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Post by Admin on Apr 28, 2022 17:18:36 GMT
 When Mexican police found a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave near the Guatemalan border, they thought they were looking at a crime scene, and took the bones to the state capital. It turns out it was a very cold case. It took a decade of tests and analysis to determine the skulls were from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the National Institute of Anthropology and History said Wednesday. "Believing they were looking at a crime scene, investigators collected the bones and started examining them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, known as INAH, said in a statement. The police in 2012 weren't being stupid; the border area around the town of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has long been plagued by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico usually show a hole bashed through each side of every skull, and were usually found in ceremonial plazas, not caves. But experts said Wednesday the victims in the cave had probably been ritually decapitated and the skulls put on display on a kind of trophy rack known as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks in the 1520s, and some Spaniards' heads even wound up on them. While usually strung on wooden poles using holes bashed through them - the common practice among the Aztecs and other cultures - experts say the cave skulls may have rested atop poles, rather than being strung on them. Interestingly, there were more females than males among the victims, and none of them had any teeth. In light of the cave experience, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz said people should probably call archaeologists, not police. "When people find something that could be in an archaeological context, don't touch it and notify local authorities or directly the INAH," he said. In 2015, archaeologists found the main trophy rack of sacrificed human skulls at Mexico City's Templo Mayor Aztec ruin site. That same year, artifacts found at the Zultepec-Tecoaque ruin site revealed evidence from when hundreds of people in a Spanish-led convoy were captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten. A 2016 study found that in societies where social hierarchies were taking shape, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor people, helping the powerful control the lower classes and keep them in their place. Ritual human sacrifice promoted and sustained the evolution of stratified societies PMID: 27042932 DOI: 10.1038/nature17159 Abstract Evidence for human sacrifice is found throughout the archaeological record of early civilizations, the ethnographic records of indigenous world cultures, and the texts of the most prolific contemporary religions. According to the social control hypothesis, human sacrifice legitimizes political authority and social class systems, functioning to stabilize such social stratification. Support for the social control hypothesis is largely limited to historical anecdotes of human sacrifice, where the causal claims have not been subject to rigorous quantitative cross-cultural tests. Here we test the social control hypothesis by applying Bayesian phylogenetic methods to a geographically and socially diverse sample of 93 traditional Austronesian cultures. We find strong support for models in which human sacrifice stabilizes social stratification once stratification has arisen, and promotes a shift to strictly inherited class systems. Whilst evolutionary theories of religion have focused on the functionality of prosocial and moral beliefs, our results reveal a darker link between religion and the evolution of modern hierarchical societies. |
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Post by Admin on Apr 28, 2022 18:03:42 GMT
The dark side of religion How ritual human sacrifice helped create unequal societies  Ritual human sacrifice played a central role in helping those at the top of the social hierarchy maintain power over those at the bottom. This is the central finding of a study published today in Nature. Researchers from the University of Auckland’s School of Psychology, the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany and Victoria University, wanted to test the link between how unequal or hierarchical a culture was – called social stratification – and human sacrifice. “Religion has traditionally been seen as a key driver of morality and cooperation, but our study finds religious rituals also had a more sinister role in the evolution of modern societies,” says lead author of the study Joseph Watts from the University of Auckland. The research team used computational methods derived from evolutionary biology to analyse historical data from 93 ‘Austronesian’ cultures. The practice of human sacrifice was widespread throughout Austronesia: 40 out of 93 cultures included in the study practised some form of ritualistic human killings. The term 'Austronesian' refers to a large family of languages, whose country of origin is Taiwan and whose distribution extends over much of the Indian and parts of the Pacific Ocean. Austronesian cultures form a sort of natural laboratory for intercultural studies, since they have a huge range of religions, languages, society sizes and shapes, and are located in different climatic and geographical regions. Victims were typically of low social status The methods of ritual killings in these cultures were diverse and sometimes extremely cruel. The reason for the killing was, for example, the burial of a leader, the inauguration of a new boat or house or the punishment for the violation of traditions or taboos. Victims were typically of low social status, such as slaves, while instigators were usually of high social status, such as priests and chiefs. The study divided the 93 different cultures into three main groups of high, moderate or low social stratification. It found cultures with the highest level of stratification were most likely to practice human sacrifice (67%, or 18 out of 27). Of cultures with moderate stratification, 37% used human sacrifice (17 out of 46) and the most egalitarian societies were least likely to practice human sacrifice (25%, or five out of 20). “By using human sacrifice to punish taboo violations, demoralise the underclass and instil fear of social elites, power elites were able to maintain and build social control,” Joseph Watts says. Russell Gray, Director of the Department of Linguistic and co-author of the study, notes that “human sacrifice provided a particularly effective means of social control because it provided a supernatural justification for punishment. Rulers, such as priests and chiefs, were often believed to be descended from gods and ritual human sacrifice was the ultimate demonstration of their power.” Ritualistic killings shored up social hierarchies A unique feature of the research was that the use of computational evolutionary methods enabled the team to reconstruct the sequence of changes in human sacrifice and social status over the course of Pacific history. This allowed the team to test whether sacrifice preceded or followed changes in social status. Co-author Quentin Atkinson says: “What we found was that sacrifice was the driving force, making societies more likely to adopt high social status and less likely to revert to egalitarian social structure." |
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Post by Admin on Apr 28, 2022 19:05:41 GMT
Ritual human sacrifice promoted and sustained the evolution of stratified societies Joseph Watts1, Oliver Sheehan1,2, Quentin D. Atkinson1,2, Joseph Bulbulia3 & Russell D. Gray1,2,  Figure 1 | Summary of the two series of analyses performed in this study. a, Key of the images used to represent social stratification and human sacrifice. b, In the first series of analyses, moderately and highly stratified societies cultures were grouped together to test for the co-evolution of human sacrifice with social stratification in general. c, Unconstrained dependent model of the co-evolution of human sacrifice (HS) and social stratification (SS) in general. The thicknesses of the arrows are proportional to the rates of change between states. d, In the second series of analyses, egalitarian and moderately stratified societies were grouped together to specifically test for the co-evolution of human sacrifice with high social stratification. e, Unconstrained dependent model of the co-evolution of human sacrifice (HS) and high social stratification (high SS). The thicknesses of arrows are proportional to the rates of change between states.
Evidence for human sacrifice is found throughout the archaeological
record of early civilizations1, the ethnographic records of indigenous
world cultures2–5, and the texts of the most prolific contemporary religions6.
According to the social control hypothesis2,7,8, human
sacrifice legitimizes political authority and social class systems,
functioning to stabilize such social stratification. Support for the
social control hypothesis is largely limited to historical anecdotes
of human sacrifice2,8, where the causal claims have not been subject to
rigorous quantitative cross-cultural tests. Here we test
the social control hypothesis by applying Bayesian phylogenetic
methods to a geographically and socially diverse sample of 93
traditional Austronesian cultures. We find strong support for
models in which human sacrifice stabilizes social stratification once
stratification has arisen, and promotes a shift to strictly inherited
class systems. Whilst evolutionary theories of religion have focused
on the functionality of prosocial and moral beliefs9,10, our results
reveal a darker link between religion and the evolution of modern
hierarchical societies11,12.
Human sacrifice—the deliberate and ritualized killing of an individual
in order to please or placate supernatural beings—is known
to have occurred in early Germanic, Arab, Turkic, Inuit, American,
Austronesian, African, Chinese and Japanese cultures1. Speculation
about the potential functionality of human sacrifice dates back to at
least the beginning of the European colonization of Central America
500 years ago5, and has been the subject of enduring debate across
the humanities2,13,14, social sciences1,8,15,16 and biological sciences17,18
ever since. The practice has been conjectured to act as a form of social
catharsis13, a justification for political conflicts15, and, when combined
with cannibalism, a means of overcoming protein shortages16.
Political theorists have long argued that effective political authority in
class-stratified societies requires legitimizing mechanisms12,19, an idea
which evolutionary scholars have recently endorsed11,20. According to
the social control hypothesis, human sacrifice legitimizes class-based
power distinctions by combining displays of ultimate authority—the
taking of a life—with supernatural justifications that sanctify authority
as divinely ordained2,8,13. Social stratification is thought to have been
one of the earliest forms of institutionalized leadership to emerge in
human cultures, giving rise to kingdoms, monarchies and modern
political states20,21. Existing support for the social control hypothesis
is based on anecdotal descriptions of cultures2,8,15, and one quantitative
cross-cultural study that found an association between human sacrifice
and measures of social and political complexity7. However, this study
used a sample that contained just seven cultures that practiced human
sacrifice, did not control for the non-independence of cultures7,22, and
was unable to infer the direction of causality between human sacrifice
and social stratification23.
Here we test the social control hypothesis with a Bayesian phylogenetic
analysis of 93 traditional Austronesian cultures from the
Pulotu database24. Phylogenetic methods enable us to account for the
common ancestry of cultures24, test for patterns of coevolution10,25,
and infer the direction of causality based on the order that traits evolve
in23. Austronesian cultures have been described as a natural laboratory for
cross-cultural research due to the diversity of environments
they inhabit and cultural features they have evolved26. They inhabit
environments ranging from tiny atolls to continents24, and their social
structures ranged from small egalitarian, kin-based societies such as
the Dobuans24, to large, complex polities such the Hawaiians27. From
their ancestral homeland in Taiwan, Austronesian cultures spread west
to Madagascar, east to Rapa Nui, and south to New Zealand—a region
covering over half the world’s longitude and one-third of its latitude24.
Their religious beliefs and practices were remarkably diverse3,4,10, and
the practice of human sacrifice was widespread throughout traditional
Austronesian cultures. Common occasions for human sacrifice in these
societies included the breach of taboo or custom4, the funeral of an
important chief27, and the consecration of a newly built house or boat3.
Ethnographic descriptions highlight that the sacrificial victims were
typically of low social status, such as slaves, and the instigators were of
high social status, such as priests and chiefs3,4,27. The methods of sacrifice
included burning, drowning, strangulation, bludgeoning, burial,
being crushed under a newly built canoe, being cut to pieces, as well as
being rolled off the roof of a house and then decapitated3,4,27.
For each culture in our sample, we recorded the presence or absence
of human sacrifice, and coded the level of social stratification. Cultures
that lacked inherited differences in wealth and status were defined as
lacking social stratification, and were coded as egalitarian. Cultures
were coded as moderately stratified if there were inherited differences
in wealth and social position with the potential for status change within
a generation, and highly stratified if there were inherited difference in
wealth and social position with little or no possibility of status change
within a generation (further details are provided in the Methods section).
The social control hypothesis predicts that human sacrifice
(i) co-evolves with social stratification, (ii) increases the chance of a
culture gaining social stratification, and (iii) reduces the chance of a
culture losing social stratification once stratification has arisen. Though
the social control hypothesis could potentially apply to stratified societies
in general8, the hypothesis is based on descriptions of human sacrifice in
highly stratified societies such as the Aztecs2. Here we perform
two series of analyses, the first to test the effects of human sacrifice on
the evolution of social stratification in general, and the second to test
the effects of human sacrifice on the evolution of high social stratification (Fig. 1c, e)
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Post by Admin on Apr 28, 2022 22:21:05 GMT
We found that the extent of social stratification, as well as the presence of
human sacrifice, varied throughout a wide range of geographic
regions and cultural groups (Fig. 2 and Extended Data Fig. 1). Evidence
of human sacrifice was observed in 40 of the 93 cultures sampled (43%).
Human sacrifice was practiced in 5 of the 20 egalitarian societies (25%),
17 of the 46 moderately stratified societies (37%), and 18 of the 27
highly stratified societies (67%) sampled.
In our first series of analyses, we grouped moderate and high
stratification together, referred to hereafter as ‘social stratification’ (Fig. 1b).
To test for the co-evolution of human sacrifice and social stratification,
we compared the posterior distribution of models in which human
sacrifice and social stratification evolve independently of one another
with models in which the two traits co-evolve such that the probability
of a change in one trait is dependent on the value of the other trait23.
We found substantial support for the models in the dependent analyses,
in which human sacrifice can co-evolve with social stratification,
compared with the models in the independent analyses (Bayes factor
(BF)=3.78). This indicates that human sacrifice co-evolved with social
stratification. We then performed two additional constrained analyses to test
whether human sacrifice functioned to drive and stabilize
the evolution of social stratification, as the social control hypothesis
predicts. In the first constrained analysis, cultures with and without
human sacrifice were forced to have an equal chance of losing social
stratification (rates e and g in Fig. 1c were set to be equal). The resulting
models fitted substantially more poorly than the unconstrained
dependent analyses (BF=2.30), and did not fit substantially better
than the models in the independent analysis (BF=1.48). This indicates that
human sacrifice affects the rate at which cultures lose social
stratification. The unconstrained dependent model shows that cultures
with human sacrifice were less likely to lose social stratification than
were cultures that lacked human sacrifice (in Fig. 1c rate e is higher
than rate g). In the second constrained analysis, the rate at which cultures
with and without human sacrifice gained social stratification
was forced to be equal (rates b and d in Fig. 1c were set to be equal).
The resulting models were substantially more likely than were models
in the independent analysis (BF=4.68), and slightly more likely than
models in the unconstrained dependent analysis, though not substantially so
(BF=0.60). Together these results indicate that human sacrifice functioned
to stabilize social stratification once it had arisen, but
did not affect whether egalitarian cultures gained social stratification
(in Fig. 1c, rate e is higher than rate g).
In our second series of analyses, we used the same approach to test
whether human sacrifice co-evolves with high social stratification specifically.
In this series, we grouped egalitarian and moderately stratified
societies together (Fig. 1d). We found strong support for the models
in the dependent analyses over the models in the independent analyses (BF=6.04),
indicating that human sacrifice has co-evolved with
high social stratification. To test the prediction that human sacrifice
functions to stabilize and drive high social stratification, we performed
the same sequence of constrained analyses as previously described for
social stratification in general. In the first constrained analysis, cultures
with and without human sacrifice were forced to have an equal
chance of losing high social stratification (rates e and g in Fig. 1e were
equal). The resulting models were more likely than those in the independent
analysis (BF=6.96) and the unconstrained dependent analysis
(BF=0.92), though the difference was only substantial in the case of
the former. This indicates that the presence of human sacrifice is not
associated with a change in the rate at which highly stratified cultures
become less stratified. The second analysis was constrained so that
cultures with and without human sacrifice were forced to have an equal
chance of gaining high social stratification (rates b and d in Fig. 1e are
equal). The resulting models were substantially less likely than were
the models in the unconstrained dependent analysis (BF=4.70), and
slightly less likely than the models in the independent analysis, though
not substantially so (BF=1.34). The results from our second series
of analyses indicates that human sacrifice increased the rate at which
cultures with human sacrifice gain high social stratification, but did
not function to stabilize high social stratification once it had arisen
(in Fig. 1e, rate d is higher than rate b).
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Post by Admin on Apr 29, 2022 0:12:09 GMT
 Figure 2 | Phylogenetic distribution of human sacrifice and high social stratification in Austronesia. Ancestral state reconstruction of human sacrifice and high social stratification on a maximum clade credibility consensus tree of 93 Austronesian languages.
Taken together, our results provide strong evidence for the claim that
human sacrifice played a powerful role in the construction and maintenance
of stratified societies. Though human sacrifice was practiced
in the majority of highly stratified societies in our sample, it was scarce
in egalitarian societies, and we find that its effect depended on the level
of stratification. Specifically, human sacrifice substantially increased
the chances of high social stratification arising and prevented the loss
of social stratification once it had arisen, yet was not found to increase
social stratification in egalitarian societies. This is consistent with
historical accounts that speculate that in order for human sacrifice to be
exploited by social elites, there must first be social elites to exploit it2,8
.
In our ancestral reconstructions Proto-Austronesian culture is inferred
to have had some level of social stratification (Extended Fig. 1), but
not high social stratification (Fig. 2), and the most common changes
inferred across our trees were the loss of social stratification in general,
and the gain in high social stratification. We caution that the lack of
support we find for human sacrifice sustaining high social stratification
may be due to high social stratification having been rarely lost in the
history of Austronesian cultures.
Experimental research indicates that while social inequality may foster
group decision-making and efficiency28, power hierarchies become
unstable when they lack sanctioning status29. In Austronesian cultures
human sacrifice was used to punish taboo violations4, demoralise
underclasses27, mark class boundaries3, and instil fear of social elites27 —
proving a wide range of potential mechanisms for maintaining and
building social control. Throughout human history the practice of
human sacrifice was often used by social elites as a display of power2,8,
intended to instil fear of the secular and supernatural consequences
of transgressing ruling authority. While there are many factors that
help build and sustain social stratification, human sacrifice may be a
particularly effective means of maintaining and building social control
because it minimizes the potential of retaliation by eliminating the
victim, and shifts the agent believed to be ultimately responsible to the
realm of the supernatural13.
Religion has long been proposed to play a functional role in society19,
and is commonly claimed to underpin morality. Recent evolutionary theories
of religion have focused on the potential of pro-social
and moral religious beliefs to increase cooperation9,10. Our findings
suggest that religious rituals also played a darker role in the evolution
of modern complex societies. In traditional Austronesian
cultures there was substantial religious and political overlap, and
ritualised human sacrifice may have been co-opted by elites as a
divinely sanctioned means of social control11,12,30. The approach
adopted in this paper demonstrates the way causal hypotheses about
major transitions in human social organization can be tested by combining
computational models and language phylogenies with a wealth
of cultural and historical data. Unpalatable as it might be, our results
suggest that ritual killing helped humans transition from the small
egalitarian groups of our ancestors, to the large stratified societies
we live in today
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