Book Review: "Maybe the Aztecs weren't so bad after all..."
Some brief words on Professor Nigel Davies' book Human Sacrifice which is about, well, pretty much what the title suggests.
He basically accuses every pre-Industrial society of engaging in human sacrifice. Human sacrifice is described here as "offering up human lives in a ceremonial fashion to please a deity". He does admit that one can possibly look at the mass killings of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia as 'sacrifices', but he doesn't treat them as such. It has to be admitted, some of the examples he lists are horrifying: in societies as widespread as Biblical Canaan & Carthage, Australian Aborigines, and Hindu India, it was common for a first-born son to be buried or burned alive as an offering so that your wives would produce even more sons (and the Aussies didn't just kill their children, the mother would then eat it[!]). A multitude of cultures gave human flesh and blood to the gods in return for good crops, victory in battle, or relief from plague. He accuses the Ancient Greeks and Egyptians of both humans sacrifice and even cannibalism (at an early stage of their cultures), using some obscure Egyptian legends as well as the infamous story of Cronos and Zeus, as well as Lycaon, as evidence. He writes about human sacrifice and cannibalism in Oceania (where the Melanesians were utterly savage; they kept their human cattle alive while removing only a little flesh at a time for meals, to make sure that the meaty stayed fresh) and Africa and India, where some murders were done as sacrifices as late as the 1980's. He discusses the great ritual killings that followed the deaths of kings in Shang China, among the people of Sumeria, and in the American Deep South among the Natchez Mound-Builders. ("They were very likely honored to be chosen to accompany their lord into the next world by being buried alive...")
I do feel that Mister Davies takes his comparisons a bit far though. I can mayeb see the (rather exaggerated in amount) deaths under the Inquisition as a sacrifice, but the Crusades? He also notes that an Inquisition auto da fe had in Mexico City after the Conquest was "very somber and joyless, as compared to the grand ceremonies of only a decade before, with singing and dancing." I will allow others to explain how and why it's better to kill a man amidst great rejoicing than in an attitude of somber reflection.
I also have a problem with some of the mythical examples he lists as 'proof' that this or that culture engaged in sacrifice and cannibalism. For instance, he lists the story of Lycaon in Ancient Greece as proof that the Greeks had a ritual in which they slaughtered and devoured children. In it, a Greek king named Lycaon kills his own son and offers the flesh to Zeus. He doesn't mention that when Zeus discovers what happened, he punishes Lycaon by turning him into a wolf (thus our word lycanthropy). Some of his other examples seem similarly dodgy. He also depends quite a bit on the conclusions of Frazer's Golden Bough, which by my own reading has been pretty badly discredited.
Something that surprised me was Davies' insistence that the end of human sacrifice can be laid to two influences: Judaism and its offspring, mainly Christianity (though to be fair Islam also ended human sacrifices when and where they could) with its idea that the gods required men to offer of themselves and not offer others, and Greek philosophy which began questioning how the gods could be righteous if they demanded blood and death from mortal men.
All in all, it is a good book if you're looking for historical horror stories, though it mainly reads like an excuse for the Aztecs (see my title for the entry above). If I have to rate it, I'd say four obsidian knives out of five.
He basically accuses every pre-Industrial society of engaging in human sacrifice. Human sacrifice is described here as "offering up human lives in a ceremonial fashion to please a deity". He does admit that one can possibly look at the mass killings of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia as 'sacrifices', but he doesn't treat them as such. It has to be admitted, some of the examples he lists are horrifying: in societies as widespread as Biblical Canaan & Carthage, Australian Aborigines, and Hindu India, it was common for a first-born son to be buried or burned alive as an offering so that your wives would produce even more sons (and the Aussies didn't just kill their children, the mother would then eat it[!]). A multitude of cultures gave human flesh and blood to the gods in return for good crops, victory in battle, or relief from plague. He accuses the Ancient Greeks and Egyptians of both humans sacrifice and even cannibalism (at an early stage of their cultures), using some obscure Egyptian legends as well as the infamous story of Cronos and Zeus, as well as Lycaon, as evidence. He writes about human sacrifice and cannibalism in Oceania (where the Melanesians were utterly savage; they kept their human cattle alive while removing only a little flesh at a time for meals, to make sure that the meaty stayed fresh) and Africa and India, where some murders were done as sacrifices as late as the 1980's. He discusses the great ritual killings that followed the deaths of kings in Shang China, among the people of Sumeria, and in the American Deep South among the Natchez Mound-Builders. ("They were very likely honored to be chosen to accompany their lord into the next world by being buried alive...")
I do feel that Mister Davies takes his comparisons a bit far though. I can mayeb see the (rather exaggerated in amount) deaths under the Inquisition as a sacrifice, but the Crusades? He also notes that an Inquisition auto da fe had in Mexico City after the Conquest was "very somber and joyless, as compared to the grand ceremonies of only a decade before, with singing and dancing." I will allow others to explain how and why it's better to kill a man amidst great rejoicing than in an attitude of somber reflection.
I also have a problem with some of the mythical examples he lists as 'proof' that this or that culture engaged in sacrifice and cannibalism. For instance, he lists the story of Lycaon in Ancient Greece as proof that the Greeks had a ritual in which they slaughtered and devoured children. In it, a Greek king named Lycaon kills his own son and offers the flesh to Zeus. He doesn't mention that when Zeus discovers what happened, he punishes Lycaon by turning him into a wolf (thus our word lycanthropy). Some of his other examples seem similarly dodgy. He also depends quite a bit on the conclusions of Frazer's Golden Bough, which by my own reading has been pretty badly discredited.
Something that surprised me was Davies' insistence that the end of human sacrifice can be laid to two influences: Judaism and its offspring, mainly Christianity (though to be fair Islam also ended human sacrifices when and where they could) with its idea that the gods required men to offer of themselves and not offer others, and Greek philosophy which began questioning how the gods could be righteous if they demanded blood and death from mortal men.
All in all, it is a good book if you're looking for historical horror stories, though it mainly reads like an excuse for the Aztecs (see my title for the entry above). If I have to rate it, I'd say four obsidian knives out of five.