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Ancient Mass Child Sacrifice in Peru May Be World's Largest

news.nationalgeographic.com

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Re: Ancient Mass Child Sacrifice in Peru May Be World's Largest

#21

Post by verylittlemeat »

bambax wrote: post #4

Why "sacrifice" and not murder? > "People sacrifice that which is of most and greatest value to them," he explains. But then: > isotopic analysis indicates that they were not all drawn from local populations but likely came from different ethnic groups and regions of the Chimú Empire To accept to have your own child taken from you and cut open to offer its heart to some angry God supposes an amount of "faith" difficu…

I think we have to be careful of reading the morality of our own culture into others.

That might sound glib but we have plenty of evidence even in our time of parents killing their children or allowing others to kill their children to save them from prophesied doom.

Re: Ancient Mass Child Sacrifice in Peru May Be World's Largest

#22

Post by mkempe »

bambax wrote: post #4

Why "sacrifice" and not murder? > "People sacrifice that which is of most and greatest value to them," he explains. But then: > isotopic analysis indicates that they were not all drawn from local populations but likely came from different ethnic groups and regions of the Chimú Empire To accept to have your own child taken from you and cut open to offer its heart to some angry God supposes an amount of "faith" difficu…

At the re-consecration of the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan in 1487, the Aztecs sacrificed between 10,000 and 80,400 prisoners over the course of four days.

"For many rites, the victim had such a quantity of prescribed duties that it is difficult to imagine how the accompanying festival would have progressed without some degree of compliance on the part of the victim. For instance, victims were expected to bless children, greet and cheer passers-by, hear people's petitions to the gods, visit people in their homes, give discourses and lead sacred songs, processions and dances." [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice_in_Aztec_cultu...

Re: Ancient Mass Child Sacrifice in Peru May Be World's Largest

#23

Post by dragonwriter »

bambax wrote: post #4

Why "sacrifice" and not murder? > "People sacrifice that which is of most and greatest value to them," he explains. But then: > isotopic analysis indicates that they were not all drawn from local populations but likely came from different ethnic groups and regions of the Chimú Empire To accept to have your own child taken from you and cut open to offer its heart to some angry God supposes an amount of "faith" difficu…

> Why "sacrifice" and not murder?

The two terms aren't mutually exclusive (though the latter refers to unlawful intentional killing, and that probably doesn't apply here accept by importing foreign moral codes as law.)

And, in any case, “sacrifice” is used for things destroyed as offerings to supernatural entities irrespective of their value outside of that purpose for the people destroying them.

Re: Ancient Mass Child Sacrifice in Peru May Be World's Largest

#24

Post by nprecup »

bambax wrote: post #4

Why "sacrifice" and not murder? > "People sacrifice that which is of most and greatest value to them," he explains. But then: > isotopic analysis indicates that they were not all drawn from local populations but likely came from different ethnic groups and regions of the Chimú Empire To accept to have your own child taken from you and cut open to offer its heart to some angry God supposes an amount of "faith" difficu…

From some information in the article, it seems possible to me that the mass sacrifice might have been a cruel pacification technique by the conquering Inca? It says the Chimu empire fell around 1475 to the Inca. The rope and textiles were radiocarbon dated to 1400 to 1450 AD.

Re: Ancient Mass Child Sacrifice in Peru May Be World's Largest

#25

Post by tptacek »

bambax wrote: post #4

Why "sacrifice" and not murder? > "People sacrifice that which is of most and greatest value to them," he explains. But then: > isotopic analysis indicates that they were not all drawn from local populations but likely came from different ethnic groups and regions of the Chimú Empire To accept to have your own child taken from you and cut open to offer its heart to some angry God supposes an amount of "faith" difficu…

The Nazis deliberately murdered children by the thousands, but nobody would call those “human sacrifices”.

Re: Ancient Mass Child Sacrifice in Peru May Be World's Largest

#26

Post by red75prime »

psergeant wrote: post #15
red75prime wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He stopped himself though. But yeah, more likely it was a neighbor who stopped him.

He didn’t stop himself, according to the story, God intervened. He was willing To go the whole hog

Do you think it was what really happened? Guy hears the voice telling him to kill his son, then someone stops him.

Re: Ancient Mass Child Sacrifice in Peru May Be World's Largest

#27

Post by kasey_junk »

tptacek wrote: post #25
bambax wrote: post #4

Why "sacrifice" and not murder? > "People sacrifice that which is of most and greatest value to them," he explains. But then: > isotopic analysis indicates that they were not all drawn from local populations but likely came from different ethnic groups and regions of the Chimú Empire To accept to have your own child taken from you and cut open to offer its heart to some angry God supposes an amount of "faith" difficu…

The Nazis deliberately murdered children by the thousands, but nobody would call those “human sacrifices”.

I bet you can find literary or sociological texts that y’all about those as sacrifices to some modern diety concept.

Re: Ancient Mass Child Sacrifice in Peru May Be World's Largest

#28

Post by dustincoates »

tptacek wrote: post #25
bambax wrote: post #4

Why "sacrifice" and not murder? > "People sacrifice that which is of most and greatest value to them," he explains. But then: > isotopic analysis indicates that they were not all drawn from local populations but likely came from different ethnic groups and regions of the Chimú Empire To accept to have your own child taken from you and cut open to offer its heart to some angry God supposes an amount of "faith" difficu…

The Nazis deliberately murdered children by the thousands, but nobody would call those “human sacrifices”.

Incidentally, that's what "Holocaust" means, and why many instead use the word "Shoah."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_Holocaust

> The word "holocaust" originally derived from the Greek word holokauston, meaning "a completely (holos) burnt (kaustos) sacrificial offering," or "a burnt sacrifice offered to a god."

> In Judaism, Shoah (שואה), meaning "calamity" in Hebrew, became the standard term for the 20th century Holocaust[2] (see Yom HaShoah). This is because 'Holocaust' connotes a sacrifice, and Jewish leaders argue there was no sacrifice.

Re: Ancient Mass Child Sacrifice in Peru May Be World's Largest

#29

Post by yosito »

tptacek wrote: post #14
yosito wrote: post #2

Having read A Death in the Andes and 1492 and having spent a few months in the Andes myself, it didn't surprise me to read that this child sacrifice included llamas and was likely an attempt to appease supernatural forces as plagues and natural disasters threatened precolombian civilizations. The Andes are a very strange superstitious place even today. Native cultures and traditions are still present. Llama sacrifice…

We're talking about an archeological find dated roughly 3500 years ago. Within the same span of time, human sacrifice was practiced in parts of Europe as well. Few of us use that fact as an opportunity to spread rumors that the modern-day Italians or Welsh continue to do so.

We must have read different articles. The one I read said it was dated around 1450AD.

Re: Ancient Mass Child Sacrifice in Peru May Be World's Largest

#30

Post by tptacek »

dustincoates wrote: post #28
tptacek wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Nazis deliberately murdered children by the thousands, but nobody would call those “human sacrifices”.

Incidentally, that's what "Holocaust" means, and why many instead use the word "Shoah." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_Holocaust > The word "holocaust" originally derived from the Greek word holokauston, meaning "a completely (holos) burnt (kaustos) sacrificial offering," or "a burnt sacrifice offered to a god." > In Judaism, Shoah (שואה), meaning "calamity" in Hebrew, became the standard term for the 20t…

Wow. TIL.
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