"... Ancient Egypt was at the forefront of domestication, and some of the earliest archeological evidence suggesting animal sacrifice comes from Egypt. The oldest Egyptian burial sites containing animal remains originate from the Badari culture of Upper Egypt, which flourished between 4400 and 4000 BC."
Note: "References to animal sacrifice appear in the New Testament, such as the parents of Jesus sacrificing two doves (Luke 2:24) and the Apostle Paul performing a Nazirite vow even after the death of Christ." (Wikipedia) The Nazirite vows included "three offerings: a lamb as a burnt offering (olah), a ewe as a sin-offering (hatat), and a ram as a peace offering (shelamim)..."
Animal sacrifice is still practiced in many parts of the world, including in modern Israel.
"A 1,600-year-old pagan idol, made from a wooden pole carved from an oak tree, has been unearthed in a bog in western Ireland." Source: Live Science.
"Archaeologists say the idol dates to the very late stage of pagan Ireland, only about 100 years before the conversion of the Irish to Christianity during the mission of St. Patrick in the fifth century.
"The idol appears to have been broken in two — a common practice with sacrificial objects, perhaps signifying that it was 'dead' and could no longer be used — and deliberately deposited in the bog, maybe as a substitute for a human sacrifice or 'bog body,' according to the archaeologists."
Note: This idol was unearthed in Gortnacrannagh, a rural area in the western region of Ireland (see video above), a few miles from Rathcroghan, a complex of archaeological sites in the western region of Ireland. This was a sacred place, according to one of the archaeologists:
"'It was a sacred bog, a place that would have been special or important for several thousand years, from the late Neolithic all the way through to the early medieval period ... People came and deposited objects, like our idol, into the wetland — essentially a fen [a strip of marshy land] along a river."
Next video (2015) shows an aerial view of the Rathcroghan Mound, the central feature of the prehistoric complex.
"Shimao ... is a Neolithic site in Shenmu County, Shaanxi, China. The site is located in the northern part of the Loess Plateau, on the southern edge of the Ordos Desert. It is dated to around 2000 BC, near the end of the Longshan period [next video], and is the largest known walled site of that period in China, at 400 ha [app. 988 acres]. The fortifications [double stone walls] of Shimao were originally believed by to be a section of the Great Wall of China, but the discovery of jade pieces prompted an archaeological investigation." (Wikipedia)
This is a spectacular Stone-Age site. According to Archaeology World, "The digging had revealed a 230 feet high pyramid surrounded by more than six miles of protective walls and an inner sanctum containing jade artifacts, painted murals, and gruesome evidence of human sacrifice." Around 80 human skulls, mainly of young girls, were discovered buried in six pits beneath the city's eastern wall.
This isn't a recent find. According to a 2013 AFP report, the sacrifices may have been conducted as part of religious or foundation ceremonies related to the construction of the city walls:
"There may have been an outbreak of mass violence or ethnic conflict in the region at the time since 'ancient people were prone to use their enemies or captives as sacrifices...'"
Video from 2018. Shimao was discovered in 1976.
"Shimao now is the largest known Neolithic settlement in China and none of the ancient Chinese texts mentions a city residing so far north of the 'cradle of Chinese Civilization'. It had an expanse of [approximately] 1000 acres and is larger than the Central Park of New York City. Its art and technology had influenced the northern regions and the future dynasties of China." (Archaeology World)
"Along with other discoveries at prehistoric sites, Shimao is forcing historians to rethink the origin of the Chinese civilization.
"According to the leader of the dig at Shimao, 'Shimao is one of the most important archaeological discoveries of this century.'"
According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary, there were three stages in an ancient Greek sacrifice: the preparatory stage, the kill and the treatment of the meat:
Preparatory: An animal was led to the altar, usually in a procession. The participants assembled in a circle, rinsed their hands in lustral [purifying] water, and took a handful of barley grain from a basket. Water was sprinkled on the victim to force it to 'nod' agreement to its own sacrifice. The main sacrificer (not necessarily a priest) then cut hair from the victim, put it on the altar fire, and uttered a prayer which defined the return that was desired [...] for the offering. The other participants threw forwards their barley grains.
"The kill. The victim's throat was cut with a knife; larger victims had been stunned with a blow from an axe first. Women participants raised the cry known as ololyge [shrill cry]. In Attic practice, it was important to 'bloody the altar;' small animals were held over it to be killed, the blood from larger ones was caught in a bowl and poured over it."
Treatment of the meat. There were three stages to the treatment of the meat after the sacrifice. "First the god's portion, typically the thigh bones wrapped in fat with (in Homer) small portions of meat cut 'from all the limbs' set on top, was burnt on the altar fire. Wine was poured on as it burnt. [...] Then the entrails were roasted on skewers and shared among all the participants. Finally the rest of the meat was boiled and distributed [...]; in contrast to the entrails, this boiled meat was occasionally taken away for consumption at home, though a community feast on the spot was the norm. Omens were often taken both from the burning of the god's portion and from the condition of the entrails."
Comment: Blood sacrifice, especially animal sacrifice, was an integral part of religious practice all over the ancient world. This is something that modern "neopagans" don't seem to grasp. A true pagan revival would necessarily mean a revival of these ancient rituals and it would also mean dropping all of the "belief systems" of modern paganism.
Real pagan religions, especially in the Mediterranean region, were entirely ritualistic. They weren't dogmatic or ideological. For instance, adherents didn't have to subscribe to a particular set of teachings like they do with Christianity. They didn't have to be believers to sacrifice to the gods; that's why Roman aristocrats who thought the gods were just superstitions useful for controlling the masses could serve as priests without being hypocrites.
Modern neopagans will never take the step into real paganism, however. They're too "civilized," whatever that means, so they will never advance beyond the stage of role-playing when they get together at sites like Stonehenge to celebrate the solstices and equinoxes. Whether this is a good thing or not depends on your point of view.
"Rabbits were raised for over a thousand years in Mexico without becoming domesticated. A new study finds that their solitary lifestyle and greater species diversity made domestication unlikely." Source: Science Daily.
"...Rabbits were buried at the Sun and Moon Pyramids and are found in the stomach contents of sacrificial carnivores, such as eagles and pumas. Rabbit bones found in the carnivore stomachs contain a type of carbon that indicates a diet unusually rich in corn or cactus, suggesting human-raised rabbits had, in turn, been fed to the carnivores."
Notes: The bog-preserved remains of Cashel Man were discovered in 2011. According to Wikipedia, "Radiocarbon dating places the man as having died around 2000 BC, making him one of the oldest bog bodies in Europe" and the oldest in Ireland. He is also one of the oldest bog bodies in the world and the "oldest known preserved body with the flesh still intact."
According to the National Museum of Ireland, "The remains are those of a young adult male and wounds noted on the body suggest that one is dealing with a victim of human sacrifice ... In Ireland, the ritual killing of young men was previously known to have occurred during the Early Iron Age and the discovery of an Early Bronze Age victim, apparently killed in accordance with the same ritual, brings the practice back in date by at least a millennium and a half."
This ultra-dramatic clip (2013) from a National Geographic documentary describes the discovery of Cashel Man.
According to the BBC (2013), Cashel Man may be the body of an Irish king sacrificed because of his failure to cope with a natural disaster like a crop failure or plague. The evidence for this is missing, however. "It is uncertain whether Cashel Man was one of these unfortunate kings," according to Irish Central (2013). "A milling machine destroyed his chest when he was found and researchers cannot examine his nipples [which are apparently always mutilated in king sacrifices].
The Huldremose Woman probably didn't die a natural death. According to the National Museum of Denmark, "Her hair was tied up with a long woolen cord, which was also wrapped around her neck several times. However, there are no marks on her throat or elsewhere, which can be interpreted as signs of strangulation. Perhaps instead the cord was of symbolic significance? Strangled people are known from other Danish bog finds. This applies to, amongst others, the bodies from Elling and Borremose, and the famous Tollund Man [who was hung or otherwise strangled in an apparent human sacrifice]."
Note: According to the National Museum of Denmark, one of the Huldremose Woman's arms was almost cut off before she died, but according to Wikipedia "it is thought that the arm was damaged by a shovel during excavation." Nobody knows exactly how she died, but "one possible interpretation is that she was killed and then placed in the bog as a sacrifice." (National Museum of Denmark)
The execution of Jarl Borg. Vikings Season 2, Episode 7
"The blood eagle is a ritualized method of execution, detailed in late skaldic poetry. According to the two instances mentioned in the Sagas, the victim (in both cases a member of a royal family) was placed prone, the ribs severed from the spine with a sharp tool and the lungs pulled through the opening to create a pair of 'wings'. There is a continuing debate about whether the ritual was a literary invention, a mistranslation of the original texts or an authentic historical practice." Source: Wikipedia.
The Blood Eagle was a particularly nasty form of sacrificial execution, but did the Vikings actually put people to death this way? As far as I can tell, the only primary documentary evidence for the practice comes from sources such as the Orkneyinga Saga, the Heimskringla, the Tale of Ragnar's Sons, and a handful of references in other texts.
Note: The Tale of Ragnar's Sons describes (among other things) the execution of King Aella of Northumbria, a scene also depicted in Vikings.
Jarl Borg (top video) in Vikings is an entirely fictional character, I believe. Aella, on the other hand, was apparently a real king, though the sources for his life are limited and very little is known about his reign. According to some accounts, he was executed by the Vikings after they invaded Northumbria following the king's execution of the legendary Ragnar Lodbrok, another figure who may or may not have actually existed. How Aella died is a matter of conjecture, though, because the sources contradict each other:
"While Norse sources claim that Ragnar's sons tortured Ælla to death with a blood eagle, Anglo-Saxon accounts maintain that he died in battle, at York, on 21 March 867." (Wikipedia)
"Well into the last century, most historians of the Vikings accepted that the blood eagle was deeply unpleasant but very real. According to the eminent medievalist J.M. Wallace-Hadrill, its possible victims were not only Ælla of Northumbria but also Halfdán, the son of Harald Finehair (or Fairhair), king of Norway, and the Irish King Maelgualai [Mael Gualae] of Munster; in some interpretations, it is supposed that even Edmund the Martyr may have suffered the same fate."
One possibility is that the Blood Eagle was a real execution method sensationalized by later writers. For instance, the Welsh scholar and translator, Gwyn Jones, argues in A History of the Vikings (1968) that this "inhuman rite" was "unhappily no fiction ... but owes its eminence in pseudo-lore almost entirely to fiction ..." (footnote pp 119-220, 1968 edition)
It's also possible that the Blood Eagle is entirely fictitious. This seems to be the current consensus, but there's a lot of disagreement. Revisionist historians have challenged the idea that the Vikings were just a mob of cruel barbarians wearing horned helmets, but their depictions of "cuddly" Vikings went too far in the other direction. One of the main problems with our picture of the Vikings is that much of what we know about them was written by their enemies.
If the Blood Eagle is a literary invention, there's a good chance that this grisly method of execution was dreamed up by Christian writers trying to demonize the pagan Vikings. According to Wikipedia, "[t]here is debate about whether the blood eagle was historically practiced, or whether it was a literary device invented by the authors who transcribed the sagas. No contemporary accounts of the ritual exist, and the scant references in the sagas are several hundred years after the Christianization of Scandinavia." Considering the Christians' history of inventing martyr stories set in the Roman Empire, I wouldn't be surprised if they concocted similar atrocity stories about the Vikings.
When I first started to research this subject, I assumed there was a high probability that the Blood Eagle was a real thing because the Vikings are thought to have conducted human sacrifices and the Blood Eagle is, in a way, just another form of ritual sacrifice. As it turns out, though, the question of whether the Vikings actually killed people for religious purposes isn't all that straightforward.
There is some archaeological evidence that the Vikings may have sacrificed humans. For instance, "[a]t Trelleborg [Sweden] a sacrificial site was found from the time before the Viking fortress was erected in 980-81. In five c. 3 metre-deep wells human and animal skeletons were found, together with jewellery and tools. Of the total of five human sacrifices, four were young children aged between 4 and 7. " Source: National Museum of Denmark.
Blood sacrifice, including human sacrifice, was an intrinsic part of pagan religions. The historical sources for Viking human sacrifice are questionable, though, because they all seem to come, once again, from Christian accounts:
According to the National Museum of Denmark, "[t]here are several horrifying accounts of human sacrifices from the Viking period. The German bishop, Thietmar of Merseburg, describes how the Vikings met every nine years at Lejre on Zealand [Denmark] in January 'and offer to their gods 99 people and just as many horses, dogs and hens or hawks, for these should serve them in the kingdom of the dead and atone for their evil deeds.'"
A similar ritual (at a different location) is also depicted in Vikings.
"The German monk Adam of Bremen wrote a similar account in 1072 about the sacrificial tradition at [Gamla Uppsala] in Sweden, where the temple was devoted to Thor, Odin and Frey. Here the Vikings also met every 9 years to ensure the goodwill of the gods. 9 males of all kinds of living creatures were sacrificed in a holy grove nearby. According to Adam of Bremen dogs, horses and humans hung from the trees. The number 9 was apparently of magical significance to the Vikings and was involved in a number of rituals." (National Museum of Denmark)
"There has been extensive debate over whether these accounts were real or simply Christian propaganda."
I wouldn't be shocked to learn that the Vikings actually executed royal prisoners using the Blood Eagle. Even if the descriptions in the sagas were written for entertainment, they may have had some basis in fact. At this point, however, it looks like this particular form of execution was a literary invention derived from the skaldic poems and embellished by later Christian writers in yet another attempt to make the pagans look like cruel and bloodthirsty savages:
"One of the features of a skaldic poem is that it’s incredibly convoluted, like a cryptic crossword puzzle. If you have a reference to what appears to be the Blood Eagle in a skaldic verse, it’s quite likely this is a poetic conceit. Roberta Frank, at Yale, argues that the Blood Eagle is just the idea of a carrion bird scratching at the back of the dead. If you create lots of corpses, you are a very good warrior. That’s what is being referred to. But when later writers made prose stories around these skaldic verses, they seem to have interpreted it literally. So it’s quite likely that there was no such thing as this horrible form of torture, but it grew in the telling." Source: National Geographic (2017).
There doesn't seem to be any doubt that the ancient Israelites were originally polytheistic. Back in the Iron and Early Bronze ages, Yahweh was a tribal weather/storm/warrior deity and the Israelites worshiped a multitude of gods:
"At that time the Israelites [originally Canaanites themselves] worshiped Yahweh alongside a variety of Canaanite gods and goddesses, including El, Asherah and Baal, but in time El and Yahweh became conflated, El-linked epithets such as El Shaddai came to be applied to Yahweh alone, and other gods and goddesses such as Baal and Asherah were absorbed into the Yahwistic religion." (Wikipedia)
None of this is too surprising. The famous Old Testament story of Abraham and Isaac shows that the Israelites once practiced human sacrifice, a distinctly pagan ritual. In the current version of the story, God orders Abraham to sacrifice his son as a test of faith, but when Abraham starts to carry out the order God stops him and Abraham sacrifices a ram instead. Some scholars believe that the original version of this tale may have ended differently:
"Francesca Stavrakopoulou has speculated that it is possible that the story 'contains traces of a tradition in which Abraham does sacrifice Isaac.' R.E. Friedman argued that in the original ... story, Abraham may have carried out the sacrifice of Isaac, but that later repugnance at the idea of a human sacrifice led the redactor of JE to add the lines in which a ram is substituted for Isaac. Likewise, Terence Fretheim wrote that the text bears no specific mark of being a polemic against child sacrifice." (Wikipedia)
One way or another, the story shows that the Israelites once carried out ritual child sacrifices.
It would have been nice if this clip had actually shown the results of the examination of the infant skeleton.
The ancient Israelites also conducted animal sacrifices, a practice which is still recreated on special occasions in Israel today.
Video from 2016. Rituals like this are clear evidence of ancient Israelite paganism.
The video above shows the underground chamber of the Nekyomanteion, aka the Necromanteion, the "Oracle of the Dead," which the ancient Greeks believed was the door to Hades -- the Greek underworld, not the Hell of Christianity.
"The Necromanteion ... was an ancient Greek temple of necromancy devoted to Hades and Persephone. [his wife, the goddess of he underworld] ... According to tradition, it was located on the banks of the Acheron river in Epirus, near the ancient city of Ephyra. The site was believed by devotees to be the door to Hades, the realm of the dead." (Wikipedia)
"Although there were many oracles in ancient Greece, there is only one known oracle of the dead (1)," according to Atlas Obscura. "It was an entryway to the underworld, and a place where the shades of the dead could - under special circumstances - reveal the future to the living. It was the place that Homer sent Odysseus to seek advice from a long-dead oracle, and where he was horrified by visions of Hades, and it also appears in a sordid chapter of Herodotus' Histories."
(1) According to the Ogden paper cited above, there were four major oracles of the dead: "Acheron in Thesprotia [the oracle discussed here -- named after the river], Avernus in Campania [Italy], Heracleia Pontica on the south coast of the Black Sea, and Tainaron at the tip of the Peloponnese's Mani Peninsula."
Odysseus visits Hades (plus later encounter with Scylla and Charybdis). From the great 1997 miniseries The Odyssey. Highly recommended.
"Communicating with the dead, however, was not limited to the famous characters in the writings of the ancient Greek authors," according to Ancient Origins. "Regular citizens [also visited] the Necromanteion to seek counsel with the dead. They would first enter a dark chamber before performing certain elaborate rituals intended for their own protection and to gain the ability to communicate with the deceased. After this, a priest would lead them into a deeper chamber, where a ritual animal sacrifice would be performed, before passing through three gates which symbolised their entry into the Underworld. The celebrants would now be able to speak to the spirits of the Underworld."
Note: I'm not sure about this, but the site shown in the videos above may have been incorrectly identified:
"An archaeological site discovered in 1958 and excavated during 1958-64 and 1976-77 was identified as the Necromanteion by archaeologist Sotirios Dakaris based on its geographical location and its similarities to descriptions found in Herodotus and Homer. However, its topographical situation on a hill commanding the immediate neighbourhood does not fit this interpretation and the ruins dated to no earlier than the later 4th century BC." (Wikipedia)
"It is now also believed that the site was a fortified farmhouse of a sort common in the Hellenistic period. Besides quantities of household ceramics, the site produced agricultural tools and weaponry, including Roman pila from the final destruction of the site by the Romans in 167 BC."