

800 Years Of Human Sacrifice In Kent - gwern
http://scienceblogs.com/aardvarchaeology/2013/06/10/900-years-of-human-sacrifice-in-kent/

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canjobear
There is so much ambiguity in archeological finds. I buy the evidence here
that these bodies were disposed of disrespectfully and publicly. But how do we
know it was religious sacrifice? Maybe these were criminals and this was a
standard punishment.

This was millenia ago in a culture that didn't write anything down. Who knows
what anything was like then? To fill in the gaps we end up using our own
modern biases and narratives. We like to think we're better and more rational
than people in the past, so we attribute these mutilated bodies to a motive
that we've moved on from (ritual sacrifice), rather than a motive we still
have (judicial execution). To be fair, ritual sacrifice did happen in some
cultures and was well documented, but who knows what was going on in this
case?

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ars
This could also have been a disposal pit for cursed sick people - perhaps they
believed that by putting them in this particular spot they could not transfer
the curse to anyone? That would explain why some bones more placed there after
death.

There could be a ton of reason to do this, I too don't buy that this is
sacrifice.

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TeMPOraL
My mother who studied archaeology told me that her professor said it once up-
front that when they don't have any clue what purpose something served, it's
often labelled as used for religious reasons.

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w_t_payne
TL;DR Margate only slightly stranger 4000 years ago than it is today.

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twic
I think this site is actually in Ramsgate. I dread to think what people in
Margate were up to at that time. Let alone ... _Sheppey_.

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trevmckendrick
Another reminder of the dangers of religion.

I believe one day people will look back on us with the same horror for
preventing gay marriage, premarital sex, etc., as we do the past for things
like human sacrifice.

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trevmckendrick
Being downvoted for this comment so many times is a _small_ example of PG's
essay, "What You Can't Say."

[http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html)

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venus
I think you're being downvoted because your comment was basically offtopic and
inflammatory, not because you dared to break some kind of taboo. I'm not at
all religious, and your comment annoyed me also for its obviousness and vague
smugness.

Anyway, there's some schools of thought which consider religion to be a
necessary evil for pre-scientific organisation, so I'm sure enlightened future
scholars will be studying religion's phases from its medieval heyday through
to its current last hurrahs with interest.

~~~
trevmckendrick
"Your comment was basically offtopic and inflammatory."

It was probably a bit offtopic, I"ll give you that. I was raised in a very
religious family that has negatively impacted my life in a few ways. I guess I
see the damage of religion in more places than most.

But inflammatory? I think that's the point of the PG essay I referenced: that
just saying something "you can't say" automatically makes it inflammatory. The
statement's truth is irrelevant.

"Your comment annoyed me also for its obviousness and vague smugness"

For someone who has a lot of very religious friends, I don't think this is
obvious to many people. I hope I'd have the standard to not write something
that is so obvious as to not benefit the majority of my readers.

