Where I live, 400 years ago they drained the fen and found men preserved in the mud. Human sacrifices. I wonder what their gods make of us.

They lived nine hundred years before Christ. They were volunteers or criminals or picked at random, who knows. They were tied hand and foot, killed by a blow to the head and then sunk into the fen.

It might sound barbaric but who are we, 21st century people who can kill large numbers of people with cruise missiles from great distances, in any position to judge?

I wonder what they hoped for in return for the sacrifices. A good harvest, an end to disease, a mild winter, victory over a neighbour.

Imagine if their god is real, and yours isn’t.

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4meAndyou · F

Sometimes, it was the KING who was sacrificed. If I remember my reading correctly, it was all about the harvest. If the harvest continued good, the King lived a wonderful life, well fed, with servants. If the harvest failed, the King was sacrificed.

They have also found young women in the bogs with scarves tied across their eyes. Speculation is that those women might have been unfaithful to a powerful man.

ThePatientAnarchist · 61-69

On a visit to New York my wife and I saw in a museum a shaman's mask from thousands of years ago. We had the distinct feeling it was looking at us and reporting back to its people about the strange future.

Renkon · M

Human sacrifice still exists today..just in more insidious forms. It’s embedded in ideologies, politics, and propaganda. Wars are waged not for justice, but to serve the interests of a powerful few, while ordinary people become collateral damage. This is modern human sacrifice...only now, it happens on a massive scale.