2016-04-05

Sorry, but try to understand human sacrifice is necessary to maintain social class order

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Elaborate ritual killings such as being crushed under a newly built canoe and decapitation after being rolled off a house laid the foundations of class-based structures in modern societies, a new study of Austronesian cultures suggests. — http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-05/human-sacrifice-may-have-helped-build-social-class-structures/7297460

The source article is Ritual Human Sacrifice Promoted and Sustained the Evolution of Stratified Societies in Nature magazine. I see from its first paragraph that it uses our old favourite, Bayesian analysis.

James Cook witnessing human sacrifice in Tahiti c. 1773 -- Wikipedia
James Cook witnessing human sacrifice in Tahiti c. 1773 — Wikipedia

Egalitarian societies are a good thing.

Don’t we see even in class societies that no longer practice human sacrifice the upper classes expending the blood of the lower classes in other ways — all buttressed by noble and praiseworthy ideologies, of course.

 

The following two tabs change content below.

Neil Godfrey

Neil is the author of this post. To read more about Neil, see our About page.

Latest posts by Neil Godfrey (see all)



If you enjoyed this post, please consider donating to Vridar. Thanks!


3 thoughts on “Sorry, but try to understand human sacrifice is necessary to maintain social class order”

  1. Neil, can you spell out in more detail what you mean by a desirable “egalitarian” society – politically, economically and socio-culturally?

    1. Read the context — and the linked article the post is directing readers to. I don’t like the idea of human sacrifice. One is less likely to find it in the record of egalitarian societies.

  2. All tribal societies have had a practice of killing strangers much like chimpanzees. We have bigger brains but killing others its what we’ve done since the beginning. We are improving a bit though. Keeping out immigrants is better that killing them and many of us have moved past that.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Discover more from Vridar

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading