61–70 of 322 posts
This article doesn't specifically mention cannibalism, but in my twenties I read a book that posited that "the lamb" of Christianity being a symbol of peace, as well as the Hindu reverence for the cow, were based on their ability to provide food security because they are grazers who are able to turn grass into protein. Grass is not a human food source. So this means they don't compete for the same food sources we do.…
They dismiss Cortez and his men as exaggerating the number of skulls when they claimed 130,000, but if you start calculating how many are in the image of the reconstruction in the article, it's easily close to 100,000. This reminds me of how the academic consensus was that child sacrifice in Carthage was merely Roman propaganda, until they dug up the massive infant necropolis near the temple to Moloch (yes, that Molo…
As a literary reader of the bible, I noticed that there are literally one hundred different passages in the bible where God says that he absolutely does not want his followers to sacrifice children to him or condemns other religions for this practice. https://www.openbible.info/topics/human_sacrifice That they had to repeat it over and over again gives me the impression that this practice was disturbingly widespread…
One reason why there was so much repetition against human sacrifice in the Old Testament may be related to the fact that the Carthaginians, as a Phoenician civilization, were part of the Semitic language group, and so there may be more tendency for those cultures in that time to have those practices. It's easier to avoid falling into particular practices if those who do them are separated geographically, culturally, or linguistically from you. (For example, there probably aren't many people in Western countries looking to adopt sky burial traditions of far-off Tibetan groups.)
I just asked google to solve a couple of problems for me. What is the current population, and how many years do they experience in one hour on the wall clock?
Current world population according to Google: 7.6B How many years in 7.6B hours: 867,579.9
So we are nearly at a point where there are a million years of human live/conciousness/etc experienced every hour.
That's a lot.
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> This reminds me of how the academic consensus was that child sacrifice in Carthage was merely Roman propaganda, There is really no evidence of child sacrifice at Carthage. Not sure why this myth persists but the much more plausible explanation is that (wealthy) children who died of natural causes were cremated, a very common practice in the ancient world that goes back literally 10,000 years. > Human sacrifice was…
While this is still debated by a few hold outs, This is one where Wikipedia is out of date. Oxford and others released a paper in 2014 and it is now generally held by historians and archeologists that it did in fact happen. Archeoloists questioned Plutarch, and Plutarch won. Check out Antiquity 2012, 2014, and 2017.
I'm familiar with the Oxford research. It's not conclusive and I don't think most archaeologists have signed on. We'll see how it holds up over time. Even if you accept Oxford, it's still the case that child sacrifice, if it did take place, was rare and reserved only for the very wealthy. The idea of Carthaginians all gathering in a stadium and hurling children into a pit of fire for Moloch is pure (Roman) myth.
That aside, As a historian, I think our skepticism of primary sources has gone way way way to far. Plutarch is ignored, because Roman. Cortez was ignored because Spanish. Do they have reason to exaggerate? Sure and they at times do. But the archeological evidence on both Carthage and Cortez was really clear.
We continue to find sites with mass sacrifices (not just of children) in Central and South America (Aztec, Mayan, and Inca) and instead of disregarding it due to the Spanish reports, students should understand that these incidents were probably a big reason why Spain so quickly supplanted the Aztecs.
This article doesn't specifically mention cannibalism, but in my twenties I read a book that posited that "the lamb" of Christianity being a symbol of peace, as well as the Hindu reverence for the cow, were based on their ability to provide food security because they are grazers who are able to turn grass into protein. Grass is not a human food source. So this means they don't compete for the same food sources we do.…
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This is whataboutism, I think.
Then again, it makes sense to put things into historical perspective. When we are about to talk about how one group was murderous and cruel, and how odd it makes us feel, it makes sense to point out what was going on elsewhere. Especially when the exact group reporting on those things is involved in cruelties of their own and uses these reports to excuse their own cruelties. Cortez him self was quite cruel, fond of t…
It’s just an article about Aztecs.
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I would read about the inquisitions first. The Spanish Inquisition killed about 5,000 as an execution of the civil law, not a religious ritual. The law was bad, but the interrogations were in an attempt to only censure or punish the “guilty,” and to the correct degree. It’s quite a different situation. Here is a link to the Wikipedia article: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition
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I would read about the inquisitions first. The Spanish Inquisition killed about 5,000 as an execution of the civil law, not a religious ritual. The law was bad, but the interrogations were in an attempt to only censure or punish the “guilty,” and to the correct degree. It’s quite a different situation. Here is a link to the Wikipedia article: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition
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Earlier quoted context omitted.
While this is still debated by a few hold outs, This is one where Wikipedia is out of date. Oxford and others released a paper in 2014 and it is now generally held by historians and archeologists that it did in fact happen. Archeoloists questioned Plutarch, and Plutarch won. Check out Antiquity 2012, 2014, and 2017.
> Oxford and others released a paper in 2014 I'm familiar with the Oxford research. It's not conclusive and I don't think most archaeologists have signed on. We'll see how it holds up over time. Even if you accept Oxford, it's still the case that child sacrifice, if it did take place, was rare and reserved only for the very wealthy. The idea of Carthaginians all gathering in a stadium and hurling children into a pit…