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NikkolasKing posted:Did the Carthaginians do human sacrifices? Is there any sort of consensus or proof on this? Was in a discord where it was randomly brought up with somebody claiming that there's a sort of woke narrative about how conquered people did nothing wrong and they, like the Aztecs, absolutely did sacrifice people. Not strictly susceptible of proof that they sacrificed kids, but they certainly did have cemeteries full of infant human and animal remains and votive inscriptions. And also Greco-Roman and biblical sources both throw shade at Phoenicians for their child-sacrificing ways. https://digital.csic.es/bitstream/10261/197736/3/epigraphy_topet.pdf
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Jul 2, 2022 01:51
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my understanding is that it's close to indisputable that carthage used dead infants in rituals; the question is whether they were alive when the ritual started or if the ritual was a way to honor infants who died naturally. Even if it was infanticide, infanticide is fairly common in premodern cultures and was even legal in Rome, though the way the laws were written suggested a certain amount of distaste for it; the pater familias had to convince all of his neighbors that it was a good idea first for it to be legal. I don't know how you'd go about measuring whether Carthage had more infanticide than normal for an ancient society. It could be that unwanted children who might have died of exposure somewhere else died in a ritual chamber instead and the overall rates are the same.
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Jul 2, 2022 01:58
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cheetah7071 posted:the pater familias had to convince all of his neighbors that it was a good idea first for it to be legal. Imagine that poo poo on Nextdoor
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Jul 2, 2022 02:04
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The archaeological evidence that they did child sacrifice is pretty strong at this point, nearly as strong as it can get without finding Carthaginian literature about it. Maybe I'm broken but I'm just not very scandalized. Power over life and death is an important part of judicial legitimacy and human sacrifice is a common way of building that. Sucks but common.
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Jul 2, 2022 02:12
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In my ancient near eastern religion class there was an author we read who argued there was no evidence for human sacrifics in the ancient near east, and seemed oddly focused on how 'interesting' it was that the Jews had committed blood libel in their holy texts only to have it happen to them later.
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Jul 2, 2022 02:15
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the stories in the bible about human sacrifice came from somewhere and carthaginian culture is, ultimately, a canaanite culture. it may be that these stories mainly come from their enemies, but when there are two fairly substantial sets of accounts for this practice concerning related cultures across like a thousand years there is probably something to it, even if it was ultimately an uncommon practice of course, the weird thing is that the greek sources discussing the time periods between the early biblical accounts and the punic wars don't seem to indicate that the phoenician religion was anything unusual or offputting as far as i know
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Jul 2, 2022 02:16
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Trust me your parents all had that moment when they considered it.
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Jul 2, 2022 02:38
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Jazerus posted:the stories in the bible about human sacrifice came from somewhere and carthaginian culture is, ultimately, a canaanite culture. it may be that these stories mainly come from their enemies, but when there are two fairly substantial sets of accounts for this practice concerning related cultures across like a thousand years there is probably something to it, even if it was ultimately an uncommon practice At one point I was marooned for a month in a relative's house with no internet and she had a copy of the complete, unedited, 12-volume 1915 edition Golden Bough and I read all of it. He goes through all sorts of different mediterranean child-sacrifice customs for hundreds and hundreds of pages. It's basically impossible to read it and not end up thinking "oh, ok, yeah, so they're all sacrificing firstborn children and sacrificing kings and the Christ myth comes along and just slots right into all that." Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 02:47 on Jul 2, 2022 |
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Jul 2, 2022 02:42
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Human sacrifice, and especially child sacrifice, also neatly slots into the ancient understanding of how sacrifices worked. In general, ancient religions believed that the more valuable the thing being sacrificed, the more powerful the sacrifice was. A bull was more valuable than a chicken, so sacrificing a bull was better than sacrificing a chicken. What's more valuable than a bull? Well...
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Jul 2, 2022 03:07
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CrypticFox posted:Human sacrifice, and especially child sacrifice, also neatly slots into the ancient understanding of how sacrifices worked. In general, ancient religions believed that the more valuable the thing being sacrificed, the more powerful the sacrifice was. A bull was more valuable than a chicken, so sacrificing a bull was better than sacrificing a chicken. What's more valuable than a bull? Well... Yup. Which is why even the Romans, who were adamantly against human sacrifice (and I don't think they were lying about that), did it occasionally when events were dire enough.
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Jul 2, 2022 03:11
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I tend to read the Isaac story as an element of schismogenesis, which only works if child sacrifice is an existing practice.
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Jul 2, 2022 03:13
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NikkolasKing posted:Did the Carthaginians do human sacrifices? Is there any sort of consensus or proof on this? Was in a discord where it was randomly brought up with somebody claiming that there's a sort of woke narrative about how conquered people did nothing wrong and they, like the Aztecs, absolutely did sacrifice people. In the case of Carthage, it's not about "wokeness", it's about Tunisian nationalism. I remember a fascinating article on this that I can't be bothered to find right now, but basically, the Ben Ali regime put the legacy of Carthage at the core of official Tunisian national identity, and they promoted Carthage-related archaeological research so long as it presented Carthage in a good light, but scholars who were vocal about believing that, for example, the Carthaginians sacrificed a lot of kids probably wouldn't get approval to dig.
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Jul 2, 2022 03:14
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Yeah I wonder if maybe we had more sources directly sympathetic to the Carthaginians, Aztecs, or Incans, they might've had their own excuses rationalizing their sacrifices as something else. I heard that Gaul druids also had a whole thing with human sacrifice that Rome had to stamp down on, but I don't know any details about it. I guess there's probably also a big difference between sacrificing your own and sacrificing slaves or captured enemies.
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Jul 2, 2022 03:23
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SlothfulCobra posted:Yeah I wonder if maybe we had more sources directly sympathetic to the Carthaginians, Aztecs, or Incans, they might've had their own excuses rationalizing their sacrifices as something else. I heard that Gaul druids also had a whole thing with human sacrifice that Rome had to stamp down on, but I don't know any details about it. Yeah, druids did some human sacrifice too (though mainly of adults, IIRC). There's some legitimate scholarly dispute about the scale of it, though; obviously there are nationalist motives at work here too (primarily on the part of British and French scholars themselves rather than government pressure), but there's also legitimate reasons for skepticism about Caesar's rather sensational account of the wicker man ritual.
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Jul 2, 2022 03:34
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To me it all seems a little idk .. BS to talk about the relative practices of ritual sacrifice when these cultures in other contexts put a quite low price tag on human life
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Jul 2, 2022 03:35
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Mystery of the Druids is probably the best singular source on druidic human sacrifice.
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Jul 2, 2022 03:36
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Tulip posted:I tend to read the Isaac story as an element of schismogenesis, which only works if child sacrifice is an existing practice. yes, me too. rejecting the myth of abraham sacrificing isaac (originally, to baal ha'dad) and rewriting it to have the opposite moral has always seemed to me like a possible point for the hebrews to have decided that no, we are not canaanite, thanks. we may be a bunch of hill bandits but at least we don't do that poo poo. this potentially even predates yahweh's entrance into the pantheon, given the sheer age of the patriarch stories, or corresponds to it.
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Jul 2, 2022 03:40
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Silver2195 posted:In the case of Carthage, it's not about "wokeness", it's about Tunisian nationalism. I remember a fascinating article on this that I can't be bothered to find right now, but basically, the Ben Ali regime put the legacy of Carthage at the core of official Tunisian national identity, and they promoted Carthage-related archaeological research so long as it presented Carthage in a good light, but scholars who were vocal about believing that, for example, the Carthaginians sacrificed a lot of kids probably wouldn't get approval to dig. picking people who are mainly notable for losing wars as your national heroes is a tradition I don't get
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Jul 2, 2022 05:12
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Some currency bits from the Han dynasty to go with the earlier coinage talk:quote:初，秦用半兩錢，高祖嫌其重，難用，更鑄莢錢。於是物價騰踊，米至石萬錢。夏，四月，更造四銖錢；除盜鑄錢令，使民得自鑄。 Taishi Ci fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Jul 2, 2022 |
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Jul 2, 2022 05:44
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It's not about choosing big tough guys to show how big and tough your ancestry is, it's about choosing a historical people who are more widely known to help building your national myth and defining your place in international culture. But then if they're only known for something dumb, that can play into the creation of a national myth as well, because the process of relitigating and reinterpreting their place in history gives plenty of opportunities to develop the story and also build up a weird thing of bonding over hating foreigners who don't respect your new national mythmaking.
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Jul 2, 2022 05:56
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SlothfulCobra posted:Yeah I wonder if maybe we had more sources directly sympathetic to the Carthaginians, Aztecs, or Incans, they might've had their own excuses rationalizing their sacrifices as something else. I heard that Gaul druids also had a whole thing with human sacrifice that Rome had to stamp down on, but I don't know any details about it. Even the Spanish, who were not particularly friendly to Aztec religion, were pretty clear that the Aztec did it because they believed regular human sacrifices kept the world from ending.
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Jul 2, 2022 06:17
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Taishi Ci posted:Some currency bits from the Han dynasty to go with the earlier coinage talk: hell yea, absolutely one of my top 10 favorite stories in chinese history, absolutely insane
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Jul 2, 2022 06:43
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SlothfulCobra posted:Yeah I wonder if maybe we had more sources directly sympathetic to the Carthaginians, Aztecs, or Incans, they might've had their own excuses rationalizing their sacrifices as something else. I heard that Gaul druids also had a whole thing with human sacrifice that Rome had to stamp down on, but I don't know any details about it. IIRC the Romans did like parading and ceremonially executing the captured/surrendered kings of enemies and conquered peoples, which doesn't really sound too different from human sacrifice. euphronius posted:To me it all seems a little idk .. BS to talk about the relative practices of ritual sacrifice when these cultures in other contexts put a quite low price tag on human life Fair enough, but sacrifice does still have a very different context from death by neglect or at least seen as justified as punishment, conquest or exercise of authority. It's killing a helpless victim in premediated and officially sanctioned fashion with the idea that it is the correct and literally sacred thing to do, especially in the case of child sacrifice where the innocence and value of the victim is the point. I imagine it doesn't even need to be a frequent, widespread or even long-lived practice to quickly become notorious.
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Jul 2, 2022 06:55
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Aztecs had it right by sacrificing warriors. Children are useless and easy to make more. A good warrior? Now that takes time and talent.
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Jul 2, 2022 08:47
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Ghost Leviathan posted:IIRC the Romans did like parading and ceremonially executing the captured/surrendered kings of enemies and conquered peoples, which doesn't really sound too different from human sacrifice. I mean gladiatorial games (which were dedicated to religious figures / concept) and other forms of killing in circuses seem to me like human sacrifice even if the Romans wouldn't call it that.
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Jul 2, 2022 08:58
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Crab Dad posted:Aztecs had it right by sacrificing warriors. Children are useless and easy to make more. A good warrior? Now that takes time and talent. The aztecs did sacrifice children though.
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Jul 2, 2022 09:27
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https://twitter.com/brandenburghist/status/1543070404759126016?s=21&t=4nIn3TVoVwLICchvwftegA
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Jul 2, 2022 09:37
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I'd much rather spend a year living like a king, get high out of my mind, and then get human sacrificed by the Tawanintsuyu than get worked to death in a roman mine as my entire culture is genocided. Putting yourself in the mindset of someone who actually has to live near these cultures, being good at war doesn't seem so much like the be-all end-all. We've got the cosmopolitan boat guys who buy our wares, and the assimilationist terminator horde out of Latium that will stab me and enslave my wife and kids. I'm sticking with Carthage. The main difference between Julius Caesar and Hitler was that Caesar's enemies didn't think the genocide part was anything bad. And also Caesar could write coherent sentences in his book. Edgar Allen Ho fucked around with this message at 09:53 on Jul 2, 2022 |
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Jul 2, 2022 09:48
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Ghost Leviathan posted:IIRC the Romans did like parading and ceremonially executing the captured/surrendered kings of enemies and conquered peoples, which doesn't really sound too different from human sacrifice. I mean, capital punishment. The British were executing far more people in 1400 AD than the Aztecs were.
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Jul 2, 2022 11:55
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I mean, capital punishment. The British were executing far more people in 1400 AD than the Aztecs were. Wait, capital punishment isn't human sacrifice because.... uhh... uh... hmm.
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Jul 2, 2022 12:10
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Aztecs - if we don't execute these prisoners the gods will cause society to collapse English - if we don't execute these prisoners as a criminal deterrant God will cause society to collapse.
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Jul 2, 2022 13:49
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Magnetic North posted:Wait, capital punishment isn't human sacrifice because.... uhh... uh... hmm. Yeah this was one of those penny-drop insights for me. I mean, look at our current legal system. We have to keep literal millions of people locked in cages for decades or else . . . . drugs will win the drug war?
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Jul 2, 2022 13:57
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yeah this was one of those penny-drop insights for me. That's slavery and profiteering from people trade, not human sacrifice
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Jul 2, 2022 13:59
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steinrokkan posted:That's slavery and profiteering from people trade, not human sacrifice  I mean, yes, but if you've ever heard a judge or prosecutor talk about how they have to "protect the public" and "pursue Justice"
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Jul 2, 2022 14:01
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that seems to be from the perspective that "the aztecs didn't actually believe their gods were real"
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Jul 2, 2022 14:16
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:I'd much rather spend a year living like a king, get high out of my mind, and then get human sacrificed by the Tawanintsuyu than get worked to death in a roman mine as my entire culture is genocided. Putting yourself in the mindset of someone who actually has to live near these cultures, being good at war doesn't seem so much like the be-all end-all. We've got the cosmopolitan boat guys who buy our wares, and the assimilationist terminator horde out of Latium that will stab me and enslave my wife and kids. I'm sticking with Carthage. No, having a relatively competent military doesn’t necessarily improve quality of life for the average Tupac, Dick, or Hanno, but they still were probably pretty pissed off when the Romans came across the pond and killed/enslaved the lot of them. It’s not that anyone really loves having a bunch of soldiers around, it’s that you’d rather the soldiers who are around aren’t there to kill you. Roman militarism doesn’t arise from them just deciding to be Hitler one day, it’s an extreme end of an Iron Age Italian cultural complex where rape and pillage of the guys next door was just kind of what everyone did with their leftover men in the summer, and if it wasn’t you doing it to them they certainly would do it to you, vae victis. Carthage was a colonial state where a handful of citizens and subjugated allies lived large off enserfed/conscripted native labor. Farther afield the Inca were militarily aggressive imperialists to a degree literally unprecedented on their continent as far as we know and most of their male subjects spent the majority of their adult lives performing corvee labor, while the ones who got sacrificed while high out their minds were mostly state-owned teenage girls. It’s bastards all the way down.
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Jul 2, 2022 15:06
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yeah this was one of those penny-drop insights for me. Because the only safe place for an abusive personality is in a cage, or dead? The problem isn't prison, it is the colossal waste of time going after 'glamorous' drug arrests and the failure to aggressively pursue the crimes that actually ruin real peoples' lives. E: ie, crimes of abuse. Most of which I expect aren't even illegal in many places. Strategic Tea fucked around with this message at 15:46 on Jul 2, 2022 |
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Jul 2, 2022 15:40
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Strategic Tea posted:Because the only safe place for an abusive personality is in a cage, or dead? The problem isn't prison, it is the colossal waste of time going after 'glamorous' drug arrests and the failure to aggressively pursue the crimes that actually ruin real peoples' lives. Eh, I don't want to perpetuate the derail too much, but most crimes aren't committed by people with "abusive personalities" however you define that; they're committed by dumb people doing stupid poo poo, often while drunk or high or experiencing a personal crisis. Cops don't go after "Big fish" too much at all; they're too much trouble; most of the arrests are low level offenders; most arrests come out of traffic stops. 95% of all defendants end up represented by public defenders. It's a lot easier to get a conviction for a low level user. The average drug conviction is "pulled over for speeding, cop says "i smell weed!", searches car, finds [x]." Just replacing traffic cops with speed cameras nationwide would dramatically reduce incarceration. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 16:05 on Jul 2, 2022 |
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Jul 2, 2022 15:58
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Regardless of how you feel about either capital punishment or criminal incarceration in the modern US, I don't think it can be compared to ritual religious human sacrifice (although there may have been ritual human sacrifice of criminals in past societies). While the supporters of capital punishment may believe it's part of either human or cosmic justice, it's not sacralized. The state isn't saying "We gave this person a lethal injection last night, and now God is pleased.",
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Jul 2, 2022 16:53
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They don’t say god - they say justice and the victim’s family. The portion of the death attributed to the abstract concept of justice is virtually identical to what you describe. The victim’s family portion is a sacrifice to appease them via retribution. Not exactly a sacrifice to please a diety or abstract concept, but absolutely done to please people. So, I could very easily consider capital punishment here to be a type of ritual sacrifice even though it isn’t always done explicitly to make some divinity happy. I’m also pretty sure we can find plenty of preachers in the south talking about executions saying that the lord is happy they carried out his vengeance.
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