Kurt Andersen has an interesting article in The Atlantic on ritual sacrifice, and how the right’s resistance to vaccination equates to various societies’ use of ritual sacrifice (of people) to solidify ruling structures. While noting the prominent role that belief in the supernatural, formal or informal, plays in ritual sacrifice, more importantly he notes the real goal:
A long-standing theory of human sacrifice, the “social-control hypothesis,” has argued that social elites used it to keep the hoi polloi subservient. But the evidence was scattered and anecdotal, untested by the most rigorous modern scholarship. One big question: What distinguished the cultures that practiced human sacrifice from those that did not? Thanks to a massive historical database of the social and genetic particulars of a hundred traditional societies spread over a sixth of the planet, from the eastern Pacific to Australia and East Asia, in 2016 we got one definitive answer: “Ritual human sacrifice,” an official summary of the research said, “played a central role in helping those at the top of the social hierarchy maintain power over those at the bottom.”
The entire article is worth your time, but I’m not sure if it’s entirely relevant. For example, I don’t know how to work in the role of It’s all a hoax!, especially from those who are on their deathbeds, and still cry our Hoax! It feels like a loose end.
But I enjoyed the article, as I know little about ritual sacrifice.
