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New evidence of ancient child sacrifice found in Turkey
Remains of young people who were ritually sacrificed have been found from Bronze Age Mesopotamia. Led by Museum scientific associate Dr Brenna Hassett, a team examined burial practices at Başur Höyük, a Bronze Age cemetery in Turkey. It contains a series of individuals who were buried between 3100 and 2800 BCE. The site dates to 500 years before the famous Royal Cemetery of Ur, a luxurious series of tombs that form the resting place of Mesopotamian rulers.
An excavation of Başur Höyük [DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2018.63] [DX] uncovered a large, coffin-like stone tomb that contained multiple burials, with an unprecedented number of high-status grave goods for the period and region.
In three graves were found the remains of at least 11 people, male and female, ranging from age 11 to young adults. Several people were buried outside the tomb with elaborate ornaments and grave goods. Brenna says, 'The burials are remarkable because of the youth of the individuals, the number that were buried and the large wealth of objects that were buried with them.
Also at Live Science and Newsweek.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by HiThere on Sunday July 01 2018, @05:27PM (4 children)
Still, that's a long time, and likely the people living there bore no relation to anyone currently in the area.
OTOH, there is a similarity to the Phoenician custom of the wealthy sacrificing their children in times of dire straits ... presumably to hold the community together with evidence of "it's hard on all of us". The reasoning is a guess, however, as the records aren't trustworthy.
P.S.: While the Romans had officially given up human sacrifice and thus were able to be appalled at the Carthaginian custom, it's worth remembering that during the pre-imperial time the deaths in the area were dedicated to Jupiter, and the change of dedicating them to the Emperor didn't signify *much* of a change, as the Emperor was essentially a representative of the same power that Jupiter was supposed to represent (official laws and state power). (I'm less sure how the Christians justified it when they took over the exact same custom without changing anything except the victims.)
P.P.S.: This gives me to wonder about movies that glorify battles, etc. and about the curious indifference that is displayed to deaths in military training. This seems to still be the exact same god being worshiped. US football may also be an aspect here, though deaths are rare, maimings are not. What seems to be missing is the worship of the state.
The point of this is, some customs seem built in as "easily activated" routines. This may be the kind of thing that Jung called an archetype, though not the common interpretation of that term. Jung was careful about how he bounded them. Personally I think he just lacked the appropriate language. I'd call them the set of firmware routines that had a publicly accessible API, but that's my metaphor. Anyway, it's patterns of reaction and behavior that people are predisposed to from before birth. How they show up is very context dependent. And that's why they can persist across such a long period of time.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Sunday July 01 2018, @06:18PM (2 children)
You probably imagine too much.
These so called sacrifices may simply be a change from one warlord to the next, eliminating anyone with dynastic claims to power, but glorifying them to avoid hatred.
Or parental killings to avoid killing by the enemy in the face of an impending defeat. Or oldest offspring eliminating any contenders for the throne. Or disease.
One need not reach to ritualism every time a body is found to be buried with care.
Future (perhaps alien) archaeologists will probably attribute aluminum pop-tops [westerndigs.org] scattered around the earth as religious symbols and wax eloquent about them in some Post-apocalyptic future.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 01 2018, @06:58PM (1 child)
I plan to have several anime figures buried with me, just to confuse future archeologists.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 01 2018, @08:51PM
I plan on not dying.
To confuse doctors.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 01 2018, @06:39PM
Hardly matters. Jews were memorizing the whole bible and a few additional works right up until the 15th century without real relations to most of it. Some of that stuff is similarly old. Australian aboriginals have tales stretching even longer. Chinese ancient scholarship was all about the memorization of works and easily covered 3000 years of legal papers up until the early Qian dynasty despite having written documents... You'd be amazed how much information people retained before the information age. It's not all gone. There Iranian farmers that retain pre-Islamic oral traditions that are only now being recorded. Under different circumstances a Christian priest encounter this would have decorated the tales while adding Christian motifs and teaching the new edition to the kids until it became the local Christian saints and practices. This is exactly what happened in Norway when the Christian invaded. That is, the new Christian traditions weren't just taken from the current religions but from the ones before. Aesir, Vanir and even the previous unnamed pantheon as hinted in the Völuspá. So now you can't even tell what came form where and how it all connects. And Santa is just a part of all of this.
Overall, don't underestimate syncretism. It's all jumbled up and has been that way since for ever. A good hint is tracking proto-indo languages and seeing how it all spreads like wild fire. Ideas follow the same pattern.