AHC: Human sacrifice much much more common.

Perhaps it would help to carefully define what we mean by human sacrafice. It seems that most people on this thread implicitly define human sacrifice as killing someone in an act of worshiping some god. This is a fine definition, but may be a bit narrow. To illustrate Charles Mann (in 1493 I think) suggests that the rate of judicial killing (i.e. execution) in 15th century England was roughly analagous to the rate of human sacrifice in the Azetec Empire at the same time. In the case of judicial killing, the person is killed to appease the conceptual entity known as the state. In human sacrifice as worship the person is killed to appease a conceptual entity known as a god. Obviously, there are difference, but as my word choice should suggest I do not see these differences as large. If we start to think about judicial killing as a form of human the obvious question becomes has human sacrifice in fact become less common or more (look at the 20th century...)? If we want to draw a sharp distinction between human sacrifice as worship and judicial killing what is our basis for drawing such a distinction (aside from facile arguments that basically boil down to human sacrifice as worship is icky and judifical killing is ok).
 
I'm also looking for some of the victor sacrifices the defeated type of ritual. For example something like TTL's version of "Today President Barrack Obama has sacrificed competitor Mitt Romney in order to celebrate his recent victory in the 2012 elections."

That would make a great concept for a semi-dystopian crapsack America TL.

Well, considering how many people die by the wars caused by coltan extraction, how many people die (and women are raped) trying to illegally immigrate into the first world so first world countries can get relative cheap labor and how many people die due the illicit drug trade, I'd just say human sacrifice is still up and running. It's not ritual anymore and it's dedicated to the money god instead of the sun god, but it's still there.

I agree with this post and mjwebb76's post immediately above (edit: btw welcome to the forum!). In addition it occurs to me that things like witch trials can be counted as human sacrifices. And what of the crimes committed during colonization, crimes of conquest? Fundamentally these are crimes committed in the hope that it will bring something better. I would submit that ideological killings are merely the post-enlightenment versions of religiously-motivated human sacrifice.

In addition, many religious traditions practice various versions of martyrdom/self-sacrifice (early Christian saints, Buddhist priests self-immolating, etc) that could also be interpreted as a form of human sacrifice.
 
According to the Catastrophism theory of the world. The Aztecs and other American societies began human sacrifice as a means of preventing another large disaster. Then if there was a large multi-cultural belief in Europe as well it spread out as well.

Weren't most of Rome's executions of it's enemies a kind of human sacrifice?
 
The primary difference between human sacrifice in the Old World and in the New is the terminology used to describe it. Since the English word "sacrifice" acquired extremely negative connotations in Europe, it is not used very often if at all for acts extremely similar if not identical to things described as sacrifice done by ancient American societies. So basically it has become a situation where if a Roman warlord paraded a defeated foe before the crowds and had them publicly strangled to death, it's a 'triumph', whereas if a Maya king captured some warlord, had them judged, and then had their head chopped off, it's 'human sacrifice'.
 
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