Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014) | Hacker News Reader

Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)

ox.ac.uk

125 pointsareoform235 comments

I remember reading an analysis of a script written during the wars of Carthage with Rome which had this incredible meaning: "Stop adopting slave children to sacrifice them so that we have a favorable outcome, it needs to be your actual children".

Most if not all Mediterranean civilizations practiced child sacrifice, for Minoans the keywords for those with access to scientific papers is "The Southern House of Knossos" and ofcourse the 14 youths being sent each year to the Minotaur

Most Ministries of culture of the respective countries have not financed further research to this arguably interesting topic

Given the paucity of Punic texts that we possess, I'd be surprised to learn that this script of which you speak is in any language other than Latin.

Most, if not all civilizations, practice child sacrifice to this day. It's called war, and it's practiced to such a ritualistic, feverish pitch that it may as well be a public festival glorifying death and national identity.

The "proof" that the Carthaginians, Canaanites, and Bronze Age Minoans practiced child sacrifice begs a misanthropic perspective from the start. While our modern society may think nothing of animals, and even reject the notion that they possess a soul, this was certainly not the case for the Etruscans or Canaanites. We have ample evidence, in the case of Etruria, that children who died prematurely were embalmed and buried with the remains of household pets, in the hope that the souls of both the animals and the children would be enticed to reincarnate in the presence of their living loved ones again. Being as close to residential districts as they were, these Carthaginian "tophets" served the same purpose--directing the souls of those who perished to return in new forms. The concept that these children were murdered to appease barbarous, foreign gods exposes a level of ignorance and anti-Semiticism that is unfortunately altogether too familiar in the modern-day.

As for the "Southern House of Knossos", the keyword here is "excarnation" and is an alternative method of mummification.

I want to make a plug for the Fall of Civilizations podcast. Last month was the Carthage episode. Here's the audio version(video version hasn't been released yet): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mqX9twdyYo

That is such a well done podcast and give a detailed look at a series of cultures as they grew, prospered, and faded. Fascinating stuff.

I love that podcast. Too bad there are only a few episodes, but I get it, if you make everything yourself, you can only be this fast.

Dan Carlin has an excellent podcast on Carthage as well: https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-punic-nig...

Child sacrifice was part of Semitic culture. The story of Issac and Jacob (Ishmael and Jacob in the Arab scriptures) teaching against the practice of child sacrifice is pretty good evidence that it was an old practice and that Hebrew and Arab cultures were trying to move on from it. Phoenicians, also Semitic, never moved on from the practice.

I don't understand why it's so controversial.

I think you do understand why "our ancestors practiced child sacrifice" is controversial when you think about it

I think the most charitable interpretation of OP is that there is no controversy over the fact that pagan Semites practiced ritual human (child) sacrifice.

A simple fact of history being controversial is a function of bias. The worship of Moloch and its attendant ritual of child sacrifice is attested to in many scriptures.

It is, but really human sacrifice was the norm, not the exception, in preclassical ancient societies.

Well, either they did or they didn't. The confusion comes when we try to apply modern outlooks to people from a different civilization, and end up saying "well, I'd never do that, so neither would they," and we end up ignoring evidence that doesn't fit our preconception of the world.

Not really. My ancestors were Norse and practiced human sacrifice. There are also some archeological findings indicating that they also practiced child sacrifice. Doesn't bother me at all, I sm not my ancestors.

Great timing on empires who sacrifice children. Today this article about Instagram facilitating child sex trafficking was released. https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/instagram-facilitates-vast... Mel Gibson is about to release a four part documentary about child sex trafficking and sacrifice. I expect to see a bunch of reminders of how Mel is antisemitic and such to gatekeep people from watching it.

something something groomers?

That part about Gibson doing a documentary is not true. Just Google it.

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.

> Their civilisation was destroyed as thoroughly as possible

Ehh, we still remember they exist. How many other civilizations have been so thoroughly eradicated that we don't even remember them at all?

many! mostly nature-friendly ones lacking concrete perhaps?

> 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.

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.

Yes, but that more or less applies to every civilization besides Greeks and Romans regardless of what happened to them (and even the amount of Greek/Romans text that have survived is tiny). Maybe Egypt is an exception.

For instance most of what we know about ancient Persia comes from Greek sources. As far as we know more the Greek/Romans had preserved much more information about Achaemenids than their Sassanian successors.

Even if Carthage was somehow semi peacefully annexed into the Roman empire and and their upper classes were assimilated into the Roman society over time more or less the same thing would have happen (just that we’d have had a longer window during which Punic texts could’ve been translated to Greek/Roman). This happened all the time after all.

“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.

Romans almost exclusively only sacrificed foreigners who were basically subhuman (and even that was exceptionally rare). Sacrificing your own citizens was something else…

as late as the 19th century, "accepted practices of the time" was a defense for some genocides. Source: british historians documenting acts of war by early British Kings

> 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 it into the argument, so I assume the evidence was either slimmer or newer.

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

Yeah, but they weren't exactly friends with the Phoenicians either, were they?

Why didn’t they accuse their other enemies of this?

Anyway, on balance I think it’s pretty reasonably to say that it’s more likely that Carthaginians practiced child sacrifice to some extent.

Which is more likely: ancient people sacificing their children, or ancient writers wanting to mess with future historians or simply writing horror?

They mention it was documented by the Greeks & Romans, but was dismissed at the time as politically motivated slander. Those records plus physical evidence give it more weight, so I say the former is more likely.

The same people who wrote about mythical creatures, mythical cities, mythical wars and all kinds of propaganda and made up stories...

Yes that's why it being supported by physical evidence, which it appears to be, is so important.

History as social science was basically invented between 19th and 20th century. Ancient writers generally had agenda and they happily filled missing pieces with ideologically-fueled speculation.

but, intelligence is not new. There were astute readers at that time, too. So there must have been a spectrum, and reading people knew something about that spectrum.. from fawning sycophants of the current despot, to tellers of tall tales, to scholars, and those close to traders and travelers.

In a society where tons of kids are born and half of them don't live to see their fifth birthday, children's lives are a lot less valuable than in the Western societies of 2023, where kids are something of a rare resource and they are expected to live full, long lives.

This difference needs to be taken into account when thinking about various probabilities in the past.

Psychologically, I don't think the value of children has changed. Mourning the death of children is as ancient a literary trope as any.

But from a microeconomic point of view, children were more valuable in pre-industrial times. Most people worked in agriculture or the trades and lived in multi-generation households, and children were necessary to help with chores and eventually take over the main occupation and care for the elder parents. There was no retirement fund, just your children. Food and clothing were more expensive and childbirth was risky, so children represented a major investment. That they were sacrificed is a testament to how much value people placed on the ritual, not the lack of value of children. See also how valuable farm animals were sacrificed.

"Mourning the death of children is as ancient a literary trope as any."

It might have been different between infants and slightly older children. The really young ones died all too often.

That is definitely true, we have diaries from folks who lived in the 1600s in London where you have the different reactions to their children dying at different age. They loved and cared for them but with close to a quarter of kids dying in their first year, it was something most families came to expect and experience but that they never completely numb to. When an older child died, it was an even bigger deal because they'd got past that dangerous first few years and you weren't expecting it.

What's interesting is that a "good" name would often be reused when a child died. So a former leader of my country had three daughters called "Catherine" (IIRC), but two are buried beside each other in a small gold mining town's cemetery, having died young, the last Catherine living to adulthood.

Ritual sacrifice, including of children is well documented all across the world (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sacrifice). So it's not a question of likelihood, we've dug up plenty of gravesites documenting it especially in Mesoamerica. There's even some modern examples, with an isolated tribe of Chilean natives sacrificing a 5 year old after the 1960 Valdivia earthquake.

You have it sort of backwards. These practices are only 'horror' by modern standards, it doesn't make sense to disregard history because we live by other values than an ancient civilization.

I think the fact that it seems incredible to us that people could sacrifice their children is a testament to the advance of civilisation.

children were not always so precious. if memory does not fail me, in the 20th century, there were still laws that stated that children were property of their parents who disposed of their lifes as they wish. that means you could kill your child without consequences. child labor : legal. etc...

They lived at the Malthusian population limit of their ecosystem anyway.

Sacrificing children was just another way to get rid of excess population and would absolutely improve the lives of whoever was left.

Any children not sacrificed would have to die by disease, war, or starvation at some point anyway, because again, the population cannot grow above the Malthusian limit.

This core concept - that preindustrial people all lived at their Malthusian population limit - is incredibly important in understanding the preindustrial world and it's shocking that it's not more broadly understood and applied.

Sounds like an overly simplistic answer. You got a source?

It is hard to argue against it as a first principle in population growth: reproduction is pretty simple math.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism

You would be surprised: a child that was difficult to provide for and had no future of providing for you in your old age wasn't that hard to discard even 100 years ago.

Some people believe abortion is basically the same thing

…which it isn’t. We know that. Right?

Not if they follow biblical precedent.

Child and human sacrifices were surprisingly common across the world. Many countries had to pass special laws to ban these practices - but it hasn't yet been rooted out.

Perhaps you could give some examples of where it still occurs, having not been rooted out. I'd be very interested as I'm not aware of any.

Still happens quite a lot here in Nigeria and many parts of Africa

Also hasn't been completely rooted out in India.

For example: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-39176570

This is only from India but you can see such instances in Africa as well:

10-Year-Old Boy Killed By His Own Family in a Human Sacrifice Ritual There has been over 103 such ritualistic sacrifices in the 2014-2021 period: https://www.vice.com/en/article/7kx9pe/10-year-old-boy-human...

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/baby-sacrif... There is also adult human sacrifices:

There are actually temnples in India dedicated to human sacrifice. Kamakhya temple in Assam, India is infamous for that: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1908706.stm

There was a case from 2019 where a woman was sacrificed in this temple: https://news.abplive.com/crime/assam-human-sacrifice-kamakhy...

This is from April 2023. Five arrested over human sacrifice at Indian temple https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/05/indian-police-...

https://www.deccanherald.com/national/interactive-human-sacr...

One of the great gifts of the Abrahamic religions was the end of human sacrifice.

Here's a fantastic graph of sacrifice over time: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FjEVivqXwAAr3kj

404

This was the base for Isaac Asimov's short story The Dead Past.

Turns out that Cato the Censor was right.

Carthago delenda est!

About what?

Romans practiced ritual human killing, too. They acted very haughty about others doing it, but they buried people under a temple when Hannibal whomped them at Cannae and they very happily and publicly performed ritual killings of prisoners of war during triumphs. Cato thought that was fine--why then, not, Roma delenda est?

Another example that comes to mind: the xōchiyāōyōtl in Mexico did involve human sacrifice, and it even was a nontrivial ramp-up in the act from pre-Mexica societies. Such acts then used in part to legitimate oppressive activity by European colonizers. They needed, after all, to be civilized. But contemporaneously Christopher Columbus himself, the guy who's got pictures in American government buildings, instituted "bring us impossible amounts of gold every year or we chop off your hands" and "test your swords' sharpness by hacking off children's legs" when lording over the Taino.

This is not an incongruity that can be reconciled, it must be understood and accepted, and the idea of "taking sides" in this flippant way for a conflict two thousand years old is deeply, deeply foolish.

Can anyone see a date on this post? Is it recent? This 2014 Guardian article seems to report a very similar revelation:

https://amp.theguardian.com/science/2014/jan/21/carthaginian...

Humans are funny. We pretend (a lot) to be more civilized than we are. Even the best of us falls far short of the ideal.

We like to believe we're very far from human sacrifice, tyranny, the Triumphs of Rome, etc.

We're very much not.

In many cases, we should look at a civilization's institutions rather than at its individuals to judge its degree of "advancement". Institutions are often much closer to the ideals of a society than its people.

For example, in many countries, people are quick to suspect someone, whereas the judicial system sees a defendant as innocent until proven guilty. (Imperfectly, of course, but better than what people do.)

(Edit: typo)

Mimetic Theory, developed by Rene Girard, is a good entry point for modern people to get some insight into why this practice was (and still is in some places) so common.

Was this for religious reasons, or for quality control?

Typically the gods did not look favorably on inferior product being placed on the alter. Even King Kong demands the hottest young babe in the tribe, does he not? Did anyone ever “sacrifice” hoary old men or women to gods? (Only in passage of kingship did humans ritually kille the elder males.)

So “religious” thinking would tend to demand something dear. This is inline with an inherent bug in human psyche — a false thought - that God wants something from us and is prone to making unreasonable demands from humanity.

> Typically the gods did not look favorably on inferior product being placed on the alter.

I bet "the gods" were especially apt to take that attitude in the cultures where people ate the sacrifice afterwards.

“Strictly speaking, you see, it’s prayers that go up to the gods,” said the priest doubtfully.

“As I understand it,” said Moist, “the gift of sausages are offered to Offler by being fried, yes? And the spirit of the sausages ascends unto Offler by means of the smell? And then you eat the sausages?”

“Ah, no. Not exactly. Not at all,” said the young priest, who knew this one. “It might look like that to the uninitiated, but, as you say, the true sausagidity goes straight to Offler. He, of course, eats the spirit of the sausages. We eat the mere earthly shell, which believe me turns to dust and ashes in our mouths.”

“That would explain why the smell of sausages is always better than the actual sausage, then?” said Moist. “I’ve often noticed that.”

The priest was impressed. “Are you a theologian, sir?”

Brilliant. Where is this from?

Terry Pratchett. I think "Making Money".

Going Postal IIRC.

Some may discern the taint of dualism in this (very amusing) dialogue.

https://radhesiam.com/bhagavadgita-quotes/bhagavad-gita-9-24...

There is this possibility to consider. Another Muslim Saint, Junaid (R), said “Water takes the color of the cup it is poured in”. The Prophet (SAWS) said “There is no I but Allah”.

You can always fashion a new cup to suit your contingent condition. But the spirit of Sacrifice, and the Enjoying of the pleasures is eternal and immutable. Is it possible that ritual sacrifice, however distorted by the understanding of ancient people, is an intrinsic impetus of the conscious knowing, feeling, desiring (and at times afflicted) being known as Human, guiding us to detachment so that we may too enjoy without attachment, like God.

We live in an age so devoid of sacrifice that it's hard for us to wrap our heads around why this was so common and so important. This act would add a layer of irrefutable legitimacy to the groups religious beliefs, and as such would make those beliefs into a unbreakable social bond. Grief is a powerful social glue, and when you use it so intentionally and solemnly it becomes a core part of the social fabric that held these groups together for hundreds of years in an ultra-hostile environment.

There are gangs where you have to kill somebody to become a full member. Same concept.

Some of the Nordic bog bodies speculated to be human sacrifices, were not exactly the most youthful and sprightly people of their society.

Religious. These were child sacrifices

Child sacrifice hooks into some very deep and dark aspects of human psychology that we have yet to unpack. There is a reason that this practice crops up in various civilizations seemingly independently, and it is not a pretty one - at least not by contemporary moral sensibilities.

It is impossible to understand the biblical narrative of the binding of Isaac, for example, without addressing the context in which such a narrative was popularized and eventually codified into a sacred text.

Abandoning/exposing infants (especially girls) was very widespread in the ancient word. It’s possible that ‘sacrifice’ was just a way to justify it through some ritual.

This didn’t really change untill the chirch started equating it with murder.

And until they started to take care of the unwanted ones.

Disgust against child sacrifice and most human sacrifice was a Roman sensibility, long before there was any church or christianity.

Yeah, I’m talking about infanticide specifically in that case.

Carthāgō dēlenda est

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

The Romans claimed this about themselves, but I'm not sure they're completely credible, at least about human sacrifice. The Roman Triumphal parade, for instance, included marching captured prisoners of war (often numbering in thousands), who would be led through the triumphal route up to the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. There, the prisoners would be executed. The Romans may have claimed that they weren't committing human sacrifice, but this seems hard to believe, given that the soldiers were killed on the grounds of the temple of their chief god, literally honored with the title "best and greatest."

On the whole, the Romans were quite enlightened compared to the other brutal civilizations of the ancient world, being governed more by law than superstition, but they still had these quirks that wouldn't be eradicated till Christianity replaced the state religion.

There's a clear in-group/out-group distinction, though.

Why not just kill them on the Campus Martius, then? Or in the middle of the Forum? Or even on the steps of the Senate house, to symbolize the supremacy of Roman state institutions?

It's not the killings of prisoners themselves - those were common throughout the ancient world, alongside slavery. It's the fact that they killed them at the temple to the chief god.

One needs to be very careful about which things to label human sacrifice. It is possible to be very "inclusive" there. One popular example is the expression "sacrificed on the altar of progress", and the works of philosophers such as Adorno and Horckheimer on the topic, who argued that human sacrifice just takes a different form in modern civilisation, but is still present e.g. as victims of car traffic, suicides from depression or industrial accidents. Imho, this only serves to hinder any kind of productive discussion because things tend to be not comparable in any way if terms are _that_ mushy.

I'd define anything as human sacrifice that the culture performing the act would label thus. E.g. we, as a modern civilization, don't call an abortion, war or execution "human sacrifice", so it isn't. The Romans didn't consider executing prisoners as such, because the prisoners were just subhuman and it was just an execution, so it isn't. The Carthagians seemed to think they were doing a human sacrifice, so yes, they were.

> One popular example is the expression "sacrificed on the altar of progress", and the works of philosophers such as Adorno and Horckheimer on the topic, who argued that human sacrifice just takes a different form in modern civilisation, but is still present e.g. as victims of car traffic, suicides from depression or industrial accidents. Imho, this only serves to hinder any kind of productive discussion because things tend to be not comparable in any way if terms are _that_ mushy.

I'm not talking about car (or chariot?) accidents here, I'm talking about literally thousands of people being executed on the grounds of a temple dedicated to Rome's chief god. Certainly people died in the Circus Maximus, and that is just sporting accident. I wouldn't even call gladiatorial combat human sacrifice, since it was mostly an entertainment spectacle in a more brutal time.

We're talking about Romans taking prisoners captured in war, marching them to one of the most significant religious locations within the sacred boundaries of the city, and executing them.

My issue with just trusting the ancients is that they sometimes aren't trustworthy. It's very possible that Rome didn't admit this was human sacrifice because Roman culture condemned human sacrifice, and kind of turned a blind eye to the ethics of this ritual.

No. Human sacrifice, in the definition I have given, has a clearly defined purpose (which I didn't state, because I thought this was implicit): Winning favour with the god(s). That only works in any religion I know of if you declare the purpose of making a sacrifice before the gods in some way.

The Romans did this through the ritual of immolation, where the animal was marked as a sacrifice by spreading mola (wheat spelt) and salsa (salt) on it. No immolation, no sacrifice. If they killed someone without immolation, to them it didn't have the purpose of pleasing the gods and thus wasn't human sacrifice. Edit: "immolation" in this context might be somewhat different in the english meaning. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mola_salsa for what I mean.

A lot of religions (don't know about the Roman in that aspect) also frown upon the intent of a sacrifice being impure: If you do the sacrifice with more than just the goal of pleasing God, e.g. to additionally get rid of that obnoxious goat/cock/person/..., then God won't be pleased.

In ancient religions, and especially Canaanite there was a great emphasis on bringing your best offerings to god, best fruits, most expensive wine and top meat.

It will be unusual that for children the unwanted ones suddenly are considered a good offering

> It will be unusual that for children the unwanted ones suddenly are considered a good offering

Seems like a win-win for me. The child is suddenly no longer unwanted but your ‘most prized possession’.

To be serious I’m not necessarily claiming that sacrifice was a direct alternative to infanticide just that there might have been some links and generally the fact that infanticide was quite widespread made sacrifice a bit more palatable.

> It is impossible to understand the biblical narrative of the binding of Isaac

Huh? It is quite easy to understand for me.

Abraham and Sarah were childless and Sarah was infertile/too old DRC. Abraham prayed for an heir and miraculously Sarah gives life to Isaac.

Yahwe demands Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, the most precious "thing" he has, to test his belief.

Since Abraham does as he is told, a angel stops him from killing Isaac in the last second.

Then he is promised by Yahwe his descendants that his descendants will be plentiful.

A myth/fairy tale IMHO but to each the most. Dawkins said that the god from the old testament is one of the most vile characters humans ever made up. To sick/tired to give examples, there are many.

>Huh? It is quite easy to understand for me.

Imagine if someone came up to you tomorrow and said "God talked to me and told me I also need to sacrifice my child." You'd assume they were crazy, hopefully to the point of calling the authorities.

It's impossible to look at that story from a modern context and think Abraham's actions are remotely right or rational. Why would anyone trust a god who does that? But if child sacrifices are a somewhat common thing, Yahwe looks like the good god who doesn't actually make you kill your kid, just asks that you're willing to kill your kid.

> Dawkins said that the god from the old testament is one of the most vile characters humans ever made up.

That’s just pure demagoguery. There are plenty of examples of much crueler cults we just don’t have as many surviving texts describing their practices.

Compared to someone like Huitzilopochtli Yahweh was pretty chill…

The story is much deeper than you give it credit:

1. God promises Abraham that his descendants will be numerous as 'stars in the sky'

2. Abraham and Sarah have 1 kid in their old age: Isaac, the only chance for God to fulfill the promise

3. God tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, his compliance indicates his faith in God's promise (that it can happen outside of his control, and beyond his knowledge)

4. God stops it and provides a 'ram in the thicket' as substitute, note the sacrifice still occurs.

5. Sacrifice is required to save the Israelites in Egypt from the angel of death, Passover begins.

6. We see a whole system and culture of sacrifices instituted in the tabernacle and later the temple as a method of 'atonement'

7. Jesus presents himself as the ultimate atonement or 'propitiation', closing the circle

Essentially in the Bible sacrifice is integral to the entire story, beginning to end. In some ways the story of the sacrifice of Isaac is a peek into the nature of justice and how in the Biblical God's conception of justice wrongdoing must be paid for by blood, just not necessarily the blood of the perpetrator themselves. All members of Israel are responsible for providing their sacrifices indicating that no one is free from guilt providing the backdrop for Christianity's pessimistic take on the nature of Man.

> Child sacrifice hooks into some very deep and dark aspects of human psychology that we have yet to unpack.

Maybe not. Humans first do something practical, and then use rituals and tradition to justify it.

Here's an alternative scenario:

In an age where abortion had a higher chance of killing the woman than childbirth, this was the only practical abortion.

It's only after the fact that it gets justified as a sacrifice demanded by the gods.

And once the practice is accepted, the next step is to forcefully sacrifice the children of your political enemies, i.e. the woman is not making the choice here.

That’s not the only practical abortion, abortion existed in ancient times too. However, even after birth there were easier methods, infant exposure was common and is far easier for parents than sacrifice

Greeks and Romans had almost bo qualms about infanticide though. It was no less acceptable than abortion is nowadays.

They only had issues with ritualizing the process or killing older children..

Is there an objective reason to find infanticide worse than abortion, besides cultural mores? It's worse for the performer, certainly, because you have to look at it before you kill it, but a newborn doesn't have any more personality than a fetus.

Well, I think abortion should be allowed until the child is 18. Basically, if parents think their child is a disappointment they should be allowed to cut their losses and start over. /s

If an infant is able to survive outside of another person without being hooked up to modern medical equipment I would say there is a very big difference between it an something which cannot.

Would it be acceptable to you to surgically remove the arm of, say, a 10 week old fetus, on the grounds that it is not able to survive outside the womb and therefore is just a piece of the mother's body at that point?

What would be the point of doing that? Let's go for something more relevant: would it be acceptable to you for me to force you to give a pint of blood every day to keep alive someone in a coma who could not live but for your blood?

What point do you need, isn't it a private matter to be decided only by the person who is housing the fetus?

But let's say there was a medical reason to do so for the sake of a child who was already born perhaps extremely premature and lost an arm in the process of extraction. By the standards given above, the already born child outranks the one still in the womb, and should be entitled to the arm if the owner of the womb agrees to donate it.

Your example is so far from relevance as to be really just an attempt to change the subject. The existence of some random person in a coma, unless they are my own child, or perhaps a clone, is not contingent upon actions undertaken with the participation (willing or not) of my reproductive system.

I mean, you have your mind made up, what is the point of you arguing with me?

would it be acceptable to you for me to force you to give a pint of blood every day to keep alive someone in a coma who could not live but for your blood?

Apt if the creation of the fetus wasn't your choice, but inaccurate if it was. If someone loses their balance and you grab their hand to stop them falling off a cliff, is it murder to deliberately let go before they regain their balance? Why can a person be legally compelled to sustain the life of a child after birth but not before?

None of this has anything to do with the difference between a unviable birth and an infant.

If an infant is able to survive outside of another person without being hooked up to modern medical equipment I would say there is a very big difference between it an something which cannot.

What happens when we invent artificial wombs? It isn't that far away.

Awesome, you should get on that.

I'm saying the morality shouldn't depend on the convenience of technological limitations. A hundred years ago a six month fetus wasn't viable. Now they are. Would abortion still be moral if we could instantly and painlessly teleport a fetus into an artificial womb?

Who cares? The question is 'what is the difference' and I gave one. Continue your crusade somewhere else.

or men having children, which would both be a highly desirable option for society as well as completely knocking the (specious) women's rights/controlling (specifically female) bodies argument out from the equation.

>Humans first do something practical, and then use rituals and tradition to justify it.

take this and combine it with sibling

>And I think the conclusion of the Phoenicians was that people get away with, and are even rewarded for doing evil things, because the gods are into that sort of stuff.

and then you get my theory.

Carl Jung had some interesting ideas on this topic, his book "Psychology and Religion" is a very thought-provoking work.

Maybe it started by people sacrificing what they considered most valuable to them -- their children.

Or maybe it started in a time of famine or other stress, where the young children were likely to die anyways. The reasoning of it seem to be 1.) Sacrifice your child and maybe make a god bring rain or otherwise change the situation. Or 2.) Do nothing and the kid dies anyway, and the famine (or whatever) continues.

North Africa / Fertile Crescent are not as fertile as say the Nile or the deep European forests. There are also much less rivers in these civilizations. My guess is that this was a measure of population control as the natural death rate was not high enough for the region. Since there was no birth-control method, the only method left is to kill the kid.

It's a good idea to disguise this as "child sacrifice" as in the "GOD" asked you to do this. Kind of make you at ease with the decision and execution since you'd not do it on your own.

But hey, that's just my guess and am a random dude on the Internet.

North Africa / Fertile Crescent are not as fertile as say the Nile or the deep European forests

North Africa and the Fertile Crescent are great examples of climate change.

They're deserts now but they were lush fertile lands several thousand years ago. The Nile floodplain was also substantially larger and more fertile than it is today.

Patrick Tierney's "The Highest Altar" [1] develops a very similar thesis, with first-hand experience by the author.

Wikipedia provides some material on child sacrifice by the Incas in e.g. [2] and [3].

[1] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-10-08-bk-201-st... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plomo_Mummy [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Llullaillaco

"Again I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place under the sun: I saw the tears of the oppressed, and they have no comforter; power was on the side of their oppressors, and they have no comforter. And I declared that the dead, who had already died, are happier than the living, who are still alive. But better than both is the one who has never been born, who has not seen the evil that is done under the sun."

That is from Ecclesiastes 4. The author was talking about the problem of evil - power was on the side of the oppressors. People were being evil, and getting away with it.

There's this idea that "the problem of evil" is, why does God permit this? I think that's too convenient. When people are being evil, and getting away with it, that's a problem not just for people who believe in a good God, but for people who believe goodness matters.

And I think the conclusion of the Phoenicians was that people get away with, and are even rewarded for doing evil things, because the gods are into that sort of stuff. The gods are sickos, so you're pretty much screwed, but get their attention with a ritual act of cruelty, and you might get a share of their power.

`Ibn Arabi has a splendid take on the entire affair. I read it in Toshihiko Izutsu’s Sufism and Taoism and it blew me away. In the Qur’an, the Muslim scripture, the story is touched upon, with an angel arriving just in the nick of time to tell Abraham to cease:

“””And when they had both submitted and he put him down upon his forehead, 104. We called to him, "O Abraham. You have fulfilled* the vision." Indeed, We thus reward the doers of good. Indeed, this was the clear trial. And We ransomed him with a great sacrifice”””

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_in_Islam#Sacrifice

*Ibn Arabi has this as “you have believed the dream”.

“”” Then when the boy reached the age to work with him, Abraham said, “O my dear son! I have seen in a dream that I ˹must˺ sacrifice you. So tell me what you think.” He replied, “O my dear father! Do as you are commanded. Allah willing, you will find me steadfast.” ”””

In Izutzu [1] we read how Ibn Arabi, a very influential Muslim mystic-saint, had read the narrative as Abraham being still in thrall of the illusion of materiality (“the world”) and reading the signs of God literally. This vision then, a great trial, was entirely designed to knock sense into him, awakening him to a higher consciousness.

[1]: https://traditionalhikma.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Sufi...

Relevant matter is in page 22 of the pdf. Prior matter touches on the metaphysical framework informing Ibn Arabi’s discourse.

There's absolutely no way this is true. In a time where most of your children die of disease, you aren't going to just kill your healthy children for the comedy value. People do a lot of fucked up shit but nobody kills their own children. Other people's children sure. Giving children to the temple so that they'll become exhaulted priests sure. But they would never beat their own children to death because someone said it's a fun idea.

This is one of those moments like when historians say the royal poo wiper is the most prestigious role in court. If historians found modern texts they would think "ass kissing" is the highest ranking role in the country and that people who get selected to that role have all the power and influence.

> In a time where most of your children die of disease, you aren't going to just kill your healthy children for the comedy value.

On the other hand, in a time when there is no contraception available you kind of expect to have up to a dozen children over your lifetime. Sacrificing one of them seems easier that if they were the only child.

More controversially, note that Phoenicia invented the alphabet, had the first maritime global trade empire, colonized Europe in the 13th century BC, and Punic dynasties eventually sat on the Roman throne despite losing the Punic wars ostensibly, with one such Severan emperor dismantling the Pantheon of Jupiter. You can also trace Byzantine dynasties back eastward and later empires too have this connection through dynasties like the Komnenos. So those conspiracy theories claiming Jewish world domination are all rather quaint when you consider that Israel was just a backwater in the classical era and antiquity and it was actually Phoenician merchants who were kingmakers in Babylon and Egypt (due to their control of the Cedars of the Gods which were crucial lumber products for shipbuilding) and would later snowball with their holdings and power as time progressed, or maybe they conveniently fell into obscurity :^)

> So those conspiracy theories claiming Jewish world domination are all rather quaint when you consider that Israel was just a backwater

You realize Phoenicia and Israel are neighbors and two very small countries? The distance from Tel Aviv to Beirut is only 200Km. They are practically the same people except at some point in history they diverged in religion and became hostile to one another. Maybe if they kept sacrificing their children then... okay, I'll see myself out.

> The distance from Tel Aviv to Beirut is only 200Km

There have been genetically and culturally distinct populations that maintained their segregation over far smaller distances than this.

Guys the Ashkenazim maintained about 90% genetic isolation for about 1,000 years and they literally lived in cities a couple dozen meters from other Europeans. I'm not wrong.

One was a global trade empire with colonies across the Mediterranean as far as present-day Gibraltar. The other was a desert backwater. The Temple of Solomon was built by the Tyrian king Hiram, Tyre and Sidon being the major cities of Phoenicia, or Canaan.

> losing the Punic wars ostensibly

Are you saying Carthage won after the city of Carthage ceased to exist? Me thinks you've watched one too many "well, ackchyually" youtube videos... Severus was emperor almost 400 years after the destruction of Carthage and you're saying that Rome "ostensibly" won. I mean, what.

Me thinks you’ve watched too many armchair historian videos, actually. Carthage didn’t “cease to exist” lol what, you think the land was actually “salted”? Carthage became one of the largest cities in the Roman Empire, then became the capital of the Vandal Kingdom who later sacked Rome, famously.

Salted or not, a city is made up of people, people who were either killed or enslaved. Rebuilt or not, it's not the same Carthage. And if you argue that an emperor from the region 400 years later somehow proves that Carthage didn't lose, you're not a serious person.

“Okay”

Still haven't explained your time traveler there but "sure".

The "total destruction" of Carthage was a myth made up and passed along by the Romans as a warning to others. There is substantial historical evidence that "Roman Carthage" was just "Punic Carthage." Archaeologists note that there is substantial mixing of Roman and Punic architecture, meaning that Punic structures were still being constructed even after the city was supposedly destroyed or "rebuilt" as a Roman city.

The ground of Carthage clearly was not salted, as Carthage was able to reestablish itself as a major city.

However, a number of historians note that "salting" in this context is ritual, a small plot of land in a defeated city was ritually salted but the agricultural lands were not since the Romans expected to one day occupy those lands for themselves. Indeed, there is no historical evidence that any culture actually salted the lands of conquered foes, both because it would have been an incredibly stupid thing to do when wars were fought over the right to control agricultural lands, but also because salt was extremely expensive and difficult to acquire in ancient times. ("Salary" is derived from salt, which was so valuable in Roman times that it was used as a measure of value.) The amount of salt that would have been required to salt the lands of Carthage would have equaled the salaries of the entire Roman army. "Salting the earth" as a meme didn't actually arise until the 17th or 18th century, when industrial salt production finally made salt cheap and plentiful.

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