Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe Human sacrifice is unlike other kinds of sacrifice. For example it is not the same thing as self-sacrifice, even though some victims might have been volunteers. Human sacrifice is normally understood as the ritual killing of children or adults carried out in order to honor or placate a god. It seems to have been widespread, occurring in the past in countries surprisingly distant from each other in both space and time: India and Mexico, Africa and Hawaii, Canaan and Tahiti. Advertisement The Greeks believed, possibly on good evidence, that their pre-classical ancestors practiced ritual sacrifice. The Old Testament describes how certain peoples sacrificed infants to Baal by "passing them through the fire". Bernal Diaz wrote about the temples in Mexico where human hearts were offered to the gods and human limbs eaten by the Aztec king. In the 18th century James Cook saw evidence of human sacrifice in Tahiti and Hawaii while the governors of British India found that Indian villagers killed human beings and buried the flesh in order to persuade a god to improve the crops. Advertisement The human race is capable of good actions and also capable of horrible deeds and practices. Philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists, economists and moralists have all attempted to explain bad or irrational behavior. Old-style explanations look at the beliefs of the people who practiced human sacrifice; more fashionable approaches look for hidden agendas. To my mind the older explanations are best because anyone can invent a hidden agenda for anyone. Thus Freud and Marx both explain human behavior by referring to (different) hidden agendas. Freud said much human behavior is caused by unconscious wishes, especially Eros, the sex drive and Thanatos, the drive toward death; Marxists still believe that hidden agendas of greed and love of power explain religion and morality and historical events. Freud and Marx do not discuss human sacrifice. But we can guess what neo-Freudians would say about the practice and we actually know what modern quasi-Marxists say. A neo-Freudian might argue that child sacrifice occurs because fathers fear their sons. Freud thought the story of Oedipus, who killed his father and married his mother, provided a clue to mysteries, including the supposed prevalence of neurotic illnesses in civilized countries. A feminist psychoanalyst might suggest that child sacrifice results from envy; either a man's envy of the baby who the woman loves so intensely or his envy of the woman herself because of her joy in the child. Advertisement Some contemporary anthropologists give semi-Marxist explanations of human sacrifice which runs like this: "Most reports of human sacrifice come from European explorers and colonists. White men set out to exploit the brown and black peoples of India, Africa, South America and the Pacific and invented propaganda about human sacrifice in order to 'prove' that the native peoples were horribly evil. Such propaganda provided spurious reasons for ruling those peoples and stealing their lands." And this: "When human sacrifice did occur the explanation must not be sought in the stated beliefs of kings and priests but rather in a hidden agenda, namely the desire for power. Human sacrifice was a way of exercising control over the king's subjects and the priests' tithe-givers." Attributing unconscious motives, especially unconscious class motives, is really only guesswork. Looking at beliefs and reasons is more sensible because the evidence for the existence of beliefs and reasons is open to view, it is not hidden away in Freudian or Marxist cupboards. Moreover attributing strange behavior to beliefs instead of to unconscious emotions and secret motivations is less condescending, less judgmental, and more able to allow for human variety. After all, individuals and tribes cannot always be judged or blamed for making intellectual mistakes. Purely intellectual mistakes are often completely innocent. Advertisement Human beings, according to the old explanations, once thought floods and diseases and crop failures were caused by gods. They inferred, not unreasonably, that those gods were much given to anger, did not like human beings, and needed to be placated with precious gifts. Now, what could be more precious than a human child? The disappearance of human sacrifice in modern times was brought about by the armies of the white man. But why? Quasi-Marxists characteristically refer to a hidden agenda as follows: "Europeans pretended to dislike human sacrifice because they wanted an excuse to rule over non-European peoples and steal their goods and lands." The belief that human sacrifice is horrible is not inconsistent with love of power. Even if and when it is part of a total explanation it is surely the most important part. It raises the question: Why did we Europeans give up human sacrifice? We gave it up nearly 3,000 years ago because the Hebrew prophets convinced our Jewish and Christian forbears that it was a terribly evil practice.
