Why did the Carthaginians sacrifice humans/infants?

Why did the Carthaginians sacrifice humans/infants?

Other urls found in this thread:

journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0009177
theguardian.com/science/2014/jan/21/carthaginians-sacrificed-own-children-study
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

Baal mane

Why did romans have sex with men and german tribals?

What did those humans/infants ever do that could justify them not being sacrificed, huh?

Humans make an especially good sacrifice for emergencies. plus they were set up by Phoenicians, who probably worshipped Molech who we know child sacrifice was related to his cult from the Bible. also a lot of the sacrifices in Carthage were actually still borns

They didn't, please stop perpetuating this meme. I am working archaeologist and personally know a guy who did analysis on those "infant" bones and they were all stillborn fetuses or stillborn infants. Romans found out about this and were about as clueless as you are, plus they added stories about how they burned first born sons alive children, which is extremely silly. Carthagians weren't some demon worshippers. In fact I can't think of any culture but Aztecs who went as far as sacrificing their own people and even that might be exaggarated, but I don't know. Germans sacrificed enemies, but also not in fire and not their own. I mean sure world is terrible but its not THAT fucked up to burn your own kids.

They did.

>DEY WAS STILLBORNS
Explain the fucking 4 year olds then.

Why did the Inca sacrifice children? I'm sure they both made up some reason or another to make it seem like the necessary thing to do.

Nephillim still borns obviously

journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0009177

Never heard of 4 year olds, but if there were any, they probably died and were put there.

>journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0009177
Yes. They died. And were put there. In the same urns as sacrificial animals. With inscriptions making it clear that the sacrifice was being made because the gods had fulfilled their end of the bargain.

theguardian.com/science/2014/jan/21/carthaginians-sacrificed-own-children-study

They absolutely killed their children. Believing otherwise is wishful thinking.

Why is it hard to believe they sacrificed to Ishtar? I know it was a Roman smear campaign but human sacrifice was not really that uncommon in proto-society (i.e. sumer, babylon, basically anyone who worshipped ishtar). That is a key facet of her worship.

>I know it was a Roman smear campaign
It's actually literal truth. The Romans overplayed the frequency of child killing, but it happened.

"IT WAS JUST PROPAGANDA" is a result of modern people not wanting to accept that a society was willing to routinely kill children,and searching for any excuse to reject the idea.

CARTHAGO

The only cases of actual human sacrifice that I know of (not counting Americas) and that was confirmed archaeologically were those among Minoans. We can only randomly guess how often they sacrificed people, but one of those sacrifices was stopped mid-earthquake.

DELENDA

"It is to the Lady Tanit Face of Baal and to Baal Hammon that Bomilcar son of Hanno, grandson of Milkiathon, vowed this son of his own flesh. Bless him you!"

Seems confirmed to me.

EST

Interestingly it must have been somewhat common in the ancient middle East. All the religious texts ive read include a story of human sacrifice, most usually of children to prove their loyalty to the divines.

yeah, even the Bible has Isaac and Jephthah's daughter

Human sacrifice has occurred, but of thralls, enemies, or at least the poor. The elites of one of the most successful societies at the time killing their own children spits in the face of self interest and logic. The assumptions in this article are as baseless as they are retarded

Thank you for outing yourself as a retard. You can leave the thread now.

We should be super careful about these things. Its certainly not impossible, but those sources are very tricky. Ancient people saw human sacrifice as the most ultimate act of evil, but also devotion. The more I read about it and read various interpretations, I can't concluseively find any case of anyone being sacrificed in any official state/city cult whatsoever, yet I can find a lot of sacrificial vows. Even if it was practiced, it wasn't common but rather rare, it wasn't widely accepted and interestingly enough, it could've been volontarily. When people before used to start a village/city, they sacrificed animals and buried them in the village walls/borders. Its a long tradition and this one did probably have some sacrifices, even when Rome was found Remus had to die, according to the myth. Also all around the Europe there are dead bodies under neolithic settlements where such things would really be hardcore, but were they sacrificed or what, we don't know.

I find Minoan one perhaps the most interesting because not only it was confirmed and proved, it also seems normal/common practice that was done in temples.

>Ancient people saw human sacrifice as the most ultimate act of evil
That's an awfully big assumption to make about dozens of cultures spread across several continents.

It also isn't borne out by evidence.

I agree that from the texts ive read it definitely doesn't seem common, but it seems more of an act of desperation/extreme piety

How does one become an archeologist
Is the pay good?
What kind of work do you have to do
Pls respond

>The elites of one of the most successful societies at the time killing their own children spits in the face of self interest and logic.
Self interest and logic being universally constant and consistent across all societies.

Carthaginians almost certainly did not practice child sacrifice on a regular basis. Probably just in times of great despair.
The Romans are also known to have done this.

All successful societies yeah

Define success. By ancient standards Isis would be wildly successful given their want of a strong central government, simple and strictly-enforced law, and being a strongly militarist society (modern weapons aside)

Militarily and mercantilely, they possessed an alphabet and pluming - you don't really have to define non vague terms

Romans were sacrificing humans to the gods themselves in desperate situations as some sort of ultima ratio. It was extremely rare, but still.

>Ancient people saw human sacrifice as the most ultimate act of evil, but also devotion.

Exactly. For most of Carthage's history, there was most likely no child sacrifice, only the symbolised "sacrifice" of foetuses and stillborns. During the Third Punic War, when the Carthaginians knew that they were fighting an unwinnable war against a nation that desired their complete and utter destruction they brought back infant sacrifice, which we do have archeological evidence of in Carthage itself.

Is this much worse than the Romans executing innocent people with decimation? Both would be for morale purposes.

Nonsense. Not to whom you've been replying.

>germans sacrificed people
Caesar made it pretty clear in de bello gallico that the guals sacrificed people, while the germans did not.

Well, Carthage was not a successful society, so your argument is out the window.

We have about 6 of those (tophets) in Sardinia, more than in the rest of the Med, pretty scary.

>The elites of one of the most successful societies at the time killing their own children spits in the face of self interest and logic

>Now that's what I call presentism.png