Inca, Ur (Iraq), China, Maya, Israel, Aztec, Egypt, Hitobashira, Stonehenge, Hawaii, Rome, Greece, and so many other ancient civilizations engaged in the practice. Some were kinder to the victim, getting it done quickly and relatively, painlessly—others followed painful, torturous processes, such as clubbing.

We have evidence of these humans—oftentimes virgins—being “given up” to the gods. The premise was almost always the same: if we do not sacrifice a virgin—or a number of virgins—the gods will be angry.

Oh, and these gods almost always lived in the sky—that’s an operational term here.

Why Virgins?

History seems to be obsessed with virgins in general—be it pagan religions or Abrahamic ones. Something about the idea of a virgin woman is so innocent and helpless that humans, in the extremity of their barbarity, have often found in virgins the perfect victims. The idea that a virgin girl being given to the gods will appease them is, if you think about it, extremely problematic. What could gods even do with virgin girls? And why did these strange ancient gods demand that virgin girls be sacrificed on divine alters?

That doesn’t sound divine at all.

Cannibalism and Head Hunting

In many civilizations, human sacrifice wasn’t just limited to killing another human on an altar and letting their blood spill over the holy foundations of whatever temple they were in. In many civilizations, it extended to even weirder practices—such as consumption of the sacrificed human, or to headhunting. In headhunting, the head of a person was preserved after they were beheaded.

These might sound barbaric and prehistoric to us, but the truth is that the humans that carried them out were just like us. We might pretend to dissociate from the crowd, but it doesn’t help.

While you might remember headhunting or scalping (common among Indians) as a display of gross violence and an exhibition of masculine power, anthropologists also believe that ancient civilizations engaged in such for the sake of cosmological balance.

Cosmological is the key word here.

Biblical Evidence

Evidence of human sacrifice is also to be found in the Bible—and other texts from Abrahamic religions, such as Islam. The story of Abraham taking a knife to his son’s throat is one that has been told over the centuries—the Muslims even celebrate a festival over it, sacrificing cattle as a sign of remembrance.

Whatever its connotation, the fact remains that the concept endured up until Abrahamic religions mandated animals be sacrificed instead of humans.

That, however, still doesn’t change history.

Could Reptilians Have Had a Hand?

Okay, we’re going to crack a lame joke here and say that reptilians couldn’t have had a hand in it because reptiles don’t have hands—but you know as well as we that we’re talking about a different breed altogether here.

Aztecs, Mayans, Incans—all were making human sacrifices at one point or the other in history. They thought they were all making their sacrifices to their god, but here’s the thing:

• These cultures were all pointedly different from each other, so how did they carry out the exact same ritual to appease the “gods?” If their gods were so different, their rites, rituals, and requirements should have been different, too.
• These people, who were also different in their understanding of the world and how it works, apparently universally understood that human sacrifice was the one way of ensuring proximity to the gods.

These clues, naturally, lead us to believe that different factions of ancient cultures, distances from each other and not very well-versed in the ways of the world, did not universally intuit the significance of human sacrifice. There was, definitely, some force driving them to do it. All the humans in the world could not devise something like that on their own—that’s not how humans think, naturally. They don’t seek to be inhuman.

Another important thing that we must point out here is the fact that these ancient populations just died out—they were there and then they weren’t.

Why Civilizations that Carried Out Human Sacrifice Died Out

One of the reasons behind their dying out was their utter corruption at the hands of some sinister, dark force that led them to the path of self-destruction. These civilizations, despite being advanced and having access to strange, advanced tools and techniques, went extinct. What could have led the Mayans to make their astounding predictions—or the ancient Egyptians to build those towering pyramids?

Something more powerful was guiding them—and it wasn’t guiding them towards the right path.

No Divinity in Human Sacrifice

Whether you take a more Darwinist approach to it and say that humans were merely evolving, or believe that humans did indeed feed their supposed gods with the blood of the innocent, the fact remains: there is nothing divine in human sacrifice.

The Creator is all-knowing and all-sustaining—and does not require you to torture and torment another being for gratification. The Creator does not require grand displays of cruelty to be convinced of your devotion to the divine. The Creator does not require anything that is so self-demeaning, self-disrespecting, and self-damaging to the human cause.

It isn’t the divine hand at work—but something else entirely. You can ask the Creator directly to find out more or join the discuss on the Get Wisdom Forum.