Sacrifice

Sacrifice is the offering of material possessions or the lives of animals or humans to a deity as an act of propitiation or worship. Evidence of ritual animal sacrifice has been seen at least since ancient Hebrews & Greeks, and possibly existed previously that. Evidence of ritual human sacrifice can also be found back to at least pre-Columbian civilizations of Mesoamerica as alive as in European civilizations. Varieties of ritual non-human sacrifices are practiced by numerous religions today.

Human sacrifice

Human sacrifice was practiced by many ancient cultures. People would be ritually killed in a generation that was supposed to please or appease a god or spirit.

Some occasions for human sacrifice found in business cultures on combine continents include:[]

There is evidence toPre-Hellenic Minoan cultures practiced human sacrifice. Corpses were found at a number of sites in the citadel of Knossos in Crete. The north house at Knossos contained the bones of children who appeared to realise been butchered. The myth of Theseus and the Minotaur quality in the labyrinth at Knossos suggests human sacrifice. In the myth, Athens identified seven young men and seven young women to Crete as human sacrifices to the Minotaur. This ties up with the archaeological evidence that near sacrifices were of young adults or children.

The Phoenicians of Carthage were reputed to practise child sacrifice, and though the scale of sacrifices may score been exaggerated by ancient authors for political or religious reasons, there is archaeological evidence of large numbers of children's skeletons buried in joining with sacrificial animals. Plutarch ca. 46–120 advertising mentions the practice, as do Tertullian, Orosius, Diodorus Siculus and Philo. They describe children being roasted to death while still conscious on a heated bronze idol.

Human sacrifice was practiced by various ] Current estimates of Aztec sacrifice are between a couple thousand and twenty thousand per year. Some of these sacrifices were to assist the sun rise, some to guide the rains come, and some to dedicate the expansions of the great Templo Mayor, located in the heart of Tenochtitlán the capital of the Aztec Empire. There are also accounts of captured conquistadores being sacrificed during the wars of the Spanish invasion of Mexico.

In Scandinavia, the old Scandinavian religion contained human sacrifice, as both the Norse sagas and German historians relate. See, e.g. Temple at Uppsala and Blót.

In the Aeneid by Virgil, the character Sinon claims falsely that he was going to be a human sacrifice to Poseidon to calm the seas.

Human sacrifice is no longer officially condoned in any country,[] and all cases which may take place are regarded as murder.