Absorption of blood into soil

[minerva710]

So this is a weird question that is hard to research without people thinking you are a serial killer, but here goes: the set-up is an alternate history of Classical Rome, set about 400 CE. The religion still includes regular sacrifices, but instead of focusing on the smoke rising into the sky, it focuses on the blood soaking into the ground. So

Comments

[orange_fell]

I don't know where your alternate Roman world departs from the real one, so what I have to say may not be entirely relevant, but by the 300s CE, grand, multiple-large-animal sacrifices were emphatically no longer the norm. The last pagan emperor, Julian (r. 361-363), DID have a taste for sacrifices of this kind, and it made him come off as hideously old-fashioned and extravagant even to other pagans. He would visit a town and come to its temple, hoping to arrange to drench the ground in the blood of bullocks or something, and find that the local priest was an old man who hadn't sacrificed anything larger than geese in years. There were various reasons for the decline of blood sacrifice but idk if they'd be relevant for your story

[minerva710]

Thank you for the hecatomb- I'd forgotten about that passage! Yeah it's completely different from actual Roman practice because the timeline diverges all the way at the beginning of Roman history with Remus founding the city (not called Rome, either). Instead of following a sky-based pantheon like the Greeks, they continue to venerate a group of earth deities who are strongly linked with death. I think they still cook and eat the animals, but the ritually significant portion of the sacrifice is the blood soaking down to feed the earth, not the smoke rising up. I really think it would smell but it's one of the oldest things in the city so even if it's right in the middle of everything people just have to deal with it if it stinks. Thanks!

[orange_fell]

That's interesting! I bet it would smell too, but unfortunately we'll have to hope somebody better-informed about blood comes along to help with that part.

Sooo out of curiosity, how does the "Reman Empire" develop with this lack of religious syncretism with the main cultures it comes in contact with? Did they enforce their earth-based practices on the regions they conquered--by 400 CE, does everyone worship these gods in Greece and Egypt and Asia Minor, or has the Olympian pantheon survived? Is Christianity a thing? What happened to the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem? You don't have to answer of course, I'm just a curious ancient historian lol.

[minerva710]

Religion is quite different in this world since most gods have some physical manifestation in the world- people get magic from the gods either by being descended from them or, more rarely, by following them. Other pantheons exist still, but there are tensions between the Reman and foreign cults. People are mostly allowed to continue local practices but they have to also perform sacrifices for the Reman death cults, sort of like the Imperial cult in the later Empire where it didn't matter if you believed the emperor was divine of not, you put in your incense and mumbled your prayer like everyone else did. Christianity is not a thing, though some of the precursor mystery religions like Mithraism and the cult of Sol Invictus are around. The Jews are interesting. I think Judea is a Reman protectorate because Jerusalem and its surroundings are protected by the Arc, but they can't move the Arc, so there's a perpetual stalemate there

[kate_fire]

I think that the blood saturation of the soil would depend a lot upon the location. What type of dirt are we talking about here? Dirt with a lot of clay would get nasty very quickly, while sandy soil would be able to soak up a lot more. How deep is the soil? That matters too

[minerva710]

Thank you so much! I never even thought about fertilizer as a comparison, and I will have to check on the soil around Rome. You also gave me some good ideas for how to make the ritual believable- I think they would have to treat it after each death like you said or it would just be a mess (and it occurs to me that they would have to remove some sometimes or there would be a problem with, well, poop). I also didn't think about the effect of climate but that's a good detail to pursue, since the cult would be spread throughout the Empire so the temples in North Africa would be different from the ones in Britain.

Thanks again! I need gardening advice, which is way less likely to disturb the librarians.

[greenstorm]

Blood meal (dried blood) is used by gardeners to add nitrogen (the most-required plant nutrient) to soil. You'd definitely have lush growth in the area.

[sushidog]

I have a vague memory of an archaeological dig in a mediaeval monastery in the UK somewhere, which found an area of particularly rich soil behind the infirmary, which was revealed by analysis to be the area where they dump the by-product of blood-letting, which was carried out on a regular basis. Google suggests the site was Soutra in Scotland and the dig was around 1987, but I can't find anything extra on it; it's pre-internet archives. But that might give you a place to start?

[orange_fell]

Ladies and gentlemen, the reason a comm called little_details exists: comments like this one.

[rose_cat]

Oooh, this is fascinating!

[lolmac]

Outstanding answer indeed