By Katie Hawkins - United Kingdom and Singapore
How can we define human sacrifice?
Human sacrifice is the act of killing one or more humans as part of a ritual. Most often intended to please or appease gods, a human ruler, an authoritative/priestly figure, spirits of dead ancestors or as a retainer sacrifice, wherein a monarch’s servants are killed in order for them to continue to serve their master in the next life.
Origins of human sacrifice
The practice of human sacrifice, although deemed as violent and contentious in modern society, once thrived in civilizations around the world. It can be traced back to regions in Central America during the 15th century A.D. where the Aztecs and Mayans extracted the beating hearts of victims on elevated temple altars. Over 5,000 years ago human sacrifice was also commonly practiced in China and Egypt where the tombs of rulers were accompanied by pits filled with hundreds of human bodies, whose spirits were thought to provide assistance in the afterlife. Therefore, it is not surprising that many of the oldest religious scriptures and texts, including the Bible, Quran, Torah and Vedas refer to themes of human sacrifice. The various explanations to human sacrifice are very similar to the ones that motivate religious sacrifice in general. In ancient civilizations, a common reason to practice human sacrifice was due to the belief that it would bring good fortune as well as to pacify the gods. An ancient Japanese legend Hitoshabira (‘human pillar’) talks of maidens who were buried alive near construction sites in order to protect the infrastructures from enemy attacks or catastrophes. The act of sacrifice itself consisted of bludgeoning, strangulation, burning, burial, drowning, decapitation.
Justification
Although it is apparent that human sacrifice is immoral and cruel, is it possible to infer that it may have served some sort of social function? A well founded argument for this is the Social Control Hypothesis. This theory elucidates that social elites exploited human sacrifice in order to terrorize lower classes, secure authority and penalize non-compliance. As a result, the elites had a perfect solution to solidifying hierarchy and social order. Often, human sacrifice was performed within cultures which had authoritarian regimes rather than cultures which were centered around egalitarian ideals. This makes sense as victims of sacrifice were often slaves or of low class, and unsurprisingly, the perpetrators were typically of high status, for example, a monarch or priest. The fact that rulers and kings were the ones who orchestrated such inhumane acts, can be linked to the political doctrine called the Divine Right of Kings. This doctrine outlines the notion that kings derived their authority from god. As a result, the kings posited that they could not be held accountable for their actions by any earthly authority, hence condemning human sacrifice, as their superiority outweighed the immorality. Consequently, religious systems were constructed in favour of the social elites, and so individuals that broke given rules almost always became the victims of sacrifice. The interlink between religion and a nonegalitarian society highlights that in early civilizations, religion was often the root cause of exploitation by rulers.
Conclusion
Human sacrifice is blatantly brutal and savage, which makes the justification of it difficult to outweigh. The practice of human sacrifice demonstrates the barbaric lengths that deceitful rulers and governments turned to in order to acquire dominance, framing the vulnerability of religion as a means of rationalization. Sacrifice provided a clear method of instilling fear into the lower class, enabling corrupt leaders to stay in power, which are notably similar themes in modern society today. Human sacrifice could be argued to have played a significant role in the development of key principles and ideologies of recognisable political systems, such as totalitarianism and fascism.
Bibliography
"Human Sacrifice." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 7 Oct. 2023, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice. Accessed 23 Oct. 2023.
Watts, Joseph. "Why Did Early Human Societies Practice Violent Human Sacrifice?" THE CONVERSATION, 4 Apr. 2016, theconversation.com/why-did-early-human-societies-practice-violent-human-sacrifice-55380.
Tucker, Jeffery A. "Human Sacrifice, Then and Now." Brownstone Institute, 16 Jan. 2023, brownstone.org/articles/human-sacrifice-then-and-now/. Accessed 23 Oct. 2023.
Kempf-Leonard, Kimberly, and Nancy A. Morris. "Social Control Theory." Oxford Bibliographies, 24 Jul. 2012, www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780195396607/obo-9780195396607-0091.xml. Accessed 23 Oct. 2023.
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "divine right of kings". Encyclopedia Britannica, 18 Mar. 2021, https://www.britannica.com/topic/divine-right-of-kings. Accessed 23 October 2023.
Comments