800 Years Of Human Sacrifice In Kent
scienceblogs.com
scienceblogs.com
This was millenia ago in a culture that didn't write anything down. Who knows what anything was like then? To fill in the gaps we end up using our own modern biases and narratives. We like to think we're better and more rational than people in the past, so we attribute these mutilated bodies to a motive that we've moved on from (ritual sacrifice), rather than a motive we still have (judicial execution). To be fair, ritual sacrifice did happen in some cultures and was well documented, but who knows what was going on in this case?
There could be a ton of reason to do this, I too don't buy that this is sacrifice.
OTOH we do know human sacrifice was practiced. [1] and [2] give a reasonable overview of what we do know.
Beware that there is some attempt to manufacture a controversy over human sacrifice in Britain. The Celts didn't keep written records of their practices, and Roman records are often interpreted as propaganda.
In my view, the combination of archaeological records[3] with the fact that those digs match the Roman records fairly well makes a compelling case.
[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/british_prehistory/huma...
[2] http://news.nationalgeographic.com.au/news/2009/03/090320-dr...
[3] eg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindow_Man#Interpretation
Judicial executions and ritual sacrifices were often mixed together as they both served social functions. In Rome's arenas, newly captured foreign tribesmen would be "sacrificed" in games along with local criminals.
For example I may be too picky but I'm always suspicious when I see percentages used for analyzing a sample of 25 individuals. In my opinion
36% local
32% southern Norway or Sweden
20% western Mediterranean
12% indeterminate
9 local
8 southern Norway or Sweden
5 western Mediterranean
3 indeterminateI believe one day people will look back on us with the same horror for preventing gay marriage, premarital sex, etc., as we do the past for things like human sacrifice.
We probably do not currently look back with horror to the things that those people from old Kent thought we'd look back in horror to.
Instead we judge these people according to our current standards, just as future people will judge us to their standards, which we would probably find quite revolting if we could grasp them at all.
Basically, I think your comment lacked perspective.
All cultures have taboos and rites. It is extremely difficult to predict how they will change in the future.
For example, the ancient Greeks had no taboo against homosexuality (indeed, it was considered normal), but they also had nothing against keeping slaves.
The US as a nation has no taboo against advertising to children, and yet attitudes to homosexuality vary dramatically by region. Extreme violence in films is considered taboo in most cultures, and yet entertaining in the US.
Racism is publicly decried in the US, and yet remains ingrained in some other countries.
Eating dogs is taboo in the US, not in other countries. Bacon is considered a delicacy in the US, and taboo in many countries.
Sometimes religion is the carrier of some of these taboos and rites, and sometimes it is not. Sometimes religion innoculates a culture against a particular practice (eg, Halal means alcoholism isn't a big problem in Muslim countries), and other times it is used to both justify it and to fight it (eg the changing Christian attitude to Slavery).
I suspect you'd be better off justifying your post rather than complaining about persecution of downvotes.
"Sometimes religion is the carrier of some of these taboos and rites, and sometimes it is not."
Agreed. But my original post simply said this was a reminder of the "dangers of religion."
And this specific example demonstrates that well. Religious beliefs were used to justify human sacrifice, despite murder being a "taboo that is shared by many cultures", as you well put it.
And maybe these human sacrifice rituals had some utility.
Just sayin, let's try to see beyond the conventions of the moment.
Anyway, there's some schools of thought which consider religion to be a necessary evil for pre-scientific organisation, so I'm sure enlightened future scholars will be studying religion's phases from its medieval heyday through to its current last hurrahs with interest.
It was probably a bit offtopic, I"ll give you that. I was raised in a very religious family that has negatively impacted my life in a few ways. I guess I see the damage of religion in more places than most.
But inflammatory? I think that's the point of the PG essay I referenced: that just saying something "you can't say" automatically makes it inflammatory. The statement's truth is irrelevant.
"Your comment annoyed me also for its obviousness and vague smugness"
For someone who has a lot of very religious friends, I don't think this is obvious to many people. I hope I'd have the standard to not write something that is so obvious as to not benefit the majority of my readers.
We may imagine that we are a great deal smarter and more virtuous than past generations, but the more history you read, the less likely this seems.... I suspect the only taboos that are more than taboos are the ones that are universal, or nearly so. Murder for example. But any idea that's considered harmless in a significant percentage of times and places, and yet is taboo in ours, is a good candidate for something we're mistaken about.
To make it clear: thinking particular taboos are caused by religion is shortsighted. These things keep happening over & over again, and unfortunately "progress" isn't always towards something you may like.
However, human sacrifice (aka murder) is a taboo that is shared by many cultures. That makes that different to the other things you lists.