This practice has been in existence throughout history, with some historians claiming that it is associated with Neolithic and nomadic cultures before the emergence of civilization.

In many African communities, human sacrifice was done for a number of reasons, but mainly it was intended to bring good fortune and to appease the gods.

For instance, some African communities offered human sacrifices to celebrate the completion of a new building, such as a temple or a bridge.

In modern times, witch doctors are said to use human body parts, especially from albinos, to bring luck and wealth. In fact, the black market for albino body parts is said to be booming in countries, such as Tanzaniaand Malawi, with their graves usually violated and sold to witch doctors.

People with albinism in these countries have been forced to seek refuge in rescue centers or flee to neighboring countries.


https://face2faceafrica.com/article/african-human-sacrifice

KATABI, Uganda — Jackline Mukisa sobbed as she described how her 8-year-old son was found in a nearby swamp in February without teeth, lips, ears and genitals.

“My innocent son died a painful death,” said Mukisa, 28. “How could somebody intend to murder my son?”

A motorcyclist offered John Lubega a lift as he walked back from school, according to fellow students who saw him last. His remains suggest he was slowly killed as part of a human sacrifice ritual performed by witch doctors, apparently to appease the spirits, said Mukisa, who filed a police report.

No arrest has been made so far.

In this landlocked country whose diverse landscape includes the snow-capped Ruwenzori Mountains and immense Lake Victoria, many believe sacrificial rituals can bring quick wealth and health.

Among those rituals, human sacrifice, especially of children, occurs frequently despite the government’s efforts to stop it.

Seven children and two adults were sacrificed last year, said Moses Binoga, a police officer who heads Uganda’s Anti-Human Sacrifice and Trafficking Task Force. Seven children and six adults were sacrificed in 2015.

But experts said the number could be much higher.

(read more in the link)

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/09/26/witch-doctors-sacrificing-children-drought-stricken-african-country-uganda/703756001/

Hope and desperation

For the people in this farming community, hope is all that is left for them to hold on to. They can only hope for the rain to come in order to relieve them from their misery. Some men lose this hope and commit suicide. Mokgobja and his family carry on, hoping for the rain. When the rain finally comes they rush to their farm, full of hope, excitement, anticipation and joy. They think that their problems will be resolved. However, their happiness is short-lived. The rain stops falling, shattering all their dreams.

Nevertheless, they do not lose hope. They wait for the rain again. After a long wait, their hopes turns to desperation, and they reach a point where they are willing to grasp at anything that might resolve their problem. Hoping that the rain will come if they offer the “ultimate” sacrifice, the family does the ritual killing of the 2 children. Pushed to the very limits of desperation and hope, these people lose their sense of humanity and rationality.

http://linguallyspeaking.blogspot.my/2012/02/looking-for-rain-god-by-bessie-head.html

Head was the daughter of a white woman and black man. After her mother’s parents found she was pregnant she was sent to a mental asylum, where Head was born on 6 July 1937. She was brought up by foster parents and then by the Anglican mission orphanage. Head trained as a primary school teacher and taught for a few years but in 1959 she began a career as a journalist. She wrote short stories for Johannesburg’s Golden City Post a weekly supplement that was related to the more famous Drum magazine. Her work for Drum magazine won her a reputation as writer.

In 1960 Head moved to Cape Town where she became part of a group of anti-apartheid activists and married fellow activist Harold Head in 1962. Together they lived in District Six and Head worked for a monthly magazine, The New African where she found general support for her Africanist politics. During this period in District Six, Head wrote her first novel, The Cardinals but this was only published after her death. In 1963, she moved to Port Elizabeth with her husband, where he was to work as the first Black reporter for the Evening Post. In 1964 her husband, Harold, fled to England and Head was given a one-way exit to Botswana. By this time their marriage had fallen apart.

In Botswana, Head taught for a while and then started to work on the Swaneng Hill project dealing with community farming education in Serowe, but had a difficult time as she experienced rejection from the Africans of Botswana. After losing her job as a teacher she worked on a farm and then for a construction company. She turned to writing, and in her writing draws from her experiences in South Africa. She talks about her vision for the future and the problems she experienced with identity. In Botswana, Head wrote a short novel, When Rain Clouds Gather followed by Maru, a novel that dealt with the oppression against the Masarwa people. After Maru, Head wrote A Question of Power which is a reflection of her experience of a mental breakdown that she suffered as a result of living in fear and poverty as a refugee.

In 1977 she published the first collection of short stories (The Collector of Treasures) to be published by a black South African woman. The Botswana government finally granted Head citizenship in 1979, which allowed her to travel overseas. Her reputation as a writer grew and she often met academics and students who wished to make her work the subject of their thesis and even South African publishers eventually published her work.

Head died of hepatitis at the age of 49 in 1986 while still working on some books.

http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/bessie-amelia-head

JINJA, Uganda — Caroline Aya was playing in front of her house in January when a neighbor put a cloth over her mouth and fled with her.

A couple of days later, the 8-year-old's body was found a short walk away — with her tongue cut out. Police believe she was offered up as a human sacrifice in a ritual killing, thought to bring wealth or health.

"If it is a sickness you try to treat it, and if they die that is one thing," said Caroline's father, Balluonzima Christ. "But when you slaughter a person like a goat, that is not easy."

The practice of human sacrifice is on the rise in Uganda, as measured by ritual killings where body parts, often facial features or genitals, are cut off for use in ceremonies. The number of people killed in ritual murders last year rose to a new high of at least 15 children and 14 adults, up from just three cases in 2007, according to police. The informal count is much higher — 154 suspects were arrested last year and 50 taken to court over ritual killings.

(read more in the link)

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/36167424/ns/world_news-africa/t/children-sacrificed-rituals-uganda/#.Wl6yjq6WaM8

surrounding areas, Africa. The story is set in the periods before and after

1958. Before 1958, the land is rich with trees, flowing plants and vegetation.

Wild figs and berries are available to be plucked as and when the needs

arise. But all this changes after 1958, as a seven-year drought seizes the

land. The drought changes the natural landscape. The land transforms into

thorny bushes, withering trees and the grounds become barren. This is the

physical setting and the changes to the land before and after 1958 are

visible.
https://www.scribd.com/doc/10207082/Looking-for-a-Rain-God

http://literaturewithariff.weebly.com/looking-for-a-rain-god.html

 

Symbolism

·         The two young children symbolize innocence and helplessness. They also represent future generation
·         The sun and rain are symbols of life. They are important sources of life for people to live and carry out agricultural activities 

 

In Africa, the rainmakers were considered to be rainmaking priests and priestesses, and some African tribes even had rainmaking clans. 

A ‘rainmaking’ center, where African shamans would call on the gods to send rain, was discovered in Southern Africa by archaeologists in 2013 while investigating rock art. Researchers confirmed the hilltop sacred site of Ratho Kroonkop was full of evidence of rain control fauna. It is believed that the San people used this site to conduct rituals for rain and that when farmers came to the area they would hire the San shamans to call on the skies to open up. Researchers say the shamans would have climbed up the hill through the fissures in the rock, and then lit fires to offer animal remains to the gods as part of their ceremonies. 

African rainmakers were considered priests and priestesses, and they conducted rituals. 

Maurice Iwu, Nigerian professor of pharmacognosy (the study of medicinal plants) in his Handbook of African Medicinal Plants, says that the process of rainmaking is complicated and differs enormously from place to place. 

The Igbo people burn sacred herbs and call on the rain god with broomsticks: the Koma rainmakers live in caves and restrict their drinks to milk, and only drink water publicly to initiate rainmaking ceremonies. 

He says rain falls when the ancestors and gods are pleased. 

Rain is viewed as a sacred and phenomenal gift from God, the most explicit expression of God’s goodness, providence and love. This important herald of creation serves as a first sign (droughts and flood) of the anger of the creator. Rainmakers represent the people’s contact with the blessings of time and eternity, a link between humans and the Divine. The rainmakers do not rely exclusively on their spiritual powers; they are well versed in weather and environmental matters and may spend long periods of apprenticeship acquiring their knowledge.


http://upliftconnect.com/ancient-indigenous-rainmaking/

Bessie had good luck finding a job. She became a freelance reporter, and the only woman reporter, at the Golden City Post. This was an important newspaper for 'non-white' readers. She rented a room in the poor 'Coloured' community of District Six. However, most of her neighbours spoke Afrikaans. Fair-skinned 'Coloureds' acted as if they were more cultured than others. (Bessie was too dark for them). At home and at work she was rudely confronted with her own identity.

The next year, 1959, she moved to Johannesburg to work for the weekend magazine Home Post. Here she met well-known African journalists and learned certain writing skills from them. She encountered a militant liberation movement, the Pan-Africanist Congress, and later joined it. Its leader, Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe, remained one of her heroes all her life.

Bessie herself was a failure at politics. In 1960, following the Sharpeville massacre, she was arrested for her PAC activities. She gave the police some unimportant evidence, a mistake which tormented her. Then a well-known artist, whom she greatly admired, sexually assaulted her. In despair she tried to commit suicide.

After a time in hospital, she returned to Cape Town. She began to write again for the Golden City Post, but became depressed and quit. For several months she was 'invisible'. When she re-emerged, she started her own little homemade newspaper, The Citizen, which expressed her strong pro-Africanist views.
http://thuto.org/bhead/html/biography/brief_biography.htm
 

Sparsely populated, Botswana protects some of Africa's largest areas of wilderness. Safari-based tourism - tightly-controlled and often upmarket - is an important source of income.

Botswana is the world's largest producer of diamonds and the trade has transformed it into a middle-income nation.

The country has had its share of problems: It once had the world's highest rate of HIV-Aids infection. UN figures for 2014 suggest that for adults aged 15 to 49 the prevalence rate is 25%.

The country has one of Africa's most-advanced treatment programmes, however, and medicine for the virus is readily available. 

The Tswana had begun to develop the kgotla tradition during the early 1800s and by the time British Empire had incorporated the nation of Botswana under their imperialist wing as the Bechuanaland Protectorate in 1885, the Tswana people had already developed a unique political culture centered around public consultation.[3] The British government, in concurrence with its indirect governance strategy, encouraged this propensity through legislation which put into law what many chiefs had already begun to do, that is, bring all potential laws before a public assembly so as to benefit from their consult. So from then on, after devising legislation together with his advisers, the chief was expected to call a tribal assembly and to put whatever it was that he had produced before them for consideration. If the men assembled liked the proposal, the chief would surely implement it. If they did not like it however, he would more often than not either scrap his plans or modify them to make them more agreeable to his subjects, though he was not legally bound to do so. This was perhaps due to the Tswana's unique political culture, which among other things, emphasized that the "Chief is Chief by grace of his tribe," a sentiment which certainly does not encourage unilateral domestic policy implementation. In the early days the kgotla acted effectively as a means of indirect participation in Tswanan government and to ensure “competent leadership” [4]

The British had chosen to leave the traditional government in place partly because they were so effective at keeping things running smoothly. The stability had come at a steep price though. While their support did help the Chiefs maintain political stability in the region it inadvertently degraded the already somewhat specious quality of the Tswana’s only democratic institution. Chiefs no longer ruled "by the grace of the people," rather they served the people at the behest of the British empire. In other words, the popular constraints (civil unrest, disobedience, and general noncooperation) that had kept their tribal sovereigns in line were neutered by foreign money and military support. [5] Still the tribes managed to survive and eventually became the Independent Republic of Botswana in 1966. With the advent of representative democracy came the central bureaucracy which greatly diminished the powers of the old tribal chiefs. Today, kgotla meetings are still held but due to several factors (including an across the board decline in civic participation) are sparsely attended. 

'Sacrifice business'

Many believe that members of the country's new elite are paying witch doctors vast sums of money for the sacrifices in a bid to increase their wealth.

At the Kyampisi Childcare Ministries church, Pastor Peter Sewakiryanga is teaching local children a song called Heal Our Land, End Child Sacrifice.

To hear dozens of young voices singing such shocking words epitomises how ritual murder has become part of everyday life here.

"Child sacrifice has risen because people have become lovers of money. They want to get richer," the pastor says.

"They have a belief that when you sacrifice a child you get wealth, and there are people who are willing to buy these children for a price. So they have become a commodity of exchange, child sacrifice has become a commercial business."

The pastor and his parishioners are lobbying the government to regulate witch doctors and improve police resources to investigate these crimes.

According to official police figures, there was one case of child sacrifice in 2006; in 2008 the police say they investigated 25 alleged ritual murders, and in 2009, another 29.

The Anti-Human Sacrifice Police Task Force, launched in response to the growing numbers, says the ritual murder rate has slowed, citing a figure of 38 cases since 2006.

Pastor Sewakiryanga disputes the police numbers, and says there are more victims from his parish than official statistics for the entire country.

The work of the police task force has been strongly criticised by the UK-based charity, Jubilee Campaign.

It says in a report that the true number of cases is in the hundreds, and claims more than 900 cases have yet to be investigated by the police because of corruption and a lack of resources.

(read more in the link)

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-15255357

The culture of human sacrifice is said to be rampant in many African countries, including Nigeria, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Swaziland, South Africa, and several others.

These practices involve the hunting down, mutilation, and murder of the most vulnerable members of the society, particularly children, people with albinism (a genetic skin disorder), and the handicapped.

 

Unfortunately, most of these cases go unreported largely due to the secret nature of the ritual sacrifices and naivety of the people involved.

Many people in the communities where these practices are held have accepted them as a part of their tradition and do not report them to the relevant authorities.

Law enforcement agencies and human rights defenders have had a hard time dealing with these killings mainly because they touch on deep-rooted cultural underpinnings that often bring about the ideological rift between cultural beliefs and practices and the respect for human rights.

Human sacrifice is defined as the act of killing one or more human beings as an offering to a god and as part of a ritual. The victims are usually killed in a ritualistic way that is meant to appease the gods or the spirits.

This practice has been in existence throughout history, with some historians claiming that it is associated with Neolithic and nomadic cultures before the emergence of civilization.

In many African communities, human sacrifice was done for a number of reasons, but mainly it was intended to bring good fortune and to appease the gods.

For instance, some African communities offered human sacrifices to celebrate the completion of a new building, such as a temple or a bridge.

In modern times, witch doctors are said to use human body parts, especially from albinos, to bring luck and wealth. In fact, the black market for albino body parts is said to be booming in countries, such as Tanzaniaand Malawi, with their graves usually violated and sold to witch doctors.

People with albinism in these countries have been forced to seek refuge in rescue centers or flee to neighboring countries.

Many lives have been lost and continue to be lost in Africa through this loathsome cultural practice. It’s no doubt a regressive culture that has played a major role in dragging the African economy backward.

That’s why many governments across the continent are adopting new and stringent measures aimed at curbing the vice.

In Tanzania, the government has been very tough in combating this menace, with the police carrying out regular crackdowns on unlicensed traditional healers and witch doctors.

In 2015, Tanzanian authorities arrested more than 200 witch doctors and herbalists across the country and charged them with several crimes, including murder and human trafficking. Each suspect was ordered to pay $75,000 for every complete set of albino body parts found.

In March of the same year, a Tanzanian court sentenced four people to death, after they were found guilty of killing an albino woman for purposes of selling her body parts to witch doctors.

But despite the numerous arrests and prosecution of people involved in this heinous practice, human rights activists in the country are worried that the trend is nowhere near the end.

Reports of people with albinism being attacked are still dominating headlines in Tanzania and Malawi, even as the two governments continue to speak tough on the issue.

Human rights defenders have called on African governments and the international community to ensure that all vulnerable people, including albinos, are fully protected and decisive actions are taken against their attackers.

There is also the need to educate people about the dangers of human sacrifice and discrimination against people with albinism.

African countries, where human sacrifice and other ritual killings are common, need to adopt new legislation that will outlaw these practices and ensure perpetrators of such crimes are dealt with accordingly.

While the right to one’s religion and belief is a fundamental freedom, human sacrifice and ritual killings are not permissible under the African Charter, meaning any person or community practicing it must be fully prosecuted. 

http://iheu.org/ritual-killing-and-human-sacrifice-africa/

http://iheu.org/ritual-killing-and-human-sacrifice-africa/

 

Schoolchildren are closely watched by teachers and parents as they make their way home from school. In playgrounds and on the roadside are posters warning of the danger of abduction by witch doctors for the purpose of child sacrifice.

The ritual, which some believe brings wealth and good health, was almost unheard of in the country until about three years ago, but it has re-emerged, seemingly alongside a boom in the country's economy.

Image caption

Stephen's decapitated body was found in a field

The mutilated bodies of children have been discovered at roadsides, the victims of an apparently growing belief in the power of human sacrifice.

'Sacrifice business'

Many believe that members of the country's new elite are paying witch doctors vast sums of money for the sacrifices in a bid to increase their wealth.

At the Kyampisi Childcare Ministries church, Pastor Peter Sewakiryanga is teaching local children a song called Heal Our Land, End Child Sacrifice.

To hear dozens of young voices singing such shocking words epitomises how ritual murder has become part of everyday life here.

"Child sacrifice has risen because people have become lovers of money. They want to get richer," the pastor says.

"They have a belief that when you sacrifice a child you get wealth, and there are people who are willing to buy these children for a price. So they have become a commodity of exchange, child sacrifice has become a commercial business."

The pastor and his parishioners are lobbying the government to regulate witch doctors and improve police resources to investigate these crimes.

According to official police figures, there was one case of child sacrifice in 2006; in 2008 the police say they investigated 25 alleged ritual murders, and in 2009, another 29.

The Anti-Human Sacrifice Police Task Force, launched in response to the growing numbers, says the ritual murder rate has slowed, citing a figure of 38 cases since 2006.

Pastor Sewakiryanga disputes the police numbers, and says there are more victims from his parish than official statistics for the entire country.

The work of the police task force has been strongly criticised by the UK-based charity, Jubilee Campaign.

It says in a report that the true number of cases is in the hundreds, and claims more than 900 cases have yet to be investigated by the police because of corruption and a lack of resources.

'Quiet money'

Image caption

Allan was left for dead after a vicious attack

Tepenensi led me to a field near her home where she found the body of her six-year-old grandson Stephen, dumped in the reeds. She trembled as she pointed out the spot where she found his decapitated body; he had been missing for 24 hours.

Clutching the only photo she has of her grandson, Tepenensi sobbed as she explained that although the local witch doctor had admitted to sacrificing Stephen, the police were reluctant to pursue the case.

"They offered me money to keep quiet," she says. "I refused the offer."

No-one from the Ugandan government agreed to do an interview. The police deny inaction and corruption.

The head of the Anti-Human Sacrifice Police Task Force, Commissioner Bignoa Moses, says the police are doing all they can to tackle the problem.

"Sometimes, they accuse us of these things because we make no arrests, but we are limited. If we get information that someone is involved in criminal activities like human sacrifice, we shall go and investigate, and if it can be proven we will take him to court, but sometimes the cases are not proven."

Boy castrated

At Kampala main hospital, consultant neurosurgeon Michael Muhumuza shows me the X-rays of the horrific injuries suffered by nine-year-old Allan.

They reveal missing bone from his skull and damage to a part of his brain after a machete sliced through Allan's head and neck in an attempt to behead him; he was castrated by the witch doctor. It was a month before Allan woke from a coma after being dumped near his village home.

Allan was able to identify his attackers, including a man called Awali. But the police say Allan's eyewitness account is unreliable.

Image caption

Some children are cut to collect blood for rituals

Local people told us that Awali continues to be involved with child sacrifice.

For our own inquiries, we posed as local businessmen and asked around for a witch doctor that could bring prosperity to our local construction company. We were soon introduced to Awali. He led us into a courtyard behind his home, and as if to welcome us he and his helpers wrestled a goat to the ground and slit its throat.

"This animal has been sacrificed to bring luck to us all," Awali explained. He then demanded a fee of $390 (£250) for the ritual and asked us to return in a few days.

At our next meeting, Awali invited us into his shrine, which is traditionally built from mud bricks with a straw roof. Inside, the floor is littered with herbs, face masks, rattles and a machete.

The witch doctor explained that this meeting was to discuss the most powerful spell - the sacrifice of a child.

"There are two ways of doing this," he said. "We can bury the child alive on your construction site, or we cut them in different places and put their blood in a bottle of spiritual medicine."

Awali grabbed his throat. "If it's a male, the whole head is cut off and his genitals. We will dig a hole at your construction site, and also bury the feet and the hands and put them all together in the hole."

Image caption

The attacks have created a climate of fear

Awali boasted he had sacrificed children many times before and knew what he was doing. After this meeting, we withdrew from the negotiations.

We handed our notes to the police. Awali is still a free man.

'No voice'

Allan's father, Semwanga, has sold his home to pay for Allan's medical treatment, and moved to the slums near the capital.

Sitting on the steps of their makeshift house, built from corrugated sheets of metal, I showed the footage of our meeting with the witch doctor to Allan on my laptop. He pointed to the screen and shouted "Awali!" confirming he is the man who attacked him.

Pastor Sewakiryanga says without the full force of the law, there is little that can be done to protect Uganda's children from the belief in the power of human sacrifice.

"The children do not have voices, their voices have been silenced by the law and the police not acting, and the people who read the newspapers do nothing, so we have to make a stand and do whatever it takes to stamp out this evil, we can only pray that the government will listen." 

Madam Chairperson,
The practice of ritual killing⁽¹⁾ and human sacrifice⁽²⁾ continues to take place in several African countries in contravention of the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights and other human rights instruments. In this 21st century, human beings are still being hunted down, mutilated, murdered or sacrificed for ritual purposes across the region. Several cases of kidnapping and disappearance of persons⁽³⁾ are traced to the vicious schemes and activities of ritualists. In most cases, those targeted for ritual sacrifice are vulnerable members of the population — the  poor, women, children⁽⁴⁾, the aged and people with disabilities.⁽⁵⁾

Ritualists hunt for and harvest human body parts to prepare charms and magical concoctions. In some cases desperate ritualists invade cemeteries and exhume dead bodies⁽⁶⁾ to extract body parts.

Ritual killing and related human rights abuses take place on the continent because many people still believe that the use of charms and the performance of ritual sacrifice can fortify them spiritually, enhance their fortunes in business and during elections, or protect them from harm, disease, poverty, accident, death or destruction.

Madam Chairperson, many cases of ritual sacrifice take place in secret locations. They are largely unreported, uninvestigated and unpunished. The perpetrators and their collaborators capitalize on the prevalent irrational fear of the supernatural among Africans, and the poor and corrupt policing and justice system, to get away with these egregious violations.

Victims of ritual sacrifice are mostly minors or vulnerable individuals who do not live to seek justice or redress or who lack the resources to seek redress if ever they survive the ordeal. The families of victims fear spiritual or supernatural backlash and therefore do not hold their states accountable. And local authorities lack the political will to uphold the rule of law and protect human rights.

There have been reports of ritual murder and human sacrifice in countries across the continent: in Nigeria⁽⁷⁾, Uganda⁽⁸⁾, Swaziland⁽⁹⁾, Liberia⁽¹⁰⁾, Tanzania⁽¹¹⁾, Namibia⁽¹²⁾, Zimbabwe⁽¹³⁾

Madam Chairperson, 
The continued occurrence of ritual killing and related abuses in these countries are clear indications that these states are in breach of their human rights obligations under the African Charter. These atrocious acts are often defended and justified as part of African culture, religion or tradition and it is claimed that they should therefore be upheld without any objection despite their grave implications for human and people’s rights.

IHEU calls upon the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights to pay critical attention to ritual killing, human sacrifice and other human rights violations that are committed in the name of religion, culture or tradition. The African Commission should hold states where human sacrifice is still going on accountable and responsible.

IHEU calls upon the African Commission to raise issues concerning ritual killing and sacrifice during their official visits and when examining the periodic reports of states.

IHEU urges the governments of Nigeria, Uganda, Swaziland, Tanzania, Liberia to improve law enforcement, the quality of education, the mechanisms for the promotion and protection of human rights and to take other legislative and administrative measures to combat ritual murder and human sacrifice
Thank you 

In Japan, it was said that sacrificing a woman at a rushing river would placate the spirit who lived there, allowing for the construction of bridges and the safe passage of boats. In Greek myth, the warrior king Agamemnon decides to kill his own daughter in exchange for a favorable wind on the way to Troy. The Egyptians buried some of their pharaohs with dozens of servants when they died, ensuring that their needs would still be met in the afterlife. Bodies found entombed in bogs across Europe may have been slain as gifts for higher powers. The great civilizations of Mesoamerica killed people, smashed food and sank treasure to pay their debts to their gods.

The ancients could kill you in a million different ways and give you a million different reasons why it needed to be done. In much of the pre-modern world, ritual sacrifice was framed as necessary for the good of the society at large — the only way to guarantee, say, a plentiful harvest or success in war.

But the priests and rulers who sanctioned such killings may have had another motive, a new study suggests. An analysis of more than seven dozen Austronesian cultures revealed that the practice of human sacrifices tended to make societies increasingly less egalitarian and eventually gave rise to strict, inherited class systems. In other words, ritual killings helped keep the powerful in power and everyone else in check. 
 

That finding might seem intuitive — societies in which some members are habitually killed probably value certain lives over others — but it has broader implications, the researchers said in the journal Nature. It suggests a “darker link between religion and the evolution of modern hierarchical societies,” they write, in which “ritual killings helped humans transition from the small egalitarian groups of our ancestors and the large, stratified societies we live in today.”

Lots of sociologists have theorized about this connection, the researchers say, but there haven’t been many rigorous scientific studies of how it came about until this one. 
 

The scientists behind the Nature study used phylogenetic analysis — a tool that was originally used to plot evolutionary family trees but can also be applied by sociologists to study the development of languages — to map the relationships between the 93 cultures they were examining. This allowed them to see whether the traits they were looking for were inherited or adopted from other cultures, and it helped determine the causal relationship between human sacrifice and stratification. (The same scientists used the technique last year for a study arguing that belief in supernatural punishment gave rise to political complexity.)

The cultures studied all descended from an ocean voyaging society that originated in Taiwan, but they ranged across the Pacific as far south as New Zealand and as far east as Easter Island. The group was also hugely diverse, including both the small, egalitarian family-based communities of the Isneg in the Philippines and the huge societies of the Hawaiian islands, which were home to complex states with royal families, slaves and more than 100,000 people who often came into conflict.

Relying on historical and ethnographic accounts, the researchers rated the cultures according to their level of stratification and identified which ones practiced ritual sacrifice.

The motivation and method of the killings differed across cultures, the researchers explain in a piece for the Conversation: Sacrifices could be demanded for the death of a chief, the construction of a home, the start of a war, the outbreak of disease or the violation of a social taboo. The victims might be strangled, drowned, bludgeoned, burned, buried, crushed with a newly built canoe, or rolled off a roof and then decapitated.

But the link between the sacrifices and social hierarchies seemed to transcend those differences. The victims were almost always of low social status, and the more stratified the culture was, the more prevalent ritual killings were likely to be.

Of the 20 “egalitarian” societies they studied — so termed because they didn’t allow inheritance of wealth and status between generations — just 25 percent practiced human sacrifice. By contrast, 37 percent of the 46 moderately stratified societies — where wealth and status could be inherited, but it wasn’t necessarily linked to wildly different living standards or pronounced social classes —had the practice. And among the 27 highly stratified cultures, where inherited class differences were strictly enforced with little opportunity for social mobility, a whopping 65 percent committed ritual killings.

The phylogenetic trees illustrated that ritual killings tended to precede social hierarchies, and once stratification occurred, they served to reinforce it. It was very difficult for a culture to return to egalitarianism after class differences had set in.

This finding supports the “social control hypothesis” of human sacrifice, the researchers said. This idea suggests that ritual killings are a way to terrorize people into submission, allowing the religious and political leaders (and in many cultures, those were one and the same) who ordered the killings to consolidate power unopposed.

Speaking to Smithsonian Magazine, lead researcher Joseph Watts noted that ritual killings often occurred in elaborate ceremonies that exploited gore as effectively as an HBO show: “It’s not just a matter of killing efficiently. There’s more to it than that,” he said. “The terror and spectacle [of the act] was maximized.”

The fear that sacrifices inspired allowed the practice to function “as a stepping-stone to help build and maintain power in early hierarchical societies,” Watts, a psychologist at the University of Auckland, wrote on his website. Once their authority was absolute, elites could use more traditional methods — policing, taxation, war — to keep the class system in place.

“People often claim that religion underpins morality,” Watts told Science. But he says his study illustrates how religious rituals like human sacrifice are often designed to serve someone other than the gods: “It shows how religion can be exploited by social elites to their own benefit.”

This is a pretty grim notion, to be sure. But it may also have been necessary. The division of people into groups of unequal wealth and status was vital to the development of modern civilization, Watts writes. Hierarchies helped give rise to great cities and vast empires capable of undertaking massive public-works projects and creating priceless works of art. Certainly, countless people were oppressed (and, according to this study, killed) in the process. But still, class was critical to getting us to where we are today.

“I think it’s absolutely an important project,” University of British Columbia psychologist Joseph Henrich told the New Scientist. “Sacrifice does seem to have been performed in societies all around the world.”

But he urged some skepticism about the study’s broad conclusions. Though human sacrifice may have been correlated with stratification in the Austronesian societies, Henrich was dubious of the phylogenetic analysis the researchers used to prove that the relationship was causal. That tool assumes that social strata and religious rituals are passed down and evolve through generations in the same manner as languages.

“There’s no real reason to think that’s true – and in fact there’s reason to think it’s not true,” Henrich told the New Scientist.

For proof, he pointed back at the Austronesian societies Watts and his colleagues studied. Human sacrifice has all but vanished from that region in the past few hundred years, but languages are still being passed down from parent to child — demonstrating that those two aspects of culture don’t necessarily evolve in the same way.

There’s also danger in overgeneralizing the study’s conclusions. What is true of ritual killings in Austronesian cultures may not necessarily apply to the Aztecs or ancient Egyptians. And whatever role human sacrifice may have played in those societies, it’s still only one aspect of culture — it cannot entirely be blamed for the complex hierarchies and rigid class systems that have long dominated much of the modern world.

Nevertheless, religion researchers said they were glad to see rigorous data analysis like the kind used in the Nature study injected into their field.

“The study of religion has been plagued in many ways by an abundance of ideas and a shortage of strong quantitative tests of these ideas,”  Richard Sosis, a human behavior ecologist at the University of Connecticut at Storrs, told Science.

“These methods have power, and they are certainly an advance in the way we can evaluate ideas. Are they the last piece to the puzzle? No.” But, he added, “at least the conversation can begin here and begin in a systematic way that hasn’t happened before.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/04/05/the-darker-link-between-ancient-human-sacrifice-and-our-modern-world/?utm_term=.73e89bc77f8e

Human sacrifice – horrific gift to the gods

Would you sacrifice your child?

In the Book of Judges, a soldier called a soldier called Jephtah swears to God that if God gives him victory in battle, he will sacrifice the first creature that meets him when he returns home.

Alas, it is his only child, a daughter, who runs out to greet him. Jephtah is horrified, but keeps his promise and kills the girl.

What should he have done? Keep his promise, or break his word to God? The Bible leaves us in no doubt. His action is heavily condemned.

But the man himself? Jephtah becomes one of the great tragic figures of the Bible – as does his daughter. 

Until 12,000 years ago Austronesian societies lived within largely egalitarian, classless hunter-gatherer cultures, but then the development of hierarchical societies began – a system whereby wealth and power were centered on the ruling elite.

A new study suggests elaborate human sacrifices in these ancient societies like crushing a victim under a newly constructed canoe or decapitating a victim after they had been rolled off of a house were the foundation of some class-based groups in modern Austronesian societies.

Key points of the study include; 40 of the 93 Austronesian cultures studied practiced human sacrifice, the victims were typically of low status, and the initiators were elites like chiefs or priests.

Joseph Watts with the University of Auckland, a coauthor of the study, told Nature, “Unpalatable as it might be, our results suggest that ritual killing helped humans transition from the small egalitarian groups of our ancestors, to the large stratified societies we live in today. Our study shows in these early stages that human sacrifice might have helped to build and sustain the social class systems.” 

a new study published Monday in Nature revisits the ancient practice to look for fresh insights. The scientists found that, for better or worse (and only worse for the victims, of course), human sacrifice helped create the hierarchies present in many modern societies.

The scientists from the University of Auckland and Victoria University of Wellington, both in New Zealand, found that ritual sacrifice may have spurred the transition of small, egalitarian societies to large, stratified ones. The study examined 93 traditional Austronesian cultures (speakers of a family of languages in parts of Africa, Asia and Oceania).

They looked at whether and how these cultures used ritual sacrifice — 40 of them practiced it — and how it affected social organization. The cultures were then divided into groups: egalitarian, moderately stratified and highly stratified. They were defined by the presence or absence of social hierarchy, and the rate of social mobility.

The scientists found, perhaps not surprisingly, that human sacrifice contributed to creating and preserving social hierarchies, and that it increased the chances that societies would have more fixed strata, which were inherited positions, and less mobility. It also generally helped prevent loss of social divisions once they existed. 

Despite its barbaric nature, human sacrifice was a useful tool for rulers, elites, and religious figures to maintain or cement their power, or even to proclaim their own divinity.

In these cultures, human sacrifice — usually of slaves or others with low status — was sometimes called for in response to several events, including the breaking of taboos or customs, the funerals of important people, or the consecration of a new house or boat, according to the authors.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/05/science/ritual-human-sacrifice.html