sacrifice has a long history and has been found throughout the world. The summary shown above is neither complete nor comprehensive but is illustrative of human sacrifice in diverse cultures.
Religion 101
Religion 101 is a series of essays on different religious topics in which the concept of religion is not confined the the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), nor is it restricted to religions which are based on the worship of gods. More from this series:
Religion 201: Human Sacrifice
Religion 101: The Meaning of Ghosts
Religion 201: Reincarnation
Religion 201: An Introduction to Ancestor Worship and Veneration
Religion 101: God-Given Morality
Religion 101: Some Norse Gods
Religion 101: Divination in Ancient Civilizations
Religion 101: Zoroaster's Vision