Darryl Cooper's MartyrMade podcast does some interesting analysis of the history and common heritage just about every human culture has with human sacrifice and/or cannibalism sometime in our respective pasts: http://www.martyrmade.com/8-how-to-serve-man-sacrifice-canni...

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.)