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Concept
Child sacrifice
Summary
Child sacrifice is the ritualistic killing of children in order to please or appease a deity, supernatural beings, or sacred social order, tribal, group or national loyalties in order to achieve a desired result. As such, it is a form of human sacrifice.
Child sacrifice is thought to be an extreme extension of the idea that the more important the object of sacrifice, the more devout the person rendering it.
The practice of child sacrifice in Europe and the Near East appears to have ended as a part of the religious transformations of late antiquity.
Child sacrifice in pre-Columbian cultures
Archaeologists have found the remains of more than 140 children who were sacrificed in Peru's northern coastal region.
The Aztecs are well-known for their ritualistic human sacrifice as offerings to gods with the goal of restoring cosmological balance. While the demographic of people chosen to sacrifice remains unclear, there is evidence that victims were mostly warriors captured in battle and slaves in the slave trade. Human sacrifice was not limited to adults, however; 16th century Spanish codices chronicled child sacrifice to Aztec rain gods. In 2008, Archaeologists found and excavated 43 victims of Aztec sacrifice, 37 of which were subadults. The sacrificial victims were found by Temple R, a temple in Tlatelolco (archaeological site), the ancient Aztec city which is now modern day Mexico City. Temple R was dedicated to the Aztec rain gods, including Tlāloc, Ehecatl, Quetzalcoatl, and Huītzilōpōchtli. A majority (66%) of the excavated subadults were under 3 years old, and 32 subadults as well as 6 subadults were identified as male.
It is hypothesized that this specific child sacrifice cite took place during the great drought and famine of 1454-1457, furthering the theory that Aztecs utilized human sacrifice to placate the gods. Osteological and dental pathological evidence shows that many of the child sacrificial victims had varying health issues, and it is suggested that the Tlaloques selected these children whom had medical ailments.
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Related concepts (6)
Human sacrifice
Human sacrifice is the act of killing one or more humans as part of a ritual, which is usually intended to please or appease gods, a human ruler, public or jurisdictional demands for justice by capital punishment, an authoritative/priestly figure or spirits of dead ancestors or as a retainer sacrifice, wherein a monarch's servants are killed in order for them to continue to serve their master in the next life. Closely related practices found in some tribal societies are cannibalism and headhunting.
Baal
Baal (ˈbeɪ.əl,_ˈbɑː.əl), or Baʻal ( בַּעַל baʿal), was a title and honorific meaning 'owner', 'lord' in the Northwest Semitic languages spoken in the Levant during antiquity. From its use among people, it came to be applied to gods. Scholars previously associated the theonym with solar cults and with a variety of unrelated patron deities, but inscriptions have shown that the name Ba'al was particularly associated with the storm and fertility god Hadad and his local manifestations.
Moloch
Moloch, Molech, or Molek is a name or a term which appears in the Hebrew Bible several times, primarily in the book of Leviticus. The Bible strongly condemns practices which are associated with Moloch, practices which appear to have included child sacrifice. Traditionally, the name Moloch has been understood as referring to a Canaanite god. However, since 1935, scholars have debated whether or not the term refers to a type of sacrifice on the basis of a similar term, also spelled mlk, which means "sacrifice" in the Punic language.