Posted on 06/13/2007 4:21:13 AM PDT by Renfield
Paleolithic ping.
Not unlike what today’s democrats want to do.
That explains it!
Actually, it is what Muslims do TODAY, not 26,000 years ago.
I think it is speculation fuled by an agenda that has nothing to do with science.
Culling....a bit of un-natural selection.
Maybe this is why early explorers of the Americas found these acts so horrific.
We do the same thing these days. It's just sanitized with genetic testing and phrases like *quality of life*; and *properly* dispose of the remains instead of burying them.
At least they allowed them to be born, first.
Once again GMTA.
Probably, but most of what we know started out as a hypothesis based on meager initial evidence and wild speculation. Sometimes it finds support in later finds and becomes a larger more accepted body of theory, ie. look at the current fight over the current "wild speculation" on pre-Clovis peoples in America.
As for this article, from what I've read of examinations of human remains from the paleolithic, and contemporary observations of existing primitive cultures upon their modern discovery, I would speculate that among stone age cultures, the existence of ritual sacrifice at least some point in their early development would be more expected than not.
Actually, it is what abortionists do TODAY, not 26,000 years ago.
Human sacrifice, by whatever rationalization, has at some time or another been included in EVERY religion, no matter what its origin. Some have been more attuned to sacrifice in greater numbers, others to only a specific few, but the practice is not at all rare.
For one thing, martyrs seem to have a great deal of moral authority, when they appear to challenge the existing code of ethics, and there is need to establish a new principle.
For another, sacrifice is a way of atonement for past sins that have been against authority and the conventional wisdom. There is always a rationale for putting some members of any society to death, or ordering them into situations in which death is the likely result. Religion, when it is also the government, is very much a part of that ethic.
And like it or not, EVERY government that was ever formed, has at its foundation, religious authority first, if only as a place to form the basis of governance through reaction to an existing religion. Eventually the civil authority itself becomes the religion.
Rather like World War I (one) and its ramifications.
Right. The idea of 2 members of a tribe dying of measles or pox and being buried together is too fantastic for archaeologists.
“The new findings could mean the hunter-gatherers were more advanced than once thought.”
Human sacrifice is advanced?
Mrs VS
“The diversity of the individuals buried together and the special treatment they received could be a sign of ritual killing, said Vincenzo Formicola of the University of Pisa, Italy....”
or they were firm believers in multi-culturalism! ;-)
It strongly indicates the existence of a religious belief system, and the grave goods, depending on what they are further indicate a belief in an afterlife. This is more sophisticated than a group of hand-to-mouth hunter gatherers as it requires, and probably increases, an organization of practice among the members of the group.
There was already evidence of grave goods and ritual even without human sacrifice.
Mrs VS
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