But new research enabled by DNA analysis and other scientific advances has challenged assumptions about the identity of sacrificial victims, at least among the Maya of Central America.
Between 900 and 1,400 years ago, the Maya regularly sacrificed boys—particularly twins or close male relatives—according to a study published in June in the journal Nature.
The
findings are based on the ancient DNA of 64 children who had been
deposited in an underground cistern at the site of Chichén Itzá, a city
built on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula.
For
the ancient Maya, being sacrificed was considered a privilege, so these
boys—most of whom were between the ages of 3 and 6—were likely given up
willingly by their families, according to Rodrigo Barquera, an immunogeneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany and co-author of the recent study.
A
possible explanation for the sacrifices lies in Maya lore. According to
the culture’s written traditions, “Hero Twins”—both male—traveled to
the underworld to avenge their father, a twin himself, who was killed by
the lords of the underworld. Sacrifices of two male children were
likely part of a ritual that helped the Maya honor this part of their
mythology and belief system.
At
the distance of millennia, these and other ritual killings appear
barbaric. But to the cultures that carried them out, human sacrifices
served myriad purposes, including fulfilling a universal desire to
manage the uncontrollable world in which they lived.
“We
think of this as such a bizarre practice, something very unusual and
unexplainable, but three-quarters of societies did it,” according to Peter Turchin,
an evolutionary scientist at the Complexity Science Hub, a Vienna-based
research organization, who wasn’t involved in the research.
For the most part, ritual killings fell into one of two categories.
The
first was what anthropologists called a retainer sacrifice, when
servants or consorts, for example, were killed to accompany someone who
had died—usually a member of the elite—into the great beyond.
It
was particularly prevalent among members of the African Kingdom of
Dahomey, which persisted until roughly the beginning of the 20th
century; during the Shang Dynasty of China some three millennia ago; and
in Egypt between about 3100 and 2900 B.C. King Djer, a pharaoh who
ruled during ancient Egypt’s first dynasty, had more than 500 retainer
sacrifices surrounding his tomb in Abydos.
The
other form was the sacrifice of captives or community members to
placate, please or ask favors of gods and ancestors. “You’re supplying
the divine world with something valuable in order to get something in
return,” said Glenn Schwartz, a professor of archaeology at Johns Hopkins University. “It’s often discussed in the literature as a gift-giving enterprise.”
The Aztec,
who mostly postdated the Maya and were famous for cutting out the
hearts of prisoners atop pyramids as an offering to their gods, didn’t
even have a word for human sacrifice.
“The word they always used for these ceremonies was debt payment,” said Davíd Carrasco, a historian of religions at Harvard University.
Children
were believed to be among the best emissaries to the gods because in
many cultures they were considered purer than adults, and thus better
able to communicate with the spirit world.
The
ancient Carthaginians sacrificed their infants and buried the ashes in
urns at special seaside burial grounds, perhaps to engender safe voyages
across the Mediterranean.
Centuries
ago, the Inca drugged and sacrificed their children in a ritual known
as capacocha to appease the gods during times of crisis, such as a
drought or disease, according to Angelique Corthals, a forensic anthropologist at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
“The
Inca were trying to control that event by offering the most precious
thing that they had,” she said. Some of these children were brought high
atop a dormant volcano in the Andes, where their bodies ended up
mummified and exceptionally preserved because of the cold atop the peak.
In one of the largest known examples
of child sacrifice, the Chimú killed more than 100 boys and girls in
prehispanic Peru some 500 years ago. Hundreds of baby llamas were killed
too.
Experts
have interpreted the Chimú sacrifice as “a very desperate act to
communicate with the gods during a period of extreme climate change,”
said Brenna Hassett, a biological anthropologist and lecturer at the
University of Central Lancashire in the U.K. It followed a time of heavy
rainfall and flooding from an El Niño event, concurrent with an
invasion threat from the nearby Inca.
But
inferring motives, or even distinguishing ritual killings from
executions with nothing more than visual examinations of bones or
burials is challenging.
The
contents of a tomb can offer hints—such as the presence of objects for
use in the afterlife called grave goods or the positioning of bodies in
relation to one another—but now a new wave of studies is using genetic
analysis to shed light on archaeological mysteries.
DNA
analysis and other tools enable anthropologists to discern where a
person was from, the quality of their diet and health and their
sex—something previously impossible for children and a key to the
discovery of the Maya boys.
“While
you can determine sex from adult bones, the result of hormone changes
during puberty, these changes are lacking in children,” said Barquera’s
co-author, Christina Warinner, a biomolecular archaeologist at Harvard.
Barquera
and his group analyzed the petrous bone—a dense part of the skull’s
temporal bone that preserves DNA well—from 64 children found in the Maya
cistern.
In
addition to learning that the children were male, they found identical
genomes in the different bones, revealing the pairs of identical twins.
The DNA also revealed genetic continuity between these boys and the
modern-day Maya living in the area today, underscoring that those being
sacrificed had been chosen from within the local community near Chichén
Itzá, rather than being outsiders. The findings run counter to
historical narratives passed down by Spanish officials and priests that
Mesoamerican cultures tended to sacrifice enslaved captives.
Radiocarbon
dating of the bones showed the boys weren’t all killed at once,
hinting, Warinner said, that the sacrifices might have been related to a
cyclic ritual ceremony. Isotopic analysis showed that most of the boys
shared the same diet, suggesting they were raised together and
deliberately prepared for sacrifice, Barquera added.
“It’s such an exciting time to be doing archaeology,” said Nawa Sugiyama,
an anthropologist from the University of California, Riverside, who
wasn’t involved in the Maya work. “The level of detail with which we’re
able to reconstruct these rituals has really opened up our ability to be
there and relate to these families and communities.”
Write to Aylin Woodward at aylin.woodward@wsj.com
Primitive Christianity reflects, rather than repudiates, this ancient human barbarism by insisting on the salvific meaning of the man Jesus' death as a pure sacrifice which paid a debt owed to the one God.
That is another milestone in the long trend of regressive thinking in Judaism (as was apocalyptic in particular, which the historical Jesus eschewed, and eschatology in general, which he did not; the establishment of human kingship over Israel; the building of a box for God called the temple; et cetera), which putatively from the time of Moses had repudiated human sacrifice as an abomination (Deuteronomy 12:31; 18:9ff.), or even earlier as foreshadowed in the halted sacrifice of Isaac (Genesis 22), aka the temptation of Abraham.
But in the New Testament the Jewish God himself, completely out of character, is actively nailing his own son to the cross as a sacrifice for sins.
And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
-- Hebrews 10:10
For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law.
-- Galatians 5:3
And you, who were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your
flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our
trespasses, having canceled the bond which stood against us with its legal demands; this he set aside, nailing it to the cross.
-- Colossians 2:13f.
For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
-- II Corinthians 5:21
Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He
did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our
sins.
For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right
with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his
blood.
-- Romans 3:24f.
Forasmuch
as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver
and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your
fathers; But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without
blemish and without spot:
-- I Peter 1:18f.
And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
-- Matthew 27:46
And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
-- Mark 15:34
