Human Sacrifice | not just the Aztecs

Human sacrifice gets a bad rap in the history books, and we're here to spill the tea. This week we're digging into who was really practicing ritual sacrifice across history. From Mesopotamia's royal tombs to Aztec blood debts, Celtic wicker men to Japanese seppuku and why the "savage civilization" narrative doesn't hold up.

Sources:

General / Context:

Caldararo, Niccolo. "Human Sacrifice, Capital Punishment, Prisons & Justice." Historical Social Research 41, no. 4 (2016): 322–46.

Løvschal et al. "Human Sacrifice and Value." Antiquity 93, no. 370 (2019).

Schwartz, Glenn M. "The Archaeological Study of Sacrifice." Annual Review of Anthropology 46 (2017): 223–240.

Mesopotamia / Ur:

Recht, Laerke. "Human Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East and Egypt." The Ancient Near East Today 8, no. 2 (2020).

Egypt:

Campbell, Roselyn Anne. Kill Thy Neighbor: Violence, Power, and Human Sacrifice in Ancient Egypt. PhD diss., UCLA, 2019.

Nielsen, Nicky. "In Ancient Egypt, Human Sacrifice and Shabti Figures Ensured an Afterlife of Servitude." Atlas Obscura, October 17, 2023.

Celtic / Druid / Greco-Roman: