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Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)

ox.ac.uk

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Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)

#71

Post by throw0101b »

gettodachoppa wrote: post #15

[flagged]

> My growing distrust of soft sciences […]

The "soft sciences" are harder (more difficult) to do than the "hard" sciences in many ways.

Less evidence just laying about just waiting to be tested (archaeology, ancient history), non-deterministic subjects (humans), not easily reproducible environments (society). Quantum mechanics has it easy in comparison.

Is it any surprise that the consensus goes back and form a few times.

Even when the hard scientists have something 'simple' to study like the deterministic, macro-scale universe they still get it wrong: how long was the Big Bang Theory not taking seriously?

Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)

#72

Post by ffgjgf1 »

AllegedAlec wrote: post #33
miroljub wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> No, Cato was not right. He was a racist, war criminal and very corrupt politician. Even if he was all of that, which I'd dispute or at least question, that doesn't mean he wasn't right

> which I'd dispute or at least question,

He wanted to destroy and almost exterminate/enslave a massive city for much more practical reasons than stopping child sacrifice (which was a side note at best..). How could you question that?

Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)

#73

Post by dumpsterdiver »

hef19898 wrote: post #38
dumpsterdiver wrote: post #11

[flagged]

[flagged]

When a parent "sacrifices" a child after it is born, they have indeed aborted that particular mission.

This article is referring to events that happened 2500 years ago. What do you think abortion looked like 2500 years ago? Was it any less barbaric?

Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)

#74

Post by ffgjgf1 »

stargazer-3 wrote: post #18
LatteLazy wrote: post #3

I am surprised this is a big deal, I thought it was well accepted. (Other) Phoenicians did it, Romans practised human (not sure about child) sacrifice and I thought the Carthaginians themselves recorded doing it? Humans are pretty crazy and we shouldn't pretend otherwise...

> I thought it was well accepted I was in a museum in Sardinia (was part of Carthage) sometime ago and saw some of the tophets mentioned in the article. The argument from the linked article was repeated on one of the info boards - that the Romans demonized their enemies and lots of our sources on alleged child sacrifice come from them. I am not sure about the Carthagenian sources on the matter, but they did not make…

There are other (non-Roman) sources describing child sacrifice in Phoenician societies.

Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)

#75

Post by ffgjgf1 »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #4
LatteLazy wrote: post #3

I am surprised this is a big deal, I thought it was well accepted. (Other) Phoenicians did it, Romans practised human (not sure about child) sacrifice and I thought the Carthaginians themselves recorded doing it? Humans are pretty crazy and we shouldn't pretend otherwise...

Not much of anything the Carthaginians recorded survived. Their civilisation was destroyed as thoroughly as possible, and the only proper accounts of it are Roman and Greek. So nearly everything about Carthaginian history is naturally controversial for that reason.

> was destroyed as thoroughly as possible, and the only proper accounts of it are Roman and Greek.

Physical destruction/genocide wasn’t really necessarily for that. Texts written on papyrus just don’t last very long. Nothing survives from the Etruscans either and the Roman never actively suppressed their culture as far as we know. People just stopped speaking the language and texts were no longer copied.

We know so much about many middle eastern civilizations exclusively because they were using clay tablets and liked making inscriptions on rocks. Had they used more perishable materials we’d know significantly less about them than the Carthaginians.

Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)

#76

Post by ffgjgf1 »

rsynnott wrote: post #61
ffgjgf1 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you’d have to question the independence The Greeks had no issue describing the bizarre Etruscan custom of no exposing “excess” female infants and treating the more or less equally to boys. Killing infants or even young children was really not a big deal in the ancient word. Viewing it as some act of extreme evil is mainly a Christian thing…

Oh, sure; I'm strictly talking sourcing independence (none of these are primary sources, and what _their_ source was is generally unclear). To be clear, I'm not saying Carthaginians didn't sacrifice kids, I'm saying that claims from Plato and Plutarch, _in themselves_, are not great evidence for this.

> Plato and Plutarch, _in themselves_, are not great evidence for this.

Why? That’s more evidence than we have for many other things we ‘know’ about the ancient world. We often have just a single source written down by somebody less reliable than Plutarch or Plato.

I mean we’d find something corroborated by two ancients authors sufficient for most other events which weren’t as controversial (purely from a modern perspective)

Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)

#77

Post by AmericanChopper »

ffgjgf1 wrote: post #75
AmericanChopper wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not much of anything the Carthaginians recorded survived. Their civilisation was destroyed as thoroughly as possible, and the only proper accounts of it are Roman and Greek. So nearly everything about Carthaginian history is naturally controversial for that reason.

> was destroyed as thoroughly as possible, and the only proper accounts of it are Roman and Greek. Physical destruction/genocide wasn’t really necessarily for that. Texts written on papyrus just don’t last very long. Nothing survives from the Etruscans either and the Roman never actively suppressed their culture as far as we know. People just stopped speaking the language and texts were no longer copied. We know so m…

I'm pretty sure that the total destruction of their cities, and all institutions of their society is one of the main reasons nobody was around to preserve their language or history. There are almost no primary sources of Carthaginian history, the only real close-to-contemporary sources are an incomplete account from Polybius (a Greek, who lived as a Roman slave), and Livy (a Roman aristocrat born 100 years after the destruction of Carthage). If you want to make statements about what Carthage and it's people were like, your options for source material are a mostly destroyed archeological record, or second hand accounts from outsiders mostly comprised of Carthage's enemies.

Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)

#78

Post by gattilorenz »

Keysh wrote: post #42
gattilorenz wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Child abandonment was common in the ancient world, and human sacrifice is found in many historical societies, but child sacrifice is relatively uncommon” The whole article is about this not being well accepted by ancient authors nor by modern historians, that’s why it’s a big deal

No the article is about how child sacrifice by Carthaginians was widely accepted by ancient (Greek and Roman) authors, but has been doubted by (some) 20th Century historians and archeologists.

I guess it depends on what it means "accepted"; my sentence is indeed ambiguous.

Romans did not accept (like) the fact that Carthaginians sacrificed children. They did accept (acknowledge, which is a much better word here) the fact that children were sacrificed there.

Some modern historians/archeologies did not acknowledge (nor presumably like) that at all.

Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)

#79

Post by hef19898 »

dumpsterdiver wrote: post #73
hef19898 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

When a parent "sacrifices" a child after it is born, they have indeed aborted that particular mission. This article is referring to events that happened 2500 years ago. What do you think abortion looked like 2500 years ago? Was it any less barbaric?

Child sacrifices are, by modern standards, babaric. But then again a lot things 2,500 years ago were. Applying modern morality get's you nowhere.

I don't have the slightest idea what is babaric about abortion, if done properly that is.

Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)

#80

Post by fastball »

ffgjgf1 wrote: post #57
fastball wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Societies have also been known to completely fabricate horrible anecdotes about their neighbors / nemeses.

In this case you have multiple societies independently telling the same thing about the same society. Seems about as credible as it gets in a situation like this. Also it’s not like killing infants was a big deal for the Greeks. There were even a bit shocked by their perceived lack of female infanticide in the Etruscan society.

I don't think it is entirely clear that the accounts are independent.
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