NEWS: Early Man Believed to Practice Human Sacrifice... on the Disabled

It's not news... it's FA... oh, wrong website. Carry on.

Human sacrifice was a very widespread cultural element at one point. It was certainly very popular in Britain during the late stone age. Lots of settlements from that time, like Skara Brae in Orkney, and sacred sites like Woodhenge have child corpses deposited in postholes. Evidence seems to point to them being dedicatory sacrifices.

It's funny that we think of human sacrifice as a custom detatched from our own history, when the inhabitants of this island were practicing it right up until christianity arrived in the middle of the first millennium. Human sacrifice in South America only lasted 1000 years longer than it did in the British Isles, so it is as much a part of our history as it is someone from Mexico.

I'm not condoning Human sacrifice, obviously, I just think it's interesting that many people don't know, and indeed would rather not know, that our ancestors were pretty much the definition of our modern idea of barbarism.

I swear I can smell wood burning around your posts.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who was a little surprised to find out that the guy fancies himself a writer.

Hey, thanks for not pointing out that when I was editing my post and changing tenses I chanded "implies" to "implie" instead of "imply." I have to edit quickly due to my computer's recent feistiness and that for whatever reason, lately my SG posts hve only sometimes taken and other times appeared hours later blank (like the one above that I had in actuality posted long before the one to which you replied).

But yeah.

Great, so can we fix your headline now please, and maybe like um, the whole article.

Right, so I assume you skimmed the source article rather than read it. Both of those are direct quotes, yes. But taken out of context. They're essentially saying the same thing, that if these people were sacrificed they weren't killed with anything that would have damaged their bones, and no arrowheads were found. They easily could have been drowned, buried alive, smothered, etc.

And the second quote is taken from someone who was simply interviewed as a counterpoint to the main researcher -- he didn't visit any of these sites, he simply gave a quote, and not even one that disputes Formicola's views:

The reason i didn't call this articled "early man sacrificed the disabled" is because this is a theory. I presented Formicola's theory, and so used the term "believed".

Sure, whatever you wanna believe.

Three sites, without conclusive evidence is bullshit, so sorry. It's ~10 thousand year old circumstantial evidence of a extremely limited sample size. But to be honest, it was more about your article just being lame. Misrepresenting the Maya, then misrepresenting the strength of another argument, all to conclude what? That humans have alway been mean to the handicapped? Good job. Real interesting.

It's not out of context when it's pointing out faulty logic.

I'm not going to quibble with the title of your article even though I objected, but perhaps a "may" would have been more apt.

I apologize. I didn't mean to turn this into a "thing" I'm trying to be nicer on the boards. Apparently, I'm going to have a harder time than I thought . Next time I'll just not say anything. Sorry...

Aaron: I just noticed the CA abstract. I apologize for my comment. I can see how you might get that from his study based on the Discovery article.