Human Sacrifice

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_05]: Astonishing Legends Network.

[00:00:04] [SPEAKER_06]: Disclaimer, this episode includes the usual amount of adult language and graphic discussions you've come to expect around here.

[00:00:10] [SPEAKER_06]: But in the event it becomes an unusual amount, expect another call from me.

[00:00:15] [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome back to Scared All The Time. I'm Chris Collari.

[00:00:18] [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm Ed Vecola.

[00:00:19] [SPEAKER_01]: And this past week, we have been celebrating a whole year of the podcast being on the air.

[00:00:28] [SPEAKER_01]: It's not a sound effect we added later, that's real.

[00:00:30] [SPEAKER_01]: No, we're doing that in the moment, on the day, like they say in our industry.

[00:00:34] [SPEAKER_01]: While the show's grown a great deal, we are constantly working behind the scenes to come up with new topics,

[00:00:39] [SPEAKER_01]: find new listeners, design merch, create more premium incentives, find brand partners,

[00:00:44] [SPEAKER_01]: and everything else we have to do to keep the lights on.

[00:00:46] [SPEAKER_01]: It's thrilling and rewarding, but it is exhausting.

[00:00:49] [SPEAKER_01]: And Ed and I keep asking ourselves what else we need to be doing.

[00:00:53] [SPEAKER_01]: And this week, the answer finally hit me.

[00:00:56] [SPEAKER_01]: Ed, I think you know what I'm thinking.

[00:00:58] [SPEAKER_01]: We'll say it at the same time, count to three.

[00:01:00] [SPEAKER_01]: One, two, three.

[00:01:02] [SPEAKER_01]: Quit.

[00:01:02] [SPEAKER_01]: Human sacrifice.

[00:01:03] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh boy.

[00:01:04] [SPEAKER_01]: That's not the same at all.

[00:01:06] [SPEAKER_01]: No.

[00:01:07] [SPEAKER_01]: See, this week, I decided to take a deep dive into the world of human sacrifice.

[00:01:12] [SPEAKER_01]: And I gotta say, if we were living in a different place at a different time,

[00:01:17] [SPEAKER_01]: it would have been something that we would have tried a very long time ago.

[00:01:20] [SPEAKER_01]: Because everybody back in the day was sacrificing people to something or other,

[00:01:24] [SPEAKER_01]: whether they were offering you to the sun, the weather, the crops, the king, your neighbor, who was filled with ancient wisdom.

[00:01:30] [SPEAKER_01]: One surefire way to get what you wanted was to grab your knife, find an altar, and start stabbing.

[00:01:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, that kind of behavior is frowned upon now, although some would argue our society still runs on the blood, pain, and sacrifice of the poor and downtrodden,

[00:01:45] [SPEAKER_01]: even if we're not exactly throwing them into a volcano.

[00:01:48] [SPEAKER_01]: So, that's what we're going to explore this week.

[00:01:51] [SPEAKER_01]: Human sacrifice in all its forms.

[00:01:53] [SPEAKER_01]: From the depths of the Amazon to the depths of, well, Amazon.

[00:01:57] [SPEAKER_01]: Its history is as long and violent as the history of humanity,

[00:02:01] [SPEAKER_01]: and Ed and I need to take a closer look to decide if human sacrifice is something that will help us take over the podcasting world.

[00:02:07] [SPEAKER_01]: So sit back, relax, and don't panic when you feel the knife split your sternum.

[00:02:12] [SPEAKER_01]: We appreciate your sacrifice.

[00:02:14] [SPEAKER_01]: What are we?

[00:02:15] [SPEAKER_01]: Scared.

[00:02:16] [SPEAKER_01]: When are we?

[00:02:18] [SPEAKER_01]: All the time.

[00:02:19] [SPEAKER_00]: Join us.

[00:02:20] [SPEAKER_00]: Join us.

[00:02:20] [SPEAKER_00]: Join us.

[00:02:21] [SPEAKER_01]: Now it is time for...

[00:02:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Time for...

[00:02:24] [SPEAKER_00]: Scared all the time.

[00:02:26] [SPEAKER_03]: Welcome back.

[00:02:28] [SPEAKER_03]: It is a Chris-free housekeeping.

[00:02:30] [SPEAKER_03]: This is just Ed, and I should probably say up front, I know we're talking about human sacrifice a lot.

[00:02:35] [SPEAKER_03]: I promise I did not sacrifice Chris.

[00:02:38] [SPEAKER_03]: He is just flying back east because he spends every Halloween in Pennsylvania for pretty much as long as I've known him.

[00:02:44] [SPEAKER_03]: So, it's just me.

[00:02:46] [SPEAKER_03]: Sorry, guys.

[00:02:46] [SPEAKER_03]: I just want to get straight into this episode because I'm crazy with stuff that we've got coming out over the next two weeks to celebrate the anniversary and close out October awesome.

[00:02:55] [SPEAKER_03]: So, I'm just going to zip through the normal stuff.

[00:02:57] [SPEAKER_03]: Patreon, Supercast, live shows.

[00:02:59] [SPEAKER_03]: Come hang out.

[00:02:59] [SPEAKER_03]: Five-star reviews?

[00:03:00] [SPEAKER_03]: Send us a couple.

[00:03:01] [SPEAKER_03]: Please.

[00:03:02] [SPEAKER_03]: Please.

[00:03:02] [SPEAKER_03]: Can't read any right now.

[00:03:03] [SPEAKER_03]: I'm too fucking busy making even more bonus content that is coming out in the coming weeks.

[00:03:08] [SPEAKER_03]: So, without further ado, let's get on with the show.

[00:03:10] [SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, Ed and I are not going to sacrifice anyone to get this podcast to the top.

[00:03:15] [SPEAKER_01]: We're very good boys.

[00:03:17] [SPEAKER_01]: We would never do that.

[00:03:18] [SPEAKER_01]: The real reason I wanted to cover human sacrifice is because Halloween is just around the corner.

[00:03:22] [SPEAKER_01]: And while it's not the 1980s anymore, rumors pop up almost every year that Satanists are out there sacrificing people in the woods at the most unholy time of the year.

[00:03:31] [SPEAKER_01]: But I think that's mostly because people have a warped sense of what human sacrifice actually looks like based more on horror movies and urban legends than anything that's ever happened in reality.

[00:03:41] [SPEAKER_01]: If you want to hear more about all that, check out our series on the Satanic Panic that we released around Halloween last year.

[00:03:48] [SPEAKER_01]: Are there sacrifices traditionally associated with Halloween?

[00:03:51] [SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.

[00:03:52] [SPEAKER_01]: But interestingly, history tells us they aren't human.

[00:03:56] [SPEAKER_01]: In fact, they often aren't very bloody at all.

[00:03:58] [SPEAKER_01]: To get a better understanding of what is sacrificed on Halloween and why, we have to dive way back to the holiday's origins nearly 2,000 years ago to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain.

[00:04:10] [SPEAKER_01]: As a lot of you probably know, Samhain marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the cold, dark winter.

[00:04:16] [SPEAKER_01]: Celts believe that on the night before November 1st, which was actually their new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred, allowing for ghosts of the dead to return to the earth.

[00:04:26] [SPEAKER_01]: In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts thought the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future, prophecies that would serve as an important source of comfort during the long, dark winter.

[00:04:40] [SPEAKER_01]: To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires where people gathered to burn crops, and sometimes animals, as sacrifices to the Celtic deities.

[00:04:49] [SPEAKER_01]: During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other's fortunes.

[00:04:56] [SPEAKER_01]: And when the celebration was over, they relit their hearth fires, which they had extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them during the coming winter.

[00:05:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Despite ancient Roman and modern religious protests that Halloween has its roots in deep, dark, evil rituals,

[00:05:11] [SPEAKER_01]: it really was a celebration of life, and sort of a communal prayer that everyone's family and friends would survive the winter.

[00:05:17] [SPEAKER_01]: Most scholars believe that Roman reports of human sacrifice during this time were greatly exaggerated,

[00:05:23] [SPEAKER_01]: as they were more interested in portraying the Celts as barbarians in need of conquest than they were in any sort of accurate reporting.

[00:05:30] [SPEAKER_01]: Believe me, the detail that the Romans were more interested in diminishing and spreading bad rumors about some other groups of people

[00:05:38] [SPEAKER_01]: is going to come up more than once as we dive deeper into the history of human sacrifice.

[00:05:43] [SPEAKER_01]: Sure.

[00:05:43] [SPEAKER_01]: And for anyone out there wondering, yes, this episode is going to be heavy on history.

[00:05:48] [SPEAKER_01]: The topic is massive, and I think we'll probably return to it in the future,

[00:05:52] [SPEAKER_01]: so don't worry if we don't touch on your favorite rituals or sacrificial stories in this one.

[00:05:57] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, weirdo, who has favorite rituals?

[00:05:59] [SPEAKER_01]: Hey, you know what? Some of our listeners might.

[00:06:02] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, no, no, yeah, and that's fine.

[00:06:03] [SPEAKER_01]: And that's fine.

[00:06:04] [SPEAKER_03]: We love all the weirdos here.

[00:06:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, as long as you're not sacrificing anything to do anything about us recording this show,

[00:06:11] [SPEAKER_01]: we're fine with whatever you practice.

[00:06:13] [SPEAKER_01]: So, Ed, I know we like to kick things off usually by talking about our personal relationship to the topic,

[00:06:19] [SPEAKER_01]: but I have no experience in human sacrifice, unless maybe a sacrifice was made to cause me to be born.

[00:06:27] [SPEAKER_01]: No, I doubt it.

[00:06:30] [SPEAKER_03]: If it was, then people would be pissed.

[00:06:32] [SPEAKER_03]: Didn't get their sacrifice worth there.

[00:06:34] [SPEAKER_03]: I have no experience with it.

[00:06:36] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, unless you want to make something up for me.

[00:06:38] [SPEAKER_03]: No, again, I have no experience with sacrifice of any kind.

[00:06:42] [SPEAKER_03]: I rarely even sacrifice things I just want to do for the better.

[00:06:45] [SPEAKER_03]: Like, I don't sacrifice eating a piece of cake in order to stay square.

[00:06:49] [SPEAKER_03]: Right.

[00:06:50] [SPEAKER_03]: Like, I'm bad with sacrifice.

[00:06:52] [SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[00:06:52] [SPEAKER_01]: So, I guess for today, the best place to start is to define what we're talking about here.

[00:06:57] [SPEAKER_01]: According to the big brains at Britannica.com, human sacrifice is the offering of the life of a human being to a deity.

[00:07:05] [SPEAKER_01]: The occurrence of human sacrifice can usually be related to the recognition of human blood as the sacred life force.

[00:07:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Bloodless forms of killing, however, such as strangulation and drowning, have been used in some cultures.

[00:07:18] [SPEAKER_01]: The killing of a human being or the substitution of an animal for a person has often been part of an attempt to commune with a god and to participate in divine life.

[00:07:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Human life, as the most valuable material for sacrifice, has also been offered in an attempt at expiation.

[00:07:34] [SPEAKER_01]: Which, new word alert for me, expiation means the act of making amends or atonement.

[00:07:40] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh.

[00:07:40] [SPEAKER_01]: So, basically, the definition is saying human sacrifice is exactly what you think it is.

[00:07:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.

[00:07:47] [SPEAKER_03]: And it's true.

[00:07:47] [SPEAKER_03]: It is the most precious material.

[00:07:49] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, Britannica also tells us that there are two primary types of human sacrifice.

[00:07:53] [SPEAKER_01]: The offering of a human being to a god and the entombment or slaughter of servants or slaves intended to accompany the deceased into the afterlife.

[00:08:02] [SPEAKER_01]: And that latter practice was actually more common.

[00:08:05] [SPEAKER_01]: That's what?

[00:08:06] [SPEAKER_03]: So, that's a fuck.

[00:08:07] [SPEAKER_03]: Are you kidding me?

[00:08:08] [SPEAKER_03]: No.

[00:08:08] [SPEAKER_03]: That rolled off your lips like that's not news to you.

[00:08:11] [SPEAKER_03]: I cannot believe the idea that it's like, well, you know, Chris died.

[00:08:16] [SPEAKER_03]: So, everyone who worked for him, you got to get in this hole with him.

[00:08:18] [SPEAKER_03]: That's crazy.

[00:08:19] [SPEAKER_03]: There's a lot of stories about that coming up.

[00:08:21] [SPEAKER_01]: I'll tell you, I'd quit.

[00:08:23] [SPEAKER_01]: By then, it's too late.

[00:08:25] [SPEAKER_01]: It's true.

[00:08:25] [SPEAKER_01]: For as widespread as both of these practices were, accusations of human sacrifice in ancient and modern times have been far more widespread than the practice almost ever was.

[00:08:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah.

[00:08:37] [SPEAKER_01]: Modern times for sure.

[00:08:38] [SPEAKER_03]: I feel like it comes up every day here.

[00:08:39] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, sort of like our episode on cannibalism, this is where talking about human sacrifice can get into some dicey territory.

[00:08:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Because human sacrifice accusations have been levied against people for a long time as a reason to do terrible things to those people and treat them not as people.

[00:08:57] [SPEAKER_01]: The ancient Greeks told a lot of people.

[00:09:00] [SPEAKER_01]: The ancient Greeks told a lot of myths that involved human sacrifice, which has led some researchers to posit that rights among the Greeks and Romans, which involved the killing of animals may have originally involved the killing of humans.

[00:09:11] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, wow.

[00:09:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Many of the tales of Mesoamerican human sacrifice were exaggerated by the Spanish as justification for wiping out what they deemed barbaric societies.

[00:09:21] [SPEAKER_01]: Very cannibal episode.

[00:09:22] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:09:22] [SPEAKER_01]: And tales of Native American sacrifice were used in much the same way by settlers.

[00:09:27] [SPEAKER_01]: Most famously, from the Middle Ages until quite recently, Jewish people were often maliciously accused of having sacrificed Christian children, an accusation which has been termed blood libel.

[00:09:39] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, interesting term.

[00:09:40] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:09:41] [SPEAKER_03]: Because I know what libel means.

[00:09:42] [SPEAKER_03]: Well, libel is written.

[00:09:43] [SPEAKER_03]: It's written about you as libel.

[00:09:45] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:09:45] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I don't know.

[00:09:46] [SPEAKER_01]: So they put that in a newsletter back then.

[00:09:48] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:09:49] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:09:49] [SPEAKER_01]: They put it in a newsletter this week somewhere in the American South.

[00:09:53] [SPEAKER_01]: I can almost guarantee you.

[00:09:54] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, my God.

[00:09:55] [SPEAKER_01]: That, I think, is the most famous blood libel and some of the awful lies about Jews that came from the protocols of the elders of Zion.

[00:10:06] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[00:10:06] [SPEAKER_01]: These are all things we don't need in our fucking transcript.

[00:10:09] [SPEAKER_01]: But, yeah.

[00:10:10] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, no.

[00:10:10] [SPEAKER_01]: But that, unfortunately, is still kicking around and queuing on and everything today.

[00:10:16] [SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, there's lots of repercussions to, or there have been many repercussions to talking about human sacrifice in different cultures.

[00:10:25] [SPEAKER_01]: So part of what I wanted to try to do, too, here is kind of pull the truth from the lies when it comes to human sacrifice.

[00:10:33] [SPEAKER_01]: Because, like cannibalism, it does happen.

[00:10:35] [SPEAKER_03]: Yes.

[00:10:36] [SPEAKER_03]: But also, like in cannibalism, not at the numbers or the rate people believed.

[00:10:40] [SPEAKER_03]: Because if you, like, pull that thread, it pretty quickly became a lot of, like, you can make someone a slave if you can prove.

[00:10:47] [SPEAKER_03]: Not even prove.

[00:10:48] [SPEAKER_03]: If you can just fucking say they're a cannibal.

[00:10:49] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:10:50] [SPEAKER_03]: And so, same thing.

[00:10:51] [SPEAKER_03]: It's like, I imagine a lot of the accusations of human sacrifice was used for political gain or, like, land grabs or anything else.

[00:11:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:11:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Just a way to be like, these people are grotesques and barbarians.

[00:11:04] [SPEAKER_01]: So, but yeah.

[00:11:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Even if it's been exaggerated at times, human sacrifice is a real thing that has been practiced all over the world by dozens of different cultures.

[00:11:12] [SPEAKER_01]: And for me, the big question, or one of the big questions, is that, you know, assuming all the bloodshed involved doesn't really appease supernatural beings.

[00:11:20] [SPEAKER_01]: And assuming that crops still failed and rivers still flooded and kings still died.

[00:11:24] [SPEAKER_01]: What was and is so appealing about human sacrifice that all these different cultures have tried it?

[00:11:30] [SPEAKER_01]: Strange as it may seem, scientists believe that human sacrifice was actually an essential building block of modern society.

[00:11:38] [SPEAKER_01]: What do you mean, like they used the dead bodies as bricks?

[00:11:41] [SPEAKER_01]: No, no, no, no.

[00:11:42] [SPEAKER_01]: Although in some cases, we talked about that in Buried Alive.

[00:11:45] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:11:46] [SPEAKER_01]: The husbands that murdered the wife because they couldn't get the wall to stand up.

[00:11:49] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think that was a myth, but.

[00:11:51] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, but there were other cultures that used or made sacrifices of people to put them into walls and buildings.

[00:11:57] [SPEAKER_01]: That's true.

[00:11:57] [SPEAKER_03]: But also, this is a good opportunity to remind people that if you go to the show notes of that episode, there is a song about that woman who was walled up that I don't think anyone ever clicked on.

[00:12:06] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:12:06] [SPEAKER_01]: That we wrote, so.

[00:12:07] [SPEAKER_01]: Human sacrifice may have actually been an essential building block of modern society, and it was often used as a way to create or encourage social cohesion, which sounds nice.

[00:12:18] [SPEAKER_01]: Sounds like a good thing.

[00:12:19] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:12:19] [SPEAKER_01]: But when you get into the details of it, you realize it's kind of a shitty thing.

[00:12:23] [SPEAKER_04]: Sure.

[00:12:23] [SPEAKER_04]: Cohesion sounds a lot like coercion probably for a reason.

[00:12:27] [SPEAKER_04]: Yes.

[00:12:27] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:12:27] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:12:28] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, the conclusion that that's what human sacrifice was used for was drawn as recently as 2016 when Nature published a paper that I found reported on by the New York Times that put forth the idea that human sacrifice helped create the hierarchies present in many modern societies.

[00:12:46] [SPEAKER_01]: That's what the failing New York Times said?

[00:12:48] [SPEAKER_01]: That's what the failing New York Times said at the very top of our modern society.

[00:12:51] [SPEAKER_01]: The article states that, quote, scientists from the University of Auckland and Victoria University of Wellington, both in New Zealand, found that ritual sacrifice may have spurred the transition of small egalitarian societies to large stratified ones, which, again, doesn't actually sound great.

[00:13:09] [SPEAKER_01]: No.

[00:13:10] [SPEAKER_01]: The study examined 93 traditional Austronesian cultures, which are speakers of a family of languages in parts of Africa, Asia, and Oceania.

[00:13:19] [SPEAKER_01]: They looked at whether and how these cultures used ritual sacrifice.

[00:13:24] [SPEAKER_01]: Forty of them practiced it.

[00:13:25] [SPEAKER_01]: Forty of the cultures, I think, not the scientists who were running the study.

[00:13:32] [SPEAKER_01]: They looked at whether and how these cultures used ritual sacrifice and how it affected social organization.

[00:13:37] [SPEAKER_01]: The cultures were then divided into groups.

[00:13:39] [SPEAKER_01]: Egalitarian, moderately stratified, and highly stratified.

[00:13:43] [SPEAKER_01]: They were defined by the presence or absence of social hierarchy and the rate of social mobility.

[00:13:48] [SPEAKER_01]: The article continues that,

[00:13:49] [SPEAKER_01]: Human sacrifice contributed to creating and preserving social hierarchies,

[00:13:54] [SPEAKER_01]: and it increased the chances that societies would have more fixed strata, which were inherited positions, and less mobility.

[00:14:01] [SPEAKER_01]: It also generally helped prevent loss of social divisions once they existed.

[00:14:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Despite its barbaric nature, human sacrifice was a useful tool for rulers, elites, and religious figures to maintain or cement their power,

[00:14:14] [SPEAKER_01]: or even to proclaim their own divinity.

[00:14:16] [SPEAKER_01]: In these cultures, human sacrifice, usually of slaves or others with low status, was sometimes called for in response to several events,

[00:14:24] [SPEAKER_01]: including the breaking of taboos or customs, the funerals of important people,

[00:14:28] [SPEAKER_01]: or the consecration of a new house or boat, according to the authors.

[00:14:33] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, wow.

[00:14:33] [SPEAKER_03]: The slippery slope of...

[00:14:35] [SPEAKER_03]: It's like a...

[00:14:37] [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, I have no example right now.

[00:14:39] [SPEAKER_03]: But it's funny how quickly it became like, and, you know...

[00:14:42] [SPEAKER_03]: Get in the mail.

[00:14:43] [SPEAKER_03]: You got in the mail.

[00:14:44] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:14:44] [SPEAKER_03]: You got a human sacrifice in the mail.

[00:14:46] [SPEAKER_01]: The article mentions a couple run-of-the-mill techniques for human sacrifice,

[00:14:51] [SPEAKER_01]: but others they mention are much more specific, like being crushed under a newly built canoe,

[00:14:55] [SPEAKER_01]: or being rolled off the roof of a house and then decapitated.

[00:14:59] [SPEAKER_03]: So you're saying you're throwing a guy off the roof of the house as you already killed a guy to consecrate?

[00:15:03] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, basically.

[00:15:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:15:05] [SPEAKER_01]: And then there are ghosts just hang out in your house together.

[00:15:08] [SPEAKER_01]: Just a headless ghost?

[00:15:09] [SPEAKER_01]: And that's why all of Europe is haunted.

[00:15:11] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's all haunted.

[00:15:11] [SPEAKER_01]: It was every house going back to the Gauls had somebody slain on the front porch.

[00:15:18] [SPEAKER_03]: Do you like that if there is like a AA support group in the afterlife,

[00:15:22] [SPEAKER_03]: people who were human sacrificed, where it's like, oh, what did you die for?

[00:15:27] [SPEAKER_03]: This guy fucking opened a bank or whatever.

[00:15:29] [SPEAKER_03]: And it was like, well, at least you still have your head.

[00:15:31] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:15:32] [SPEAKER_01]: They had to wrap all the coins in my nerve endings as a way to make sure that the money flowed.

[00:15:42] [SPEAKER_03]: It's just some guy being like, some ghost being like, it's getting ridiculous down there.

[00:15:47] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:15:48] [SPEAKER_01]: Now that I'm reading all this out loud, it really does sound like a fancy way of saying,

[00:15:52] [SPEAKER_01]: once people took power, they sacrificed people from lower classes

[00:15:56] [SPEAKER_01]: as a way of displaying that power over others in their community.

[00:16:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Like, your life is worth so much less than mine that I can crack you open like a bottle of champagne.

[00:16:06] [SPEAKER_03]: It is true.

[00:16:07] [SPEAKER_03]: And that still goes on, at least in the corporate world today, not human sacrifice,

[00:16:10] [SPEAKER_03]: but I won't mention their name or anything, but we have a friend who's pretty high up

[00:16:14] [SPEAKER_03]: at like a Fortune 500 type company.

[00:16:16] [SPEAKER_03]: And just recently they were talking about layoffs.

[00:16:19] [SPEAKER_03]: And our friend was newly minted as like some higher up level.

[00:16:23] [SPEAKER_03]: And he was like, oh man, yeah, I got, we got reviews coming up.

[00:16:26] [SPEAKER_03]: And they were like, you don't have to worry about that anymore.

[00:16:28] [SPEAKER_03]: Like for real, don't worry about, you worry about the performance reviews,

[00:16:32] [SPEAKER_03]: the people below you.

[00:16:33] [SPEAKER_03]: Right.

[00:16:33] [SPEAKER_03]: But nobody up here, like in the C-suite or whatever,

[00:16:36] [SPEAKER_03]: the shit you're reading in the news is not going to affect us.

[00:16:38] [SPEAKER_03]: Right.

[00:16:38] [SPEAKER_03]: And I remember them being like, they didn't say this to their coworker,

[00:16:41] [SPEAKER_03]: but them being like, man, I'm looking around.

[00:16:43] [SPEAKER_03]: There's some people up here that for sure should be let go.

[00:16:46] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:16:48] [SPEAKER_03]: But I'm not going to say shit because you're telling me that we're safe, so fuck it.

[00:16:51] [SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, that is still like, whether it's a societal situation

[00:16:55] [SPEAKER_03]: or even like a workplace situation, there's just like an echelon of assholes

[00:16:59] [SPEAKER_03]: that are going to be fine.

[00:17:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Which I guess is one way of saying it encouraged social cohesion.

[00:17:04] [SPEAKER_01]: It cohered the assholes at the top.

[00:17:06] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's true.

[00:17:07] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think it's interesting that there's some human sacrifice.

[00:17:11] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to say research, but human sacrifice and the death penalty

[00:17:15] [SPEAKER_01]: were mentioned in the same breath a lot in the research I was doing.

[00:17:18] [SPEAKER_01]: And it's because I think the death penalty can be viewed

[00:17:21] [SPEAKER_01]: through the lens of crime and punishment,

[00:17:23] [SPEAKER_01]: but it also can be seen as a sacrifice to the state.

[00:17:27] [SPEAKER_01]: Because I don't think it's really too controversial to say that

[00:17:30] [SPEAKER_01]: the death penalty doesn't serve the public good more effectively than life imprisonment.

[00:17:35] [SPEAKER_01]: It's really just the emotional and symbolic and sacrificial way of saying

[00:17:40] [SPEAKER_01]: there's certain things we won't allow.

[00:17:42] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:17:42] [SPEAKER_01]: And most of the people who end up getting fried are from lower social strata.

[00:17:47] [SPEAKER_01]: That's true.

[00:17:47] [SPEAKER_01]: There's not a lot of white collar criminals or CEOs that get put to death.

[00:17:52] [SPEAKER_03]: Sure.

[00:17:53] [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I know we have different opinions on the death penalty,

[00:17:55] [SPEAKER_03]: but it's interesting the way you bring this up.

[00:17:57] [SPEAKER_03]: It is interesting.

[00:17:57] [SPEAKER_03]: It's like a sacrifice to the state.

[00:17:59] [SPEAKER_01]: Which in our case is supposed to reflect the will of the people,

[00:18:02] [SPEAKER_01]: which makes it even more of a communal sacrifice.

[00:18:05] [SPEAKER_03]: When we were killing people all day,

[00:18:07] [SPEAKER_03]: it always seems to reflect the will of the people.

[00:18:08] [SPEAKER_03]: And I think if we're going back to these ancient times,

[00:18:11] [SPEAKER_03]: these rich fucking people were saying,

[00:18:12] [SPEAKER_03]: this is the will.

[00:18:14] [SPEAKER_03]: We're going to make this into a gladiator game,

[00:18:15] [SPEAKER_03]: or we're going to make this into a party or come watch this person get hanged

[00:18:19] [SPEAKER_03]: or whatever.

[00:18:20] [SPEAKER_03]: And it's like,

[00:18:20] [SPEAKER_03]: at a certain point you get excited for this as a poor person.

[00:18:23] [SPEAKER_03]: Be like,

[00:18:23] [SPEAKER_01]: you guys going to the hanging later?

[00:18:24] [SPEAKER_01]: Well,

[00:18:24] [SPEAKER_01]: that's one of the ways that I,

[00:18:26] [SPEAKER_01]: you know,

[00:18:26] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't think anyone mentioned it specifically in the research that I

[00:18:29] [SPEAKER_01]: found,

[00:18:30] [SPEAKER_01]: but I,

[00:18:30] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean,

[00:18:30] [SPEAKER_01]: that is very much,

[00:18:32] [SPEAKER_01]: uh,

[00:18:32] [SPEAKER_01]: whether an intended consequence or not,

[00:18:34] [SPEAKER_01]: that's one more way in which it,

[00:18:36] [SPEAKER_01]: yeah,

[00:18:36] [SPEAKER_01]: it enforced social cohesion or encouraged social cohesion.

[00:18:39] [SPEAKER_01]: Cause everybody got to come out and go,

[00:18:40] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm glad that fucker's not me.

[00:18:42] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:18:45] [SPEAKER_03]: But I,

[00:18:46] [SPEAKER_03]: I,

[00:18:46] [SPEAKER_03]: I'm what I'm about to say.

[00:18:48] [SPEAKER_03]: We'll hopefully move on fast.

[00:18:49] [SPEAKER_03]: Cause I do think we're going to do like full episodes or more episodes

[00:18:52] [SPEAKER_03]: stuff about what I'm about to say.

[00:18:54] [SPEAKER_03]: But like,

[00:18:55] [SPEAKER_03]: I was just reading something recently that kind of blew my mind that like

[00:18:59] [SPEAKER_03]: medieval torture and the stuff of,

[00:19:01] [SPEAKER_03]: I'm not sure the iron maiden was ever real,

[00:19:03] [SPEAKER_03]: but stuff where it's like,

[00:19:04] [SPEAKER_03]: they're going to twist your fucking arms off.

[00:19:07] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:19:08] [SPEAKER_03]: All the crazy medieval torture that you're like,

[00:19:10] [SPEAKER_03]: Oh my fucking God.

[00:19:11] [SPEAKER_03]: Like every crime that was committed,

[00:19:13] [SPEAKER_03]: you just got away with because it's the fucking medieval times.

[00:19:17] [SPEAKER_03]: It's like,

[00:19:17] [SPEAKER_03]: if someone didn't see you or stop you at that moment,

[00:19:20] [SPEAKER_03]: you're just in the woods now.

[00:19:22] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:19:22] [SPEAKER_03]: It doesn't matter.

[00:19:23] [SPEAKER_03]: And so part of what the exaggerated claims of insane punishment,

[00:19:28] [SPEAKER_03]: this book I was reading was saying one way to look at it is that it was to

[00:19:32] [SPEAKER_03]: make people so afraid to commit crimes.

[00:19:35] [SPEAKER_03]: Like if that's what's going to happen to me,

[00:19:37] [SPEAKER_03]: if I commit a crime,

[00:19:38] [SPEAKER_03]: I just won't do it.

[00:19:40] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:19:40] [SPEAKER_03]: Because otherwise it's like,

[00:19:41] [SPEAKER_03]: if they did,

[00:19:41] [SPEAKER_03]: no one would catch them anyway.

[00:19:42] [SPEAKER_03]: So it was like,

[00:19:43] [SPEAKER_03]: you had to make it so scary.

[00:19:45] [SPEAKER_01]: The deterrent was all there was.

[00:19:46] [SPEAKER_01]: The deterrent was all there was.

[00:19:48] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:19:49] [SPEAKER_01]: Even leaving the questions of whether or not something like the death penalty

[00:19:52] [SPEAKER_01]: or,

[00:19:53] [SPEAKER_01]: you know,

[00:19:53] [SPEAKER_01]: really low wages to people who are working their,

[00:19:57] [SPEAKER_01]: their blood and souls away in a warehouse somewhere,

[00:20:00] [SPEAKER_01]: leaving the questions of whether or not that constitutes modern human

[00:20:03] [SPEAKER_01]: sacrifice aside.

[00:20:05] [SPEAKER_01]: It is a little jarring to look back on the history of humankind and see how

[00:20:09] [SPEAKER_01]: egalitarian societies,

[00:20:11] [SPEAKER_01]: the kind of society we all claim to aspire to fared poorly in the face of

[00:20:15] [SPEAKER_01]: more stratified societies,

[00:20:17] [SPEAKER_01]: all too happy to employ human sacrifice as a way of firming up those strata.

[00:20:22] [SPEAKER_01]: It feels very original sin to me,

[00:20:25] [SPEAKER_01]: which got me thinking,

[00:20:26] [SPEAKER_01]: how old is the oldest human sacrifice?

[00:20:29] [SPEAKER_01]: We actually have a,

[00:20:30] [SPEAKER_01]: the Bible has a bunch.

[00:20:32] [SPEAKER_01]: So,

[00:20:32] [SPEAKER_01]: well,

[00:20:32] [SPEAKER_01]: we have a couple of different options when it comes to which might be the

[00:20:35] [SPEAKER_01]: oldest.

[00:20:36] [SPEAKER_01]: And according to the BBC,

[00:20:37] [SPEAKER_01]: that started long before 2000 years ago.

[00:20:40] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:20:40] [SPEAKER_01]: Human sacrifice was practiced at least 5,000 years ago.

[00:20:45] [SPEAKER_01]: Among the,

[00:20:45] [SPEAKER_01]: take that books.

[00:20:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:20:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Among the early agricultural societies of Europe,

[00:20:50] [SPEAKER_01]: Danish farmers sacrifice their stone axes and Flint tools,

[00:20:54] [SPEAKER_01]: their Amber jewelry,

[00:20:55] [SPEAKER_01]: and their food by depositing them in pots together with human offerings in bogs.

[00:21:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Probably the earliest case in the world is that of two girls found at Segerstall near Copenhagen killed around 3500 BC.

[00:21:09] [SPEAKER_01]: One of them was about 16.

[00:21:11] [SPEAKER_01]: The other,

[00:21:12] [SPEAKER_01]: who is about 18,

[00:21:13] [SPEAKER_01]: still had a cord around her neck.

[00:21:15] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh,

[00:21:15] [SPEAKER_01]: wow.

[00:21:15] [SPEAKER_01]: That's a hell of a cord.

[00:21:16] [SPEAKER_01]: Who made that?

[00:21:17] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:21:18] [SPEAKER_01]: That's,

[00:21:19] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean,

[00:21:19] [SPEAKER_01]: that is some quality and someone needs to,

[00:21:22] [SPEAKER_01]: uh,

[00:21:22] [SPEAKER_01]: patent.

[00:21:23] [SPEAKER_01]: You need to patent the cord technology.

[00:21:26] [SPEAKER_03]: Cord technology.

[00:21:26] [SPEAKER_03]: It sounds like it's only gotten worse.

[00:21:28] [SPEAKER_03]: Well,

[00:21:28] [SPEAKER_03]: I'm constantly buying new cords.

[00:21:30] [SPEAKER_03]: You know,

[00:21:30] [SPEAKER_03]: it's that,

[00:21:31] [SPEAKER_03]: it's that,

[00:21:32] [SPEAKER_03]: um,

[00:21:32] [SPEAKER_03]: designed obsolescence,

[00:21:34] [SPEAKER_03]: obsolescence or whatever designed obsolescence now,

[00:21:36] [SPEAKER_03]: but back then they had a cord that can kill a million girls and they just use it on that one,

[00:21:41] [SPEAKER_03]: which is,

[00:21:41] [SPEAKER_01]: that's how much good cord they had in 2008.

[00:21:44] [SPEAKER_01]: Neolithic expert Jacques Reinhold excavated a tomb of a 5,500 year old man.

[00:21:51] [SPEAKER_01]: North of Khartoum.

[00:21:52] [SPEAKER_01]: The man was surrounded by three sacrificed humans,

[00:21:56] [SPEAKER_01]: two dogs and exquisite ceramics indicating the man's importance to his community.

[00:22:00] [SPEAKER_01]: A year later,

[00:22:01] [SPEAKER_01]: Reinhold discovered another burial site with a man and a woman who'd been buried facing each other with bodies of two women,

[00:22:07] [SPEAKER_01]: two goats and a dog buried nearby.

[00:22:09] [SPEAKER_01]: These discoveries also dated back to around 3500 BC.

[00:22:14] [SPEAKER_01]: Frustratingly,

[00:22:14] [SPEAKER_01]: I couldn't find any writing that spoke to why they believe that these bodies were sacrificed.

[00:22:19] [SPEAKER_01]: Reinhold does seem to be a pretty respected archeologist,

[00:22:21] [SPEAKER_01]: so I don't think he was drawing conclusions without evidence.

[00:22:24] [SPEAKER_01]: Um,

[00:22:25] [SPEAKER_01]: in other cases,

[00:22:25] [SPEAKER_01]: he did speak about the positioning of bodies as a clue that they were sacrificed,

[00:22:29] [SPEAKER_01]: you know,

[00:22:30] [SPEAKER_01]: like if they were facing the North and South or something that would indicate importance and thus.

[00:22:34] [SPEAKER_01]: And I imagine that's similar to his logic there.

[00:22:37] [SPEAKER_01]: It is funny though.

[00:22:38] [SPEAKER_03]: It's someone at this time period,

[00:22:40] [SPEAKER_03]: at the time this happened is like,

[00:22:42] [SPEAKER_03]: Oh my God,

[00:22:43] [SPEAKER_03]: did you hear about Steve?

[00:22:44] [SPEAKER_03]: He's got three ladies in there with him.

[00:22:45] [SPEAKER_03]: Like that he's a big deal.

[00:22:47] [SPEAKER_03]: This guy there.

[00:22:48] [SPEAKER_03]: One day they're going to find his body and they're going to think,

[00:22:50] [SPEAKER_03]: fuck,

[00:22:51] [SPEAKER_03]: this guy was such a big deal.

[00:22:52] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:22:52] [SPEAKER_03]: And the reality is people found this body and were like,

[00:22:55] [SPEAKER_03]: what a piece of shit.

[00:22:56] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:22:56] [SPEAKER_03]: Whoever this fucking guy is,

[00:22:58] [SPEAKER_03]: is a monster.

[00:22:59] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:22:59] [SPEAKER_03]: He took,

[00:23:00] [SPEAKER_03]: he took these people with him.

[00:23:01] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:23:02] [SPEAKER_03]: Like there's no,

[00:23:03] [SPEAKER_03]: at no point do people find your body and think that you're a big time cool guy from this.

[00:23:06] [SPEAKER_01]: No.

[00:23:08] [SPEAKER_01]: Um,

[00:23:08] [SPEAKER_01]: another sacrifice that dates to around the same period leaves a much stronger impression.

[00:23:13] [SPEAKER_01]: Then a child courted up?

[00:23:15] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:23:15] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh my God.

[00:23:16] [SPEAKER_01]: This burial was uncovered in 1985 at the middle Neolithic gathering site of St.

[00:23:21] [SPEAKER_01]: Pauhtois Chateau located in the Rhone Valley.

[00:23:24] [SPEAKER_01]: The site contained the remains of three women,

[00:23:27] [SPEAKER_01]: two of whom were in unusual positions.

[00:23:29] [SPEAKER_01]: According to an-

[00:23:30] [SPEAKER_01]: Go on.

[00:23:33] [SPEAKER_01]: According to,

[00:23:34] [SPEAKER_01]: this is a website you're going to want to see.

[00:23:37] [SPEAKER_01]: According to an article on science.org,

[00:23:40] [SPEAKER_01]: one woman was lying on her side,

[00:23:42] [SPEAKER_01]: her knees slightly bent.

[00:23:43] [SPEAKER_01]: The other two were contorted into unnatural positions and hidden beneath a rocky overhang

[00:23:48] [SPEAKER_01]: with broken grindstones piled on their bodies.

[00:23:51] [SPEAKER_01]: The 25 year old researcher who discovered them was just out of med school and didn't know

[00:23:56] [SPEAKER_01]: what to make of the odd arrangement of bones.

[00:23:58] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean,

[00:23:59] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.

[00:23:59] [SPEAKER_01]: I feel like the broken grindstones piled on top of them.

[00:24:02] [SPEAKER_01]: It's like,

[00:24:04] [SPEAKER_01]: it's like a,

[00:24:05] [SPEAKER_01]: I can imagine this guy standing there with like these two hastily buried corpses being

[00:24:09] [SPEAKER_01]: like,

[00:24:10] [SPEAKER_01]: I wonder what happened.

[00:24:11] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:24:12] [SPEAKER_01]: What did they do to these people?

[00:24:14] [SPEAKER_01]: God,

[00:24:14] [SPEAKER_01]: it's a winemaking community.

[00:24:15] [SPEAKER_01]: What are they even doing with all this material?

[00:24:17] [SPEAKER_01]: But I mean,

[00:24:18] [SPEAKER_01]: yeah,

[00:24:18] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean,

[00:24:18] [SPEAKER_01]: I guess,

[00:24:18] [SPEAKER_01]: I guess just because they look,

[00:24:20] [SPEAKER_01]: you know,

[00:24:20] [SPEAKER_01]: buried or hastily buried doesn't necessarily indicate that they were sacrificed,

[00:24:23] [SPEAKER_01]: but it wasn't until 40 years later that this guy,

[00:24:28] [SPEAKER_01]: the same guy,

[00:24:29] [SPEAKER_01]: the same researcher was reading an article in a forensics journal about a method of killing

[00:24:34] [SPEAKER_01]: used by the Italian mafia.

[00:24:36] [SPEAKER_01]: It's called Incapretamento,

[00:24:39] [SPEAKER_01]: and it's done to make an example of the person.

[00:24:42] [SPEAKER_03]: It's,

[00:24:42] [SPEAKER_03]: it's,

[00:24:42] [SPEAKER_03]: that's when you were like,

[00:24:43] [SPEAKER_03]: boss,

[00:24:44] [SPEAKER_03]: how many grindstones we got back there?

[00:24:45] [SPEAKER_03]: This person hasn't,

[00:24:46] [SPEAKER_03]: they're late with their dues.

[00:24:48] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah,

[00:24:49] [SPEAKER_01]: it's,

[00:24:49] [SPEAKER_01]: well,

[00:24:50] [SPEAKER_01]: the grindstones are actually,

[00:24:52] [SPEAKER_01]: I think a medieval twist on this whole thing.

[00:24:54] [SPEAKER_01]: The modern version is a cruel and peculiar sacrifice.

[00:24:57] [SPEAKER_01]: A rope is tied around the subject's neck and another around their ankles with their knees bent.

[00:25:02] [SPEAKER_01]: They're placed face down and as their knees relax,

[00:25:06] [SPEAKER_01]: they will suffocate.

[00:25:07] [SPEAKER_01]: It's cruel and prolonged,

[00:25:09] [SPEAKER_01]: but there are no officiants and no blood is shed.

[00:25:12] [SPEAKER_01]: It's really a horror.

[00:25:13] [SPEAKER_01]: You're forcing people to strangle themselves.

[00:25:16] [SPEAKER_01]: That's a bummer.

[00:25:17] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:25:18] [SPEAKER_01]: So you're essentially,

[00:25:18] [SPEAKER_01]: it sounds like kind of like hog tied with the rope around your neck.

[00:25:21] [SPEAKER_01]: And then as your legs bend out,

[00:25:24] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm being tired.

[00:25:25] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:25:26] [SPEAKER_01]: They,

[00:25:26] [SPEAKER_01]: it pulls back on the rope around your neck,

[00:25:29] [SPEAKER_01]: chokes you out.

[00:25:29] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean,

[00:25:30] [SPEAKER_01]: someone,

[00:25:30] [SPEAKER_01]: it's a good idea.

[00:25:31] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:25:31] [SPEAKER_01]: And they had it figured out a long time ago.

[00:25:33] [SPEAKER_01]: They were inventing really effective rope and really effective ways of using it.

[00:25:38] [SPEAKER_03]: And it's one of those things too,

[00:25:40] [SPEAKER_03]: where it's like,

[00:25:40] [SPEAKER_03]: it seems born of a loophole.

[00:25:43] [SPEAKER_03]: It seems born of like in ancient Rome,

[00:25:46] [SPEAKER_03]: it's illegal to kill someone within their own home or whatever.

[00:25:50] [SPEAKER_03]: But it's like,

[00:25:51] [SPEAKER_03]: but if I put this,

[00:25:52] [SPEAKER_03]: you know,

[00:25:53] [SPEAKER_03]: this burning wick of a fucking device on them,

[00:25:55] [SPEAKER_03]: I technically am not in their home when they die.

[00:25:58] [SPEAKER_03]: So I can't get in trouble.

[00:26:00] [SPEAKER_03]: Like I can still go to heaven.

[00:26:01] [SPEAKER_03]: Like,

[00:26:02] [SPEAKER_03]: it does seem like a weird,

[00:26:03] [SPEAKER_03]: like this will kill you in enough time for me to be seen at a bar somewhere.

[00:26:07] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:26:08] [SPEAKER_01]: The bones of these victims alone can't reveal whether they were tortured or even whether they died from strangulation.

[00:26:14] [SPEAKER_01]: They could have been drugged,

[00:26:15] [SPEAKER_01]: drunk,

[00:26:15] [SPEAKER_01]: or otherwise incapacitated before they were tied up.

[00:26:18] [SPEAKER_01]: We have no signs in the bones to be sure they were conscious or even alive when they were put in the burial pit.

[00:26:24] [SPEAKER_01]: One of the scientists is quoted as saying,

[00:26:26] [SPEAKER_01]: we must be very careful with this kind of analysis.

[00:26:28] [SPEAKER_01]: And the guy's not wrong.

[00:26:30] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean,

[00:26:30] [SPEAKER_01]: in all the evidence that these deaths were sacrificial is pretty circumstantial.

[00:26:35] [SPEAKER_01]: In addition to the bodies themselves,

[00:26:37] [SPEAKER_01]: there weren't any houses or anything at the burial site to suggest people live there all the time.

[00:26:42] [SPEAKER_01]: It seemed like folks would show up for big gatherings because there were piles of animal bones left over from feasts,

[00:26:48] [SPEAKER_01]: pottery,

[00:26:48] [SPEAKER_01]: and tools that weren't local,

[00:26:50] [SPEAKER_01]: which means that people were traveling to get there.

[00:26:52] [SPEAKER_01]: So that goes in the sacrifice column of like,

[00:26:55] [SPEAKER_01]: no homes,

[00:26:56] [SPEAKER_01]: seems like a gathering area.

[00:26:57] [SPEAKER_01]: The center of the site had these round silo-like structures surrounded by a weird oval trench

[00:27:03] [SPEAKER_01]: with openings that lined up with the summer and winter solstices.

[00:27:07] [SPEAKER_01]: It's suspected that the ritual may have been related to fertility,

[00:27:10] [SPEAKER_01]: which makes sense since these were farming communities that depended on good weather for their crops.

[00:27:16] [SPEAKER_01]: And the violence at this site wasn't a one-off thing either.

[00:27:19] [SPEAKER_01]: Bodies have been discovered at other burial sites across Europe,

[00:27:22] [SPEAKER_01]: arranged in ways that suggested people were killed through ritual strangulation,

[00:27:26] [SPEAKER_01]: either by tying them up in strange,

[00:27:28] [SPEAKER_01]: painful positions or piling stones on their chest so they couldn't breathe.

[00:27:32] [SPEAKER_01]: These sites all have similar features like the grindstones,

[00:27:36] [SPEAKER_01]: animal bones,

[00:27:36] [SPEAKER_01]: and these silo-like structures,

[00:27:38] [SPEAKER_01]: which suggests that people were doing the same or very similar rituals in different places.

[00:27:43] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah,

[00:27:44] [SPEAKER_01]: like a pamphlet had been distributed.

[00:27:45] [SPEAKER_01]: This is how we do it.

[00:27:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:27:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Even though these sites were super far apart and the tools and materials that people left behind

[00:27:51] [SPEAKER_01]: suggest they weren't from the same culture,

[00:27:53] [SPEAKER_01]: some archaeologists think the way they killed people

[00:27:55] [SPEAKER_01]: points to a shared belief or ritual or pamphlet.

[00:27:59] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean,

[00:28:00] [SPEAKER_01]: it's a meme.

[00:28:01] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean,

[00:28:01] [SPEAKER_03]: I don't mean a meme like in the internet sense,

[00:28:03] [SPEAKER_03]: but in the definition of the word where,

[00:28:05] [SPEAKER_03]: I mean,

[00:28:05] [SPEAKER_03]: safety is a bad example,

[00:28:06] [SPEAKER_03]: but you remember when we were kids,

[00:28:08] [SPEAKER_03]: you'd fart and say safety.

[00:28:09] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:28:09] [SPEAKER_03]: But like you can get in a plane and go to California from Pennsylvania and people know that.

[00:28:13] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:28:13] [SPEAKER_03]: And it's like,

[00:28:14] [SPEAKER_03]: how the fuck do you know that?

[00:28:15] [SPEAKER_03]: And that's what a meme is.

[00:28:16] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:28:17] [SPEAKER_03]: But so I guess it's just the word got around that this is how you do it over there.

[00:28:20] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:28:20] [SPEAKER_01]: Well,

[00:28:21] [SPEAKER_01]: the article compares it to something a little bit more concrete,

[00:28:24] [SPEAKER_01]: but how different groups of medieval Europeans,

[00:28:27] [SPEAKER_01]: even though they spoke different languages and had different customs,

[00:28:29] [SPEAKER_01]: all knew what a crucifix meant.

[00:28:31] [SPEAKER_01]: Well,

[00:28:31] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean,

[00:28:31] [SPEAKER_01]: Jesus ended up on one,

[00:28:33] [SPEAKER_01]: but that shit was the ultimate meme.

[00:28:34] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:28:36] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:28:36] [SPEAKER_03]: Let's say Jesus ended up on one.

[00:28:38] [SPEAKER_03]: Probably the most famous crucified person,

[00:28:39] [SPEAKER_03]: but that shit was going around.

[00:28:41] [SPEAKER_03]: And the thing about crucifixion specifically,

[00:28:43] [SPEAKER_03]: it kind of what we were talking about earlier,

[00:28:45] [SPEAKER_03]: if I haven't cut it out,

[00:28:46] [SPEAKER_03]: where I was like,

[00:28:47] [SPEAKER_03]: make the punishment so bad that it deters people.

[00:28:49] [SPEAKER_03]: They always laid that shit out at like the entrance of town or on a hill.

[00:28:53] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.

[00:28:53] [SPEAKER_03]: They always wanted people to see the crucified to be like,

[00:28:56] [SPEAKER_01]: you don't want to be one of them.

[00:28:57] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:28:58] [SPEAKER_01]: So our next stop on the history of human sacrifice tour takes us to the iron age,

[00:29:02] [SPEAKER_01]: which is defined as roughly 1200 to 550 BC.

[00:29:06] [SPEAKER_01]: I wanted to stop here,

[00:29:08] [SPEAKER_01]: not because of a particularly vicious kind of sacrifice or a bloodthirsty king.

[00:29:12] [SPEAKER_01]: So that's it.

[00:29:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Good night,

[00:29:12] [SPEAKER_01]: everyone.

[00:29:13] [SPEAKER_01]: This is the scared all the time.

[00:29:14] [SPEAKER_01]: Nah,

[00:29:14] [SPEAKER_01]: nah,

[00:29:15] [SPEAKER_01]: nah,

[00:29:15] [SPEAKER_01]: nah,

[00:29:15] [SPEAKER_01]: nah,

[00:29:15] [SPEAKER_01]: nah,

[00:29:15] [SPEAKER_01]: nah.

[00:29:16] [SPEAKER_01]: No,

[00:29:16] [SPEAKER_01]: I chose to stop here because of bogs.

[00:29:19] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:29:19] [SPEAKER_03]: I heard you say earlier that they did the human sacrifice with bogs and the animal sacrifice

[00:29:23] [SPEAKER_03]: with kitchens.

[00:29:24] [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know,

[00:29:24] [SPEAKER_03]: but they,

[00:29:25] [SPEAKER_01]: they would,

[00:29:26] [SPEAKER_01]: they would sacrifice different things.

[00:29:28] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah.

[00:29:29] [SPEAKER_03]: They would put their ambers and jewels and stuff in the bog.

[00:29:31] [SPEAKER_01]: And,

[00:29:32] [SPEAKER_01]: but they would also put human sacrifices in the bog and bogs.

[00:29:35] [SPEAKER_01]: It's preserved a lot of corpses.

[00:29:37] [SPEAKER_01]: I think we've talked about a bog corpse on here before.

[00:29:40] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah,

[00:29:40] [SPEAKER_01]: I think in Ireland or something.

[00:29:41] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:29:42] [SPEAKER_01]: And bogs also introduce us to the man who I think might become this episode's mascot,

[00:29:47] [SPEAKER_01]: a corpse,

[00:29:48] [SPEAKER_01]: a corpse named Fisherd Fred Fisher.

[00:29:51] [SPEAKER_01]: What does that mean?

[00:29:52] [SPEAKER_01]: What's the definition?

[00:29:52] [SPEAKER_01]: Fisherd Fred.

[00:29:53] [SPEAKER_01]: We'll get to it.

[00:29:54] [SPEAKER_01]: Fuck you.

[00:29:54] [SPEAKER_01]: An article from the BBC tells us that evidence for human sacrifice in this period of the iron

[00:29:59] [SPEAKER_01]: age is most prolific in Denmark,

[00:30:02] [SPEAKER_01]: Germany,

[00:30:02] [SPEAKER_01]: and Holland.

[00:30:03] [SPEAKER_01]: At least two of those you don't think of as being particularly violent countries.

[00:30:07] [SPEAKER_01]: Not anymore,

[00:30:08] [SPEAKER_01]: but I don't think you get a country unless you're,

[00:30:10] [SPEAKER_03]: someone's got to be violent there.

[00:30:11] [SPEAKER_01]: True.

[00:30:12] [SPEAKER_01]: These are the places where many bodies have been found completely preserved in peat bogs.

[00:30:16] [SPEAKER_01]: Some were hanged or strangled with the noose still around their neck and others were

[00:30:20] [SPEAKER_01]: bludgeoned on their head or had their throats slit.

[00:30:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Those are good places to hit and hurt people if you want them dead.

[00:30:25] [SPEAKER_01]: Yep.

[00:30:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Um,

[00:30:27] [SPEAKER_01]: writing much later in the first century AD,

[00:30:30] [SPEAKER_01]: the Roman historian Tacitus.

[00:30:32] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah.

[00:30:33] [SPEAKER_01]: Tacitus.

[00:30:34] [SPEAKER_01]: I couldn't tell you how it's said,

[00:30:35] [SPEAKER_01]: but he comes up.

[00:30:35] [SPEAKER_01]: I assume where the term tactics comes from.

[00:30:38] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh,

[00:30:39] [SPEAKER_01]: maybe.

[00:30:39] [SPEAKER_01]: Or he's a tactician.

[00:30:40] [SPEAKER_01]: Or a tactician.

[00:30:42] [SPEAKER_01]: The Roman historian Tacitus.

[00:30:44] [SPEAKER_01]: Let's go Tacitus.

[00:30:45] [SPEAKER_01]: Writing much later in the first century AD,

[00:30:47] [SPEAKER_01]: the Roman historian Tacitus tells us that these Germanic peoples executed their social outcasts,

[00:30:53] [SPEAKER_01]: cowards,

[00:30:54] [SPEAKER_01]: shirkers,

[00:30:54] [SPEAKER_01]: those of disrepute,

[00:30:56] [SPEAKER_01]: by pressing them down into bogs.

[00:30:58] [SPEAKER_03]: So this is what we've discussed.

[00:30:59] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:31:00] [SPEAKER_03]: We definitely have talked about pressing people into bogs before.

[00:31:03] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:31:03] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't remember what episode now.

[00:31:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Well,

[00:31:05] [SPEAKER_01]: you know,

[00:31:05] [SPEAKER_01]: that I think that it blurs the line between punishment and,

[00:31:08] [SPEAKER_01]: you know,

[00:31:09] [SPEAKER_01]: execution or,

[00:31:10] [SPEAKER_01]: or sacrifice.

[00:31:11] [SPEAKER_01]: But one of the most famous denizens of the bogs was uncovered during an excavation in 1981

[00:31:18] [SPEAKER_01]: on the prehistoric site located at Fiskerton in Lindisfarne,

[00:31:23] [SPEAKER_01]: which is an island in England.

[00:31:24] [SPEAKER_01]: There,

[00:31:25] [SPEAKER_01]: archaeologists found part of a human skull lying among the swords,

[00:31:28] [SPEAKER_01]: spears,

[00:31:29] [SPEAKER_01]: tools,

[00:31:29] [SPEAKER_01]: and other items that had been placed along the causeway.

[00:31:32] [SPEAKER_01]: The skull represented the back of a man's head and was badly damaged.

[00:31:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Fissured Fred,

[00:31:37] [SPEAKER_01]: as the skeleton became known by the excavators,

[00:31:39] [SPEAKER_01]: had been hit by a sword,

[00:31:41] [SPEAKER_01]: which had taken a chip out of his skull.

[00:31:43] [SPEAKER_01]: Other than a couple of bones,

[00:31:45] [SPEAKER_01]: the rest of Fissured Fred was never found.

[00:31:46] [SPEAKER_01]: So there's no further evidence of how he met his death.

[00:31:49] [SPEAKER_01]: And experts don't think the sword blow would have been enough to kill him on his own,

[00:31:53] [SPEAKER_01]: which no,

[00:31:54] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean,

[00:31:54] [SPEAKER_01]: we were talking about pushing people face down into bogs.

[00:31:58] [SPEAKER_01]: So I think they probably hit him with the sword and then plopped his ass in a bog.

[00:32:02] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah,

[00:32:02] [SPEAKER_01]: maybe again,

[00:32:04] [SPEAKER_01]: circumstantial evidence suggests that he was sacrificed as his remains were blended with a collection of weapons and equipment.

[00:32:10] [SPEAKER_01]: It seemed to have been thrown into the water and sacrifice as well.

[00:32:13] [SPEAKER_01]: Gotcha.

[00:32:13] [SPEAKER_01]: According to the BBC article,

[00:32:15] [SPEAKER_01]: three more bog bodies.

[00:32:17] [SPEAKER_01]: Bog body sounds like the,

[00:32:19] [SPEAKER_01]: uh,

[00:32:19] [SPEAKER_01]: the final destination for dad bod.

[00:32:24] [SPEAKER_01]: You go from like in shape to dad bod to bog body.

[00:32:27] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh my God,

[00:32:28] [SPEAKER_01]: dude.

[00:32:28] [SPEAKER_01]: Um,

[00:32:28] [SPEAKER_01]: three more bog bodies were found in Lindau moss and Cheshire dating from the beginning of the Roman period.

[00:32:33] [SPEAKER_01]: Although that doesn't mean that they were sacrificed by Romans.

[00:32:36] [SPEAKER_01]: It's actually kind of,

[00:32:37] [SPEAKER_03]: I'm just thinking about this real fast.

[00:32:38] [SPEAKER_03]: It's like that they found all this stuff in the bog with him that you had said earlier.

[00:32:41] [SPEAKER_03]: They'll put their bejeweled axes and stuff in there.

[00:32:44] [SPEAKER_03]: I do like that.

[00:32:45] [SPEAKER_03]: We've transitioned into just traditional wishing wells.

[00:32:49] [SPEAKER_03]: Like we'll throw a coin in there.

[00:32:51] [SPEAKER_03]: You don't have to throw like half your shit and a guy.

[00:32:55] [SPEAKER_01]: It does make it a lot easier to use a wishing well.

[00:32:57] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:32:58] [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe that's why the wishes are overwhelmed.

[00:33:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Like it was a lot more potent when you had to give more.

[00:33:03] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:33:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Now it's like,

[00:33:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh,

[00:33:04] [SPEAKER_01]: a penny who gives a fuck.

[00:33:05] [SPEAKER_01]: That's not going to get you anything.

[00:33:07] [SPEAKER_01]: The best preserved of these three corpses was a man who had been hit on the head with sufficient force to detach chips of his skull into his brain and to crack a molar.

[00:33:16] [SPEAKER_01]: So you're a person who's been punched,

[00:33:19] [SPEAKER_01]: Ed.

[00:33:19] [SPEAKER_01]: That's pretty hard.

[00:33:20] [SPEAKER_03]: My tooth broke.

[00:33:22] [SPEAKER_03]: And I'm one of those events.

[00:33:23] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:33:24] [SPEAKER_03]: And,

[00:33:24] [SPEAKER_03]: but I think it's just,

[00:33:25] [SPEAKER_03]: I have bad oral hygiene health.

[00:33:27] [SPEAKER_03]: This person.

[00:33:28] [SPEAKER_01]: Well,

[00:33:29] [SPEAKER_01]: this guy probably didn't have it.

[00:33:30] [SPEAKER_01]: This is bog era.

[00:33:32] [SPEAKER_03]: That's why I stopped.

[00:33:33] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:33:33] [SPEAKER_03]: Definitely.

[00:33:33] [SPEAKER_01]: This guy definitely had worse.

[00:33:35] [SPEAKER_01]: His throat had been slit and there was also a leather Garrett tightened with a slipknot around his neck.

[00:33:41] [SPEAKER_01]: He was almost naked except for a fox fur armband.

[00:33:44] [SPEAKER_01]: And amongst his stomach contents of burnt bread was pollen of mistletoe,

[00:33:49] [SPEAKER_01]: a plant sacred to the Celts and Britons.

[00:33:51] [SPEAKER_01]: Wow.

[00:33:51] [SPEAKER_03]: Do you think a fox fur armband is how they identify who we're killing next?

[00:33:56] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:33:56] [SPEAKER_03]: You wake up with it on.

[00:33:57] [SPEAKER_03]: You're like,

[00:33:58] [SPEAKER_03]: no.

[00:33:58] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:33:58] [SPEAKER_03]: That's why it was still on.

[00:34:00] [SPEAKER_03]: Your other arm's chained to the bed.

[00:34:01] [SPEAKER_03]: Exactly.

[00:34:01] [SPEAKER_03]: That's why it was still on because everything else in this guy has been stripped off and he's all beat up and shit.

[00:34:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Well,

[00:34:06] [SPEAKER_01]: but they think that because he has this pollen of mistletoe in his stomach,

[00:34:10] [SPEAKER_01]: that was an indication that something special happened to him.

[00:34:14] [SPEAKER_01]: Cause that would have been a very sacred thing to eat.

[00:34:18] [SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

[00:34:18] [SPEAKER_01]: But it's still stand by my observation.

[00:34:20] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:34:20] [SPEAKER_01]: I guess they could have given it to you the night before.

[00:34:22] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:34:22] [SPEAKER_01]: It's like doing an MRI.

[00:34:24] [SPEAKER_01]: I drink all that stuff.

[00:34:24] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:34:25] [SPEAKER_01]: One member of the investigating team who found the body thought that this was an ancient murder rather than a ritual killing,

[00:34:30] [SPEAKER_01]: but he was fired.

[00:34:31] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:34:32] [SPEAKER_01]: So they said,

[00:34:32] [SPEAKER_01]: get the fuck out of here,

[00:34:33] [SPEAKER_03]: Dave.

[00:34:34] [SPEAKER_03]: They don't need this.

[00:34:35] [SPEAKER_03]: We have a tight enough timeline without,

[00:34:36] [SPEAKER_03]: you know,

[00:34:37] [SPEAKER_03]: a hung jury.

[00:34:38] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:34:38] [SPEAKER_01]: Others think that it seems unlikely in light of the body's context.

[00:34:43] [SPEAKER_01]: An ancient murder is unlikely.

[00:34:45] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:34:45] [SPEAKER_01]: Leave that shit to Agatha Christie.

[00:34:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:34:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Of the two other bodies,

[00:34:49] [SPEAKER_01]: one was very unusual in having a sixth finger.

[00:34:52] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh my God.

[00:34:52] [SPEAKER_01]: Get this.

[00:34:53] [SPEAKER_01]: A surprising proportion of bog bodies from Northern Europe have physical defects such as spinal abnormalities or foreshortened limbs.

[00:35:01] [SPEAKER_01]: And these people may have been selected for sacrifice because they had been,

[00:35:04] [SPEAKER_01]: quote,

[00:35:05] [SPEAKER_01]: touched by the gods.

[00:35:06] [SPEAKER_01]: See,

[00:35:06] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't like,

[00:35:07] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't like that at all at all.

[00:35:10] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean,

[00:35:10] [SPEAKER_01]: to me,

[00:35:12] [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's a very,

[00:35:13] [SPEAKER_01]: and I'm also not an archeologist,

[00:35:15] [SPEAKER_01]: so I'm speaking completely out of turn here,

[00:35:17] [SPEAKER_01]: but I think it is a,

[00:35:19] [SPEAKER_01]: you are really giving these ancient people,

[00:35:23] [SPEAKER_01]: is the benefit of the doubt that they were so in awe of these handicapped folks.

[00:35:29] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:35:29] [SPEAKER_01]: That they were like,

[00:35:30] [SPEAKER_01]: you've been touched by the gods,

[00:35:32] [SPEAKER_01]: and so therefore we must sacrifice you in like a positive way.

[00:35:36] [SPEAKER_01]: No,

[00:35:36] [SPEAKER_01]: the reality.

[00:35:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Not the Nazi Germany like.

[00:35:38] [SPEAKER_01]: It was a hate crime.

[00:35:39] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah,

[00:35:40] [SPEAKER_01]: this is a hate crime that they're telling themselves is for the best of the community or whatever.

[00:35:45] [SPEAKER_01]: It looks better in the paper you're publishing.

[00:35:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:35:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Nearby,

[00:35:47] [SPEAKER_01]: the Celts and the Gauls,

[00:35:49] [SPEAKER_01]: early Irish and Germanic people,

[00:35:51] [SPEAKER_01]: were sacrificing people as well,

[00:35:52] [SPEAKER_01]: although a lot of what we know about their practices comes from Romans writing about them

[00:35:57] [SPEAKER_01]: and possibly talking a lot of shit.

[00:35:58] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah,

[00:35:59] [SPEAKER_01]: they did want all that land.

[00:36:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Well,

[00:36:00] [SPEAKER_01]: and they thought of themselves as much more sophisticated because human sacrifice had actually

[00:36:03] [SPEAKER_01]: ended in Rome about a thousand years earlier,

[00:36:06] [SPEAKER_01]: although they were still doing Christians and lions and gladiatorial combat and everything.

[00:36:10] [SPEAKER_01]: So,

[00:36:10] [SPEAKER_01]: they weren't that highly evolved.

[00:36:13] [SPEAKER_01]: No,

[00:36:13] [SPEAKER_01]: they gamified it.

[00:36:14] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah,

[00:36:14] [SPEAKER_01]: they gamified it.

[00:36:15] [SPEAKER_03]: But it also,

[00:36:16] [SPEAKER_03]: they did,

[00:36:16] [SPEAKER_03]: you know,

[00:36:16] [SPEAKER_03]: this other property they wanted and expanded their empire into,

[00:36:19] [SPEAKER_03]: it was a lot of like barbarian talk.

[00:36:22] [SPEAKER_03]: Like,

[00:36:22] [SPEAKER_03]: these are barbarian hordes.

[00:36:23] [SPEAKER_03]: These are whatever.

[00:36:24] [SPEAKER_03]: So,

[00:36:24] [SPEAKER_03]: yeah,

[00:36:24] [SPEAKER_03]: they're definitely out there talking shit on Celtic people.

[00:36:27] [SPEAKER_01]: And one Roman named Strabo,

[00:36:30] [SPEAKER_01]: which sounds like a clown.

[00:36:31] [SPEAKER_01]: He owns a bar on Tatooine.

[00:36:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Said,

[00:36:37] [SPEAKER_01]: he wrote that they used to strike a human being devoted to death in the back with a sword and then divine from his death struggle.

[00:36:46] [SPEAKER_01]: And according to Deodoros Siculus,

[00:36:47] [SPEAKER_01]: who I think we talked about the other week,

[00:36:49] [SPEAKER_01]: the Gauls kill a man by a knife stab in the region above the midriff.

[00:36:53] [SPEAKER_01]: And after his fall,

[00:36:54] [SPEAKER_01]: they foretell the future by the convulsions of his limbs and the pouring of his blood.

[00:36:59] [SPEAKER_03]: Who was that?

[00:37:00] [SPEAKER_01]: So this is the Romans accusing the Gauls or the Celts,

[00:37:04] [SPEAKER_01]: the Celts or the Gauls,

[00:37:05] [SPEAKER_01]: accusing them of sacrificing people to do divinations with their blood and guts.

[00:37:12] [SPEAKER_03]: The way they fell.

[00:37:13] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:37:14] [SPEAKER_03]: I took some classes in high school,

[00:37:17] [SPEAKER_03]: actually,

[00:37:17] [SPEAKER_03]: that were like European history classes.

[00:37:19] [SPEAKER_03]: There was like medieval history,

[00:37:20] [SPEAKER_03]: Roman history and stuff like that.

[00:37:21] [SPEAKER_03]: And it was really fun and cool.

[00:37:23] [SPEAKER_03]: Shout out Mr. Peluso.

[00:37:23] [SPEAKER_03]: If you're listening,

[00:37:24] [SPEAKER_03]: I have no idea where you are in the world,

[00:37:26] [SPEAKER_03]: but hey,

[00:37:26] [SPEAKER_03]: maybe you're listening.

[00:37:27] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:37:27] [SPEAKER_03]: But everyone paints themselves blue.

[00:37:28] [SPEAKER_03]: Could be the Gauls.

[00:37:29] [SPEAKER_03]: The Gauls.

[00:37:30] [SPEAKER_03]: Could be the Celts.

[00:37:31] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:37:31] [SPEAKER_03]: There was a lot of grizzly shit.

[00:37:33] [SPEAKER_03]: Those are the people who were like,

[00:37:34] [SPEAKER_03]: we're going to cut out your lungs and then make you run.

[00:37:38] [SPEAKER_03]: So as long as you're running,

[00:37:39] [SPEAKER_03]: air will go into them.

[00:37:40] [SPEAKER_03]: But if you stop running,

[00:37:41] [SPEAKER_03]: then like air,

[00:37:41] [SPEAKER_03]: your lungs will collapse.

[00:37:43] [SPEAKER_03]: Wait,

[00:37:43] [SPEAKER_03]: they did that?

[00:37:44] [SPEAKER_03]: That's what they claimed.

[00:37:45] [SPEAKER_03]: These types of people.

[00:37:46] [SPEAKER_03]: These types of people.

[00:37:47] [SPEAKER_03]: I'm saying like the,

[00:37:48] [SPEAKER_03]: the Kelts,

[00:37:49] [SPEAKER_03]: whatever.

[00:37:50] [SPEAKER_03]: I'll back it up.

[00:37:50] [SPEAKER_03]: I'll fix that.

[00:37:51] [SPEAKER_03]: But they would do shit like that.

[00:37:52] [SPEAKER_03]: I think it was called like,

[00:37:54] [SPEAKER_03]: I forgot,

[00:37:54] [SPEAKER_03]: but it's got a crazy name.

[00:37:55] [SPEAKER_03]: A fun run?

[00:37:56] [SPEAKER_03]: I'll have Instagram.

[00:37:57] [SPEAKER_03]: I'm not Instagram.

[00:37:58] [SPEAKER_03]: I'll have Trivia Bot put it in.

[00:38:00] [SPEAKER_03]: But they would do that.

[00:38:01] [SPEAKER_03]: And then they would also like,

[00:38:02] [SPEAKER_03]: just nail human body parts to trees all the time.

[00:38:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Saw that a lot in the Northmen.

[00:38:07] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:38:08] [SPEAKER_01]: That's that type of people we're dealing with.

[00:38:09] [SPEAKER_03]: Those types of people.

[00:38:10] [SPEAKER_03]: Those people.

[00:38:12] [SPEAKER_03]: Or bad news,

[00:38:13] [SPEAKER_03]: dude.

[00:38:14] [SPEAKER_00]: There's a reason why Chris was reminded of the Northmen.

[00:38:17] [SPEAKER_00]: Because pretty much everything Ed was talking about was attributed to the Vikings,

[00:38:21] [SPEAKER_00]: whom he was clearly mixing up with Kelts.

[00:38:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Both in Europe.

[00:38:24] [SPEAKER_00]: Both believed to have painted themselves blue.

[00:38:26] [SPEAKER_00]: Both would have been covered in that European history class he took.

[00:38:30] [SPEAKER_00]: Anyway,

[00:38:31] [SPEAKER_00]: that thing where they supposedly cut your lungs out that Ed said had a cool name.

[00:38:34] [SPEAKER_00]: It was called the Blood Eagle,

[00:38:36] [SPEAKER_00]: which is a cool name.

[00:38:38] [SPEAKER_01]: I do like the idea of like a disgusted parent pulling their kid out of an elementary school

[00:38:42] [SPEAKER_01]: and being like,

[00:38:43] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not sending my child to school with those people here.

[00:38:46] [SPEAKER_01]: And it's just like Vikings and Gauls.

[00:38:49] [SPEAKER_01]: I think that was the actual argument.

[00:38:51] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:38:51] [SPEAKER_01]: At the time.

[00:38:52] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:38:53] [SPEAKER_01]: So,

[00:38:53] [SPEAKER_01]: you know,

[00:38:54] [SPEAKER_01]: look,

[00:38:54] [SPEAKER_01]: divination through corpse reading,

[00:38:56] [SPEAKER_01]: not a bad reason to sacrifice a guy.

[00:38:58] [SPEAKER_03]: I mean,

[00:38:59] [SPEAKER_03]: I'm sure there's two dozen times in world history where tea was more expensive than people.

[00:39:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:39:04] [SPEAKER_03]: And so if we can't be doing divinations with tea leaves,

[00:39:07] [SPEAKER_03]: we might as well just throw a slave into the fucking.

[00:39:09] [SPEAKER_01]: I was going to say,

[00:39:10] [SPEAKER_01]: you think the meteorologists are kind of hit and miss now.

[00:39:14] [SPEAKER_01]: You imagine?

[00:39:16] [SPEAKER_01]: Well,

[00:39:16] [SPEAKER_01]: his eyeball fell out of his head.

[00:39:18] [SPEAKER_01]: So we're in for six weeks of rain.

[00:39:23] [SPEAKER_01]: If you've been listening to the show this season,

[00:39:25] [SPEAKER_01]: you know,

[00:39:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Ed and I are going through a really busy time in our lives.

[00:39:29] [SPEAKER_01]: He got in a car accident.

[00:39:30] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm getting ready to have a baby.

[00:39:31] [SPEAKER_01]: And we're both trying to stay on top of getting square at the same time.

[00:39:35] [SPEAKER_01]: It's a struggle.

[00:39:36] [SPEAKER_03]: We both love to cook,

[00:39:37] [SPEAKER_03]: but finding the time and energy to look up recipes,

[00:39:39] [SPEAKER_03]: go shopping for ingredients and lug everything into the house on my bum leg has been tough.

[00:39:43] [SPEAKER_01]: That's why we were psyched when HelloFresh,

[00:39:45] [SPEAKER_01]: America's number one meal kit reached out to us,

[00:39:48] [SPEAKER_01]: America's number one fear-based podcast about combining forces.

[00:39:51] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't think they even know anything about our personal lives,

[00:39:54] [SPEAKER_01]: but they do know how excited we get talking about stuff we love.

[00:39:57] [SPEAKER_01]: And we love HelloFresh because they have a ton of options,

[00:40:00] [SPEAKER_03]: over 50 meals to choose from.

[00:40:02] [SPEAKER_03]: Which are changing all the time.

[00:40:03] [SPEAKER_03]: Plus they send all the pre-portioned ingredients you'll need straight to your door.

[00:40:06] [SPEAKER_03]: We're talking proteins, veggies, sauces, spices, and more coming in that box,

[00:40:09] [SPEAKER_03]: along with simple instructions that'll walk you through each step of the cooking process.

[00:40:13] [SPEAKER_03]: Do you mean a recipe?

[00:40:14] [SPEAKER_03]: In our house, we call them simple instructions.

[00:40:16] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I also appreciate that they theme their simple instructions seasonally.

[00:40:20] [SPEAKER_01]: I usually eat the same stuff year round,

[00:40:22] [SPEAKER_01]: which doesn't really take advantage of what produce is in season and tastiest.

[00:40:26] [SPEAKER_01]: HelloFresh makes sure I'm trying something new all the time.

[00:40:29] [SPEAKER_01]: What's on the menu this week, Ed?

[00:40:30] [SPEAKER_01]: What are you going to order?

[00:40:31] [SPEAKER_03]: I'm pretty psyched about the fit and wholesome menu

[00:40:33] [SPEAKER_03]: because I'm losing squareness every week I haven't been able to go to the gym.

[00:40:35] [SPEAKER_03]: So knowing I've got calorie smart meals coming is huge.

[00:40:38] [SPEAKER_03]: The chicken sausage and sweet potato soup and taqueria chicken bowls I ordered,

[00:40:41] [SPEAKER_03]: both under 650 calories,

[00:40:43] [SPEAKER_03]: are way more square approved than the loose blocks of cheese

[00:40:45] [SPEAKER_03]: I've been eating handfuls of while editing.

[00:40:47] [SPEAKER_01]: So if you're ready to put down the loose cheese

[00:40:49] [SPEAKER_01]: and stop being scared of what to make for dinner,

[00:40:52] [SPEAKER_01]: head over to HelloFresh

[00:40:53] [SPEAKER_01]: and get 10 free meals at hellofresh.com

[00:40:56] [SPEAKER_01]: slash freescared.

[00:40:58] [SPEAKER_01]: Apply it across seven boxes.

[00:40:59] [SPEAKER_01]: New subscribers only.

[00:41:01] [SPEAKER_01]: Varies by plan.

[00:41:02] [SPEAKER_03]: So that's 10 free HelloFresh meals

[00:41:03] [SPEAKER_03]: just by going to hellofresh.com

[00:41:06] [SPEAKER_03]: slash freescared, all one word.

[00:41:08] [SPEAKER_03]: All one word I'm just telling you.

[00:41:09] [SPEAKER_03]: It's just freescared.

[00:41:10] [SPEAKER_01]: That's F-R-E-E-S-C-A-R-E-D

[00:41:13] [SPEAKER_01]: hellofresh.com

[00:41:15] [SPEAKER_01]: slash freescared.

[00:41:16] [SPEAKER_01]: One thing we're always scared of here at Scared All The Time

[00:41:20] [SPEAKER_01]: is how many podcasts exist in the world.

[00:41:22] [SPEAKER_01]: I believe the official scientific number is too many.

[00:41:26] [SPEAKER_01]: It's impossible to keep up with all the scary, strange, hilarious,

[00:41:29] [SPEAKER_01]: and informational shows out there, which is where we come in.

[00:41:32] [SPEAKER_01]: We're always taking the time to check out new podcasts

[00:41:34] [SPEAKER_01]: so we can give you a heads up when something catches our ears.

[00:41:37] [SPEAKER_01]: This week, we'd like to introduce you to Sinisterhood,

[00:41:39] [SPEAKER_01]: the comedy podcast about all things sinister.

[00:41:42] [SPEAKER_01]: Join longtime comedians and best friends

[00:41:44] [SPEAKER_01]: Christy Wallace and Heather McKinney

[00:41:46] [SPEAKER_01]: as they cover true crime, cults, cryptids,

[00:41:48] [SPEAKER_01]: unsolved mysteries, and strange phenomena.

[00:41:50] [SPEAKER_03]: Sinisterhood has covered everything

[00:41:51] [SPEAKER_03]: from the tragic case of Micah Miller

[00:41:53] [SPEAKER_03]: to the shocking allegations against Sean Diddy Combs

[00:41:55] [SPEAKER_03]: and suspicions of Jared Leto leading a cult.

[00:41:58] [SPEAKER_01]: They also cover more lighthearted and bizarre topics

[00:42:00] [SPEAKER_01]: like the hilarious cryptid legend from Dildo Newfoundland.

[00:42:03] [SPEAKER_03]: That's so dumb, I love it.

[00:42:05] [SPEAKER_03]: So for stuff like that, join Sinisterhood

[00:42:09] [SPEAKER_03]: each Wednesday for episodes with plenty of research,

[00:42:11] [SPEAKER_03]: lots of laughs, and legal insight from Heather,

[00:42:13] [SPEAKER_03]: a licensed attorney.

[00:42:14] [SPEAKER_03]: Plus catch all new Odd But True Tales

[00:42:16] [SPEAKER_03]: submitted by listeners every Friday.

[00:42:18] [SPEAKER_01]: So listen to Sinisterhood on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,

[00:42:21] [SPEAKER_01]: or wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:42:25] [SPEAKER_01]: Some cultures had even bigger and better reasons

[00:42:28] [SPEAKER_01]: to sacrifice their fellow citizens,

[00:42:29] [SPEAKER_01]: like the Aztecs,

[00:42:30] [SPEAKER_01]: who felt that their human sacrifices fed the gods

[00:42:34] [SPEAKER_01]: and literally ensured the continued existence of the world.

[00:42:38] [SPEAKER_01]: So according to Aztec cosmology,

[00:42:40] [SPEAKER_01]: the sun god Huitzilopochtli was waging a constant war against darkness,

[00:42:45] [SPEAKER_01]: and if the darkness won, the world would end.

[00:42:47] [SPEAKER_01]: To keep the sun moving across the sky and preserve their very lives,

[00:42:51] [SPEAKER_01]: the Aztecs had to feed the god Huitzilopochtli with human hearts and blood.

[00:42:56] [SPEAKER_01]: So that's what priests in the sacred city of Tenochtitlan did

[00:43:00] [SPEAKER_01]: to the tune of thousands of sacrifices a year

[00:43:03] [SPEAKER_01]: from roughly 1345 to 1521 AD.

[00:43:07] [SPEAKER_01]: Gotta get those hearts.

[00:43:08] [SPEAKER_01]: And according to another article I found on science.org,

[00:43:11] [SPEAKER_01]: even after Aztec priests cut the heart from their sacrifice,

[00:43:15] [SPEAKER_01]: they weren't done.

[00:43:16] [SPEAKER_01]: Quote,

[00:43:34] [SPEAKER_01]: Using their sharp blades,

[00:43:36] [SPEAKER_01]: the priests deftly cut away the skin and muscles of the face,

[00:43:39] [SPEAKER_01]: reducing it to a skull.

[00:43:40] [SPEAKER_01]: Then they carved large holes in both sides of the skull

[00:43:43] [SPEAKER_01]: and slipped it onto a thick wooden post that held other skulls

[00:43:46] [SPEAKER_01]: prepared in precisely the same way.

[00:43:49] [SPEAKER_01]: The skulls were bound for Tenochtitlan's Zobentli,

[00:43:53] [SPEAKER_01]: an enormous rack of skulls built in front of the Templo Mayor,

[00:43:58] [SPEAKER_01]: a pyramid with two temples on top.

[00:44:00] [SPEAKER_01]: One was dedicated to the war god Huitzilopochtli

[00:44:04] [SPEAKER_01]: and the other to the rain god Thlok.

[00:44:07] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh my god, all these gods and they're all looking for something?

[00:44:09] [SPEAKER_01]: And also these names, I'm sorry.

[00:44:11] [SPEAKER_01]: I did look up the pronunciations, but they are tricky for me to say.

[00:44:16] [SPEAKER_01]: So I apologize.

[00:44:17] [SPEAKER_03]: But it's interesting.

[00:44:17] [SPEAKER_03]: It's like all these gods and they all want something.

[00:44:19] [SPEAKER_03]: If I was a real one back then,

[00:44:22] [SPEAKER_03]: I would just try and convince people to be like,

[00:44:23] [SPEAKER_03]: listen, sun god, he needs hearts.

[00:44:25] [SPEAKER_03]: And no matter what the other fucking gods need,

[00:44:27] [SPEAKER_03]: I'd be like, and war god, he needs hands.

[00:44:31] [SPEAKER_03]: And just like try and use every sacrifice to the best if you can.

[00:44:35] [SPEAKER_05]: You know what I mean?

[00:44:35] [SPEAKER_03]: Really spread it around and just start telling people like,

[00:44:38] [SPEAKER_03]: yeah, you know, and this guy needs a foot.

[00:44:40] [SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, it's like, really?

[00:44:41] [SPEAKER_03]: That's what the god of fucking agriculture needs feet.

[00:44:44] [SPEAKER_03]: Well, someone's got it.

[00:44:45] [SPEAKER_01]: They got to work the plows, right?

[00:44:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.

[00:44:47] [SPEAKER_03]: So it's just like I'm saying there was probably a lot of waste.

[00:44:50] [SPEAKER_03]: Yes.

[00:44:50] [SPEAKER_03]: And then this new person who I've made up comes along and just lies to like to not kill as many people.

[00:44:56] [SPEAKER_01]: That actually will get to an idea like that in a little bit because you're not wrong.

[00:45:01] [SPEAKER_01]: Eventually, after months or years in the sun and rain,

[00:45:04] [SPEAKER_01]: a skull would begin to fall to pieces, losing teeth and perhaps even its jaw.

[00:45:08] [SPEAKER_01]: The priests would remove it to be fashioned into a mask and placed in an offering

[00:45:12] [SPEAKER_01]: or use mortar to add it to two towers of skulls that flanked the Zompentli.

[00:45:17] [SPEAKER_01]: There's just a lot of skull art in this community.

[00:45:19] [SPEAKER_01]: For the Aztecs, those skulls were the seeds that would ensure the continued existence of humanity.

[00:45:24] [SPEAKER_01]: They were a sign of life and regeneration like the first flowers of spring.

[00:45:28] [SPEAKER_01]: But the Spanish conquistadors who marched into Tenochtitlan in 1519 saw them differently.

[00:45:34] [SPEAKER_03]: I bet.

[00:45:35] [SPEAKER_01]: For them, the skulls and the entire practice of human sacrifice evinced their barbarism

[00:45:41] [SPEAKER_01]: and justified laying waste to the city in 1521.

[00:45:44] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, what's his name?

[00:45:45] [SPEAKER_01]: Fucking that piece of shit.

[00:45:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Cortez.

[00:45:48] [SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

[00:45:48] [SPEAKER_01]: The Spanish tore down the Templo Mayor, paved over the ruins and built what would become Mexico City.

[00:45:54] [SPEAKER_01]: And the Great Rack and Towers of Skulls passed into the realm of historical mystery.

[00:46:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Some conquistadors wrote about the Towers of Skulls, estimating that the racks alone contained 130,000 skulls.

[00:46:08] [SPEAKER_01]: But historians and archaeologists knew the conquistadors were prone to exaggerating the horrors of human sacrifice

[00:46:13] [SPEAKER_01]: to demonize the Aztec culture.

[00:46:15] [SPEAKER_01]: And as the centuries passed, scholars began to wonder if these skull towers ever even existed.

[00:46:21] [SPEAKER_01]: One skull was on a Wednesday.

[00:46:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:46:24] [SPEAKER_01]: And they put it up on a stick.

[00:46:25] [SPEAKER_01]: They put it on a stick.

[00:46:25] [SPEAKER_01]: And they arrested the guy who did it.

[00:46:27] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, he was swiftly dealt with.

[00:46:29] [SPEAKER_01]: But no, the reason I wanted to bring this up on the show is that in 2015, we finally found proof that it did exist.

[00:46:37] [SPEAKER_01]: Archaeologists at the National Institute of Anthropology and History discovered and excavated the remains of the skull rack

[00:46:43] [SPEAKER_01]: in one of the towers underneath a colonial period house on the street that runs behind Mexico City's cathedral.

[00:46:50] [SPEAKER_01]: The other tower, they suspect, lies under the cathedral's back courtyard.

[00:46:54] [SPEAKER_01]: I love old places.

[00:46:55] [SPEAKER_01]: I know.

[00:46:56] [SPEAKER_03]: I just love it where it's like, we got new zoning in place, so we're going to put this apartment complex here in Mexico City.

[00:47:01] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:47:01] [SPEAKER_03]: So we're going to put a parking garage in.

[00:47:02] [SPEAKER_03]: And it's like, I found a fucking column of skulls.

[00:47:05] [SPEAKER_03]: So I guess we're not going to be finishing this stupid for rent residential on top commercial on the bottom building.

[00:47:11] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:47:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, the scale of the rack and tower that they found suggests that there were thousands of skulls down there.

[00:47:19] [SPEAKER_01]: That's awesome.

[00:47:20] [SPEAKER_01]: Testimony to an industry of human sacrifice unlike any other in the world.

[00:47:24] [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, they were trying to keep humanity alive.

[00:47:27] [SPEAKER_03]: Per them, we need these skull towers to make sure that humanity survives.

[00:47:31] [SPEAKER_03]: They didn't say Aztecs survive.

[00:47:33] [SPEAKER_03]: They were like, the world needs this.

[00:47:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:47:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, and the archaeologists are now studying the skulls, hoping to learn more about these rituals and what happened to the bodies after death.

[00:47:42] [SPEAKER_01]: They are also trying to figure out who these people who were sacrificed were, where they came from, and what their lives were like before they were killed.

[00:47:49] [SPEAKER_01]: Did every one of these archaeologists die within six months from removing these skulls that were absolutely necessary to be there?

[00:47:55] [SPEAKER_01]: If there were ever a curse to bring upon yourself, you would think it would be here.

[00:48:00] [SPEAKER_01]: But no, I think they're all still alive and doing well.

[00:48:02] [SPEAKER_01]: According to History.com, DNA tests of recovered victims from the Templo Mayor site show that the vast majority of those sacrificed were outsiders, likely enemy soldiers or slaves, but not all of them.

[00:48:15] [SPEAKER_01]: As hard as it is to imagine, many captured soldiers, slaves, and Aztec citizens went willingly to the sacrificial altar.

[00:48:22] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, wow.

[00:48:23] [SPEAKER_01]: To give your heart to Huitzilopochtli was a tremendous honor and a guaranteed ticket to a blessed afterlife fighting in the sun god's army against the forces of darkness.

[00:48:33] [SPEAKER_03]: Fuck, we are still telling the poor that if you do some shit that's not good for you, it's not in your best interest.

[00:48:40] [SPEAKER_03]: You're going to seek salvation in the afterlife.

[00:48:42] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, give the church money and you will be seated at God's right hand.

[00:48:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh my God.

[00:48:46] [SPEAKER_01]: We don't know whether or not the Aztecs encouraged this willing participation, but if they did, they wouldn't be alone.

[00:48:53] [SPEAKER_01]: There's evidence that some cultures wanted their sacrifices to at least appear willing.

[00:48:59] [SPEAKER_01]: They weren't stupid.

[00:49:00] [SPEAKER_01]: They knew that willing human sacrifices were much more effective for that social cohesion than unwilling human sacrifices.

[00:49:08] [SPEAKER_01]: I bet, yeah.

[00:49:08] [SPEAKER_01]: One great example I found is this account of a Viking's funeral in Russia from around 921 AD that paints a pretty intense picture of the lengths the Vikings went to to to keep people from freaking out.

[00:49:20] [SPEAKER_01]: Quote,

[00:49:21] [SPEAKER_01]: The dead man's slave girls were asked who wished to die with him.

[00:49:25] [SPEAKER_01]: One volunteered to be burned in his ship with him.

[00:49:28] [SPEAKER_01]: When she went to her death, the men began to strike with the sticks on the shield so that her cries could not be heard.

[00:49:35] [SPEAKER_01]: And the other slave girls would not be frightened and seek to escape death with their masters.

[00:49:40] [SPEAKER_01]: A dagger was then plunged between her ribs repeatedly and the men strangled her with the cord until she was dead.

[00:49:47] [SPEAKER_01]: The flames grew and engulfed the pyre and the ship.

[00:49:50] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but that cord's still there.

[00:49:52] [SPEAKER_01]: That cord sank the whole way to the bottom of the sea.

[00:49:55] [SPEAKER_01]: And if you can find it, you can probably pull that whole damn ship back up.

[00:50:02] [SPEAKER_01]: The Incas are also known for practicing a willing sacrificial ritual called Kupakokcha, which can be translated as, quote, real obligation.

[00:50:13] [SPEAKER_01]: Which I think is hilarious, naming a human sacrifice the same way we might talk about going to a friend's improv show or something.

[00:50:20] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:50:22] [SPEAKER_01]: The willingness here is a little loose because the sacrifice was carried out by children.

[00:50:27] [SPEAKER_01]: We know this because of evidence found at high altitude sites like Luolico in Argentina, where three extraordinarily well-preserved child mummies were found.

[00:50:38] [SPEAKER_01]: Examination of their bodies suggests these kids were treated with the utmost care and respect before their deaths.

[00:50:44] [SPEAKER_01]: They were fed special diets, given hallucinogenic drugs, and dressed in fine clothes.

[00:50:49] [SPEAKER_01]: Analysis of their hair and nails shows that they were very well-nourished and healthy, indicating that they came from elite families.

[00:50:55] [SPEAKER_01]: And an article on PBS.org tells us that these child sacrifices were often made, quote,

[00:51:01] [SPEAKER_01]: during or after a portentous event, an earthquake, an epidemic, a drought, or after the death of an Incan emperor.

[00:51:07] [SPEAKER_01]: According to archaeologist Juan Schobinger,

[00:51:10] [SPEAKER_01]: Inca sacrifices often involved the child of a chief.

[00:51:13] [SPEAKER_01]: The sacrifice child was thought of as a deity, ensuring a tie between the chief and the Inca emperor, who was considered a descendant of the sun god.

[00:51:22] [SPEAKER_01]: The sacrifice also bestowed an elevated status on the chief's family and descendants.

[00:51:27] [SPEAKER_01]: So I think that's where you can see a little bit of that social strata question coming into play,

[00:51:32] [SPEAKER_01]: where you give your child to the gods, and then you get raised for generations to a better status.

[00:51:38] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. Smart.

[00:51:39] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, there's somebody who came up with a really good idea at the time.

[00:51:42] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, and then you've bought in, too.

[00:51:43] [SPEAKER_01]: So it's not just a symbolic, like, you know, we want to sacrifice children just to give you a higher rank.

[00:51:50] [SPEAKER_01]: The idea, I think, is, like, if you are making that sacrifice, you are showing that you are, you've got a dog in this fight.

[00:51:56] [SPEAKER_03]: And it probably helped with population decline, where it's like, better have a lot of kids, because you might have to be given a couple of these up.

[00:52:04] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:52:05] [SPEAKER_03]: And so that'll keep the whole tribe getting bigger and bigger.

[00:52:08] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that'll keep the bed a-rockin'.

[00:52:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:52:15] [SPEAKER_01]: After a child was chosen or offered to the emperor, a procession would begin from the child's home village to Cusco.

[00:52:21] [SPEAKER_03]: I don't like the offered. I'm sorry to interrupt, but I don't like the offered aspect.

[00:52:25] [SPEAKER_03]: Perfect. Chosen, I'm fine with. Like, hey, I drew a straw, or your numbers come up, I'm sorry.

[00:52:31] [SPEAKER_03]: But the offered aspect, that leads me to believe that there's at least a couple people who are like, huh?

[00:52:36] [SPEAKER_03]: What do you think about this kid?

[00:52:37] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:52:37] [SPEAKER_03]: And they're like, no.

[00:52:39] [SPEAKER_03]: And then you have to walk home, like, mad at your kid, because you're like, oh, fuck, we could have had better life,

[00:52:44] [SPEAKER_01]: but they didn't like you for your fucking, because you suck.

[00:52:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, no, they didn't like them because, and I actually, I didn't write the details of this down in here,

[00:52:51] [SPEAKER_01]: but one of these articles mentions that children were chosen for their perfect features.

[00:52:58] [SPEAKER_01]: So, like, the more-

[00:52:59] [SPEAKER_01]: It's the opposite of bog bodies.

[00:53:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the opposite of bog bodies.

[00:53:02] [SPEAKER_01]: They went for, like, exquisitely perfect-looking children was the idea, was who you wanted to sacrifice.

[00:53:08] [SPEAKER_01]: Sure.

[00:53:08] [SPEAKER_01]: So that also then, by deduction, must have been one ugly fucking town.

[00:53:14] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, there's all the good-looking people in this town. Oh, we killed them.

[00:53:17] [SPEAKER_01]: We killed them.

[00:53:17] [SPEAKER_03]: Killed all the good-looking people.

[00:53:19] [SPEAKER_03]: That's why we have crops.

[00:53:21] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:53:21] [SPEAKER_01]: Really, it was just one chief way back in the day was really insecure, and he was like, how about these six kids?

[00:53:28] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:53:28] [SPEAKER_01]: I want to put them up on the mountain.

[00:53:30] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:53:30] [SPEAKER_01]: Are you sure?

[00:53:31] [SPEAKER_03]: We could make a boy band with them.

[00:53:33] [SPEAKER_01]: No, no, no, no.

[00:53:35] [SPEAKER_01]: Listen to those harmonic voices.

[00:53:37] [SPEAKER_01]: It's gold.

[00:53:38] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, as we stab them.

[00:53:40] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:53:40] [SPEAKER_01]: So, the children would be brought from their village to Cusco, which was the crown seat of the Incan Empire.

[00:53:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Priests, family members, and chiefs would accompany the child on this great journey to meet the emperor.

[00:53:50] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, if you don't accompany him, he's going to run away, being like, I heard I'm going to die at the end of this, so I'm going to fucking scram.

[00:53:56] [SPEAKER_01]: Priests would then lead the grand procession to the designated high mountain.

[00:53:59] [SPEAKER_01]: Meanwhile, high on the mountain's summit, the sacrificial platforms would be under construction, and the burial site would be prepared.

[00:54:06] [SPEAKER_01]: The platforms were large retaining walls built of stone that formed a large tomb-like interior.

[00:54:12] [SPEAKER_01]: The child would be placed within the platform along with many burial artifacts, like carvings of llamas, statues made of gold and silver, and ceremonial pots, which I'm sure those are awesome to have around while you're suffocating and freezing to death.

[00:54:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Just so glad you're surrounded by your favorite ceremonial pots at the bottom of the grave.

[00:54:33] [SPEAKER_01]: Hey, you have any ceremonial blankets down here?

[00:54:35] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:54:36] [SPEAKER_03]: Ceremonial rations?

[00:54:38] [SPEAKER_01]: On the day of the sacrifice, the child would be fed chicha, a maize alcohol, presumably to ease the pain of the cold, the altitude, and perhaps the fear of dying.

[00:54:49] [SPEAKER_01]: Much ritual celebrating would take place at the platform as the child would be wrapped in ceremonial clothing, placed inside the tomb, and surrounded with the sacred artifacts that would accompany him or her into the other world.

[00:55:00] [SPEAKER_01]: This was the ultimate sacrifice the Inca could make to please the mountain gods, to offer up their own children in the highest places humans could possibly reach.

[00:55:09] [SPEAKER_01]: Whether the children died of violent death remains debate among scientists.

[00:55:14] [SPEAKER_01]: Skull fractures have been found on most of the sacrificial mummies.

[00:55:17] [SPEAKER_01]: That sounds like they died of violent death.

[00:55:19] [SPEAKER_01]: Sounds like a yes.

[00:55:20] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:55:21] [SPEAKER_01]: But Johann Reinhardt, the high altitude archaeologist who discovered the famous mummy known as Juanita, speculates that this was a quick and painless means of knocking the children out so they wouldn't have to suffer a long and grueling death of exposure to the elements.

[00:55:37] [SPEAKER_01]: Why don't you just give them more of that booze?

[00:55:38] [SPEAKER_01]: He believes the children were knocked out with a blow to a cushioning towel on the backs of their heads.

[00:55:43] [SPEAKER_01]: But I feel like if they were hit hard enough to fracture their skulls, I don't know that the towel really did anything.

[00:55:49] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I don't think it does anything in movies, too.

[00:55:52] [SPEAKER_01]: That's like being like, well, they put a helmet on them before they dropped a car on their head.

[00:55:55] [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, well, okay.

[00:55:58] [SPEAKER_01]: It still killed them from the force of the blow.

[00:56:00] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I think that's about as ineffective as like in movies where they like silence a gun by shooting into a pillow.

[00:56:06] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:56:06] [SPEAKER_03]: Like, no, that's not happening.

[00:56:07] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:56:08] [SPEAKER_01]: The article concludes,

[00:56:09] [SPEAKER_01]: Once the child died of exposure, the priests would continue to return to the site, making offerings of coca leaves and filling in the burial site with dirt.

[00:56:17] [SPEAKER_01]: Often, a miniature figurine of the child would be placed on the surface near the burial site, along with more simple offerings like ichu, wild grass from the slopes thousands of feet below.

[00:56:26] [SPEAKER_01]: For archaeologists, Jose Antonio Chavez and Johan Reinhardt.

[00:56:31] [SPEAKER_01]: These are often the first clues they look for in their search for sacrificial Inca children buried on the frozen mountaintops of the Andes.

[00:56:38] [SPEAKER_01]: So those dolls should be in our last episode because they are haunted.

[00:56:42] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, for sure.

[00:56:42] [SPEAKER_01]: The death dolls they put at the top of a mountain.

[00:56:45] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:56:46] [SPEAKER_01]: We fucked up.

[00:56:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Missed out on it.

[00:56:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that one, that didn't come up in my research.

[00:56:49] [SPEAKER_01]: A different kind of voluntary sacrifice was practiced in ancient Egypt.

[00:56:54] [SPEAKER_01]: It's what's known as a retainer sacrifice.

[00:56:57] [SPEAKER_01]: And it basically comes down to the idea that pharaohs fully expected to rule in the afterlife, a place that was just as real to them as the mortal world.

[00:57:06] [SPEAKER_01]: And no king worth his crown is going to shuffle off this mortal coil and find himself without servants and slaves in the next world.

[00:57:13] [SPEAKER_01]: So the Egyptian answer was to just take your people with you.

[00:57:16] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's nice job security.

[00:57:17] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:57:18] [SPEAKER_01]: The most dramatic example we have of this practice comes from the tomb of King Jer, D-J-E-R.

[00:57:25] [SPEAKER_01]: D-J-E-R.

[00:57:25] [SPEAKER_01]: Probably D-J-E-R.

[00:57:26] [SPEAKER_01]: D-J-E-R.

[00:57:27] [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, think about Aladdin and stuff.

[00:57:29] [SPEAKER_03]: They always have like a...

[00:57:29] [SPEAKER_01]: Think about Aladdin.

[00:57:31] [SPEAKER_01]: Clip that.

[00:57:32] [SPEAKER_01]: Which is not Egypt.

[00:57:34] [SPEAKER_01]: No.

[00:57:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Uh...

[00:57:38] [SPEAKER_01]: Comes from the tomb of King Jer at Abydos.

[00:57:42] [SPEAKER_01]: Jer, or Jar, or D-J-R, was the third king of the first dynasty ruling around 3000 BC.

[00:57:49] [SPEAKER_01]: When archaeologists excavated his tomb, they found something shocking.

[00:57:54] [SPEAKER_01]: 338 subsidiary burials surrounding the main burial chamber.

[00:57:58] [SPEAKER_01]: That's a ton of people.

[00:57:59] [SPEAKER_01]: These weren't enemy soldiers or slaves thrown in haphazardly.

[00:58:03] [SPEAKER_01]: They were carefully arranged burials of the king's retainers, his servants, officials, and possibly even family members.

[00:58:09] [SPEAKER_01]: The idea, I guess, was that these good buds would continue to serve the king in the afterlife, maintaining his status and comfort for eternity.

[00:58:18] [SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't seen as a death sentence, but as a tremendous honor and a guaranteed ticket to a blessed afterlife.

[00:58:24] [SPEAKER_01]: What I'm saying, that's job security, dude.

[00:58:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, and it kind of makes sense.

[00:58:27] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, in a lot of these early religions...

[00:58:29] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I'm talking like I know for sure.

[00:58:31] [SPEAKER_01]: I guess I don't.

[00:58:32] [SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, a lot of them, it was not a guaranteed thing that you were going anywhere good after you died.

[00:58:38] [SPEAKER_01]: So the idea that like, hey man, yeah, you could probably do another 20 years here.

[00:58:45] [SPEAKER_01]: But if you go now and you go with him, you'll definitely go to Valhalla or whatever.

[00:58:50] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, the Egyptians didn't have Valhalla, but, you know, they'd go to the good place.

[00:58:54] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you're flying first class with this dude.

[00:58:56] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:58:56] [SPEAKER_01]: And so you kind of go, hmm, all right.

[00:58:58] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, okay, sure.

[00:58:59] [SPEAKER_01]: Nothing else was going on here.

[00:59:01] [SPEAKER_01]: Just went through a breakup.

[00:59:02] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it is hard to imagine.

[00:59:03] [SPEAKER_01]: I get, you know, neither of us are really religious.

[00:59:05] [SPEAKER_01]: But even my religious family members, I don't know that they believe in the next life as much of a real place that they just haven't been yet as these people might have.

[00:59:16] [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, no.

[00:59:17] [SPEAKER_03]: And I think because of just how a lot of religions are maybe structured, sometimes it feels like it's less about I'm going to heaven and more about like I'm not, again, depending on the religion, I'm not going to be here for revelation or whatever, like for all the shit.

[00:59:31] [SPEAKER_03]: It's more about like, well, you know, we're going to take the earth back after a thousand years of darkness or whatever.

[00:59:39] [SPEAKER_03]: It's never like, oh, I'm going to have a fucking beach house in heaven.

[00:59:42] [SPEAKER_03]: But again, yeah, I don't think they picture it as real as I guess is like this Egyptian person where it's like the minute my eyes close, I'm running shit at the next place.

[00:59:51] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, in any case, scientists are pretty sure that these were willing sacrifices based on the condition of the bodies because none of them show any signs of bodily harm, violence or struggle.

[01:00:00] [SPEAKER_01]: They're arranged carefully, often with their own goods.

[01:00:03] [SPEAKER_01]: And some were found in positions of apparent sleep indicating that they might have been given a sedative before death.

[01:00:08] [SPEAKER_03]: It is interesting because retainer is a word that I only think of in a legal sense.

[01:00:12] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[01:00:13] [SPEAKER_03]: And so it is funny that I'm just like if they were called retainer sacrifices, they found like legal documents, like contracts they assign.

[01:00:19] [SPEAKER_03]: That's how I keep picturing them like hand upon hand on their chest with like a little fucking contract in it.

[01:00:27] [SPEAKER_03]: It was like I King Tuts homie.

[01:00:29] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[01:00:29] [SPEAKER_03]: You know, I signed this of sound mind and body that I'm going to go out for a rip after I die.

[01:00:34] [SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to go to sleep.

[01:00:35] [SPEAKER_03]: Goodbye.

[01:00:35] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think these I mean, you know, I trust the experts here that it's unlikely that this was a violent way to go.

[01:00:42] [SPEAKER_01]: But then I also think, to be fair, if you excavated Jonestown a few thousand years from now, you'd find pretty much the same scene.

[01:00:50] [SPEAKER_01]: That's true.

[01:00:51] [SPEAKER_01]: And that was not a willing thing for I mean, maybe a handful of them.

[01:00:55] [SPEAKER_01]: It was.

[01:00:55] [SPEAKER_01]: But for a lot of them, it was not willing.

[01:00:58] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:00:58] [SPEAKER_01]: They were arranged carefully, I guess.

[01:01:01] [SPEAKER_01]: But you wouldn't have found for most of them any signs of bodily harm or violence.

[01:01:05] [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I will say this is the first story that doesn't have skull fragments in it.

[01:01:08] [SPEAKER_03]: So it's pretty nice.

[01:01:10] [SPEAKER_03]: Pretty nice change of pace.

[01:01:11] [SPEAKER_01]: And even if you were willing, I think the degree to which royalty probably controlled people's lives at this point in history can't be discounted either.

[01:01:19] [SPEAKER_01]: Because something tells me if you were like the Pharaoh's towel guy and he needed his balls dried in heaven.

[01:01:25] [SPEAKER_01]: Like you were going whether you really wanted to or not.

[01:01:29] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't think I don't think it was much of a choice.

[01:01:32] [SPEAKER_01]: But again, if it worked as social cohesion, maybe it was just a feeling of like, well, if our leader goes, then we just go with him.

[01:01:39] [SPEAKER_01]: And that's just what you do.

[01:01:40] [SPEAKER_01]: So the practice of retainer sacrifice didn't last long in Egypt, though.

[01:01:44] [SPEAKER_01]: By the end of the first dynasty, only about 200 years after this king, it seems to have largely disappeared.

[01:01:50] [SPEAKER_01]: And the Egyptians started bearing symbolic servants in the form of Ushabti figurines, small statues they believed would come to life in the afterlife to serve the deceased.

[01:02:01] [SPEAKER_01]: And this is sort of a little bit like what you were saying earlier.

[01:02:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Some scholars think that this change might have actually been tied to economic reasons because they were killing off hundreds of skilled workers.

[01:02:11] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, my God.

[01:02:11] [SPEAKER_01]: And so killing off all these people with each royal death was probably not great for the kingdom's stability, especially at that scale.

[01:02:18] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, if it's two people, that's one thing.

[01:02:20] [SPEAKER_01]: But you're doing 400 people per.

[01:02:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:02:23] [SPEAKER_01]: That's, you know.

[01:02:24] [SPEAKER_03]: 400 skilled laborers.

[01:02:26] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[01:02:26] [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, don't get me wrong.

[01:02:27] [SPEAKER_03]: Slaves built the pyramids.

[01:02:29] [SPEAKER_03]: Those are still here.

[01:02:29] [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, if you got to lose a couple of skilled fucking laborers.

[01:02:32] [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I guess that's why the pyramids aren't gilded or anything.

[01:02:35] [SPEAKER_01]: But those also took thousands of years, right?

[01:02:38] [SPEAKER_03]: Or maybe not thousands of years, but hundreds of years.

[01:02:40] [SPEAKER_03]: I couldn't tell you.

[01:02:41] [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.

[01:02:41] [SPEAKER_03]: I think the Acropolis took like 50 years.

[01:02:44] [SPEAKER_03]: And that's not as maybe giant as the...

[01:02:47] [SPEAKER_03]: Hold on.

[01:02:47] [SPEAKER_03]: Let's see.

[01:02:47] [SPEAKER_01]: How long is he?

[01:02:48] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, 20 years.

[01:02:49] [SPEAKER_01]: Stop it.

[01:02:50] [SPEAKER_01]: The Acropolis took 50.

[01:02:51] [SPEAKER_01]: I feel like there was something that I was reading about that was like a generational project where like generations of men were born into.

[01:02:58] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, yeah, you're just going to construct this cathedral or whatever.

[01:03:01] [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it's probably when you went to that.

[01:03:03] [SPEAKER_03]: Didn't you go to that beautiful cathedral in Florence?

[01:03:05] [SPEAKER_03]: Like El Domo?

[01:03:06] [SPEAKER_03]: El Dromo?

[01:03:07] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, maybe it was El Domo.

[01:03:08] [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, that seems like some shit where people died making it for a long time.

[01:03:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:03:13] [SPEAKER_01]: No, it doesn't matter.

[01:03:14] [SPEAKER_01]: I'll look it up later.

[01:03:15] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so Chris might have been thinking of the Florence Cathedral, also known as the Duomo di Firenze, which took over 140 years to build from 1296 to 1436.

[01:03:26] [SPEAKER_00]: Far from a thousand years, but a hell of a lot more than 20.

[01:03:30] [SPEAKER_01]: Can you imagine being born?

[01:03:33] [SPEAKER_01]: Like your whole life is dedicated to building a thing that you're never going to see finished.

[01:03:39] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that's America.

[01:03:40] [SPEAKER_03]: And you maybe have no reason to even know why it's being built.

[01:03:44] [SPEAKER_03]: But I mean, that's everything.

[01:03:45] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[01:03:45] [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, that's why I said that's America.

[01:03:47] [SPEAKER_03]: It's like we're still an unfinished thing.

[01:03:49] [SPEAKER_03]: You know what I mean?

[01:03:49] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, that's true.

[01:03:50] [SPEAKER_01]: That's true.

[01:03:59] [SPEAKER_03]: Like Samford and sons.

[01:04:01] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[01:04:01] [SPEAKER_03]: Like you see a truck down the street of some plumber and sons.

[01:04:04] [SPEAKER_03]: It's like, you know, there was a time when it was and sons and grandsons who built that one church.

[01:04:10] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:04:11] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's true.

[01:04:13] [SPEAKER_01]: Interestingly, there is also evidence of very similar practices throughout China during the Shang Dynasty, which ruled a few thousand years after the pharaohs of the first dynasty, roughly 1600 to 1046 BC.

[01:04:27] [SPEAKER_01]: Just like the Egyptian sacrifices, many of the bodies found in China were buried with valuable and important items, which is not an honor that would have been granted to prisoners or slaves.

[01:04:37] [SPEAKER_01]: We know a lot of this because the people of the Shang Dynasty also left behind what we call oracle bones, which are pieces of animal bone or turtle shell that were used for divination.

[01:04:47] [SPEAKER_01]: They were heated until they cracked.

[01:04:49] [SPEAKER_01]: And then the patterns of the cracks were interpreted as messages from the gods.

[01:04:53] [SPEAKER_01]: But the Shang people didn't just read the cracks.

[01:04:55] [SPEAKER_01]: They carved records of the divinations that they made into those bones.

[01:05:00] [SPEAKER_01]: So they left us with a lot more information about their sacrifices than the Egyptians did.

[01:05:05] [SPEAKER_01]: It's pretty cool.

[01:05:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:05:06] [SPEAKER_01]: Many of the oracle bone inscriptions mentioned Ren Shang, which translates to human offerings.

[01:05:12] [SPEAKER_01]: And in many cases, these inscriptions suggest that the sacrificed individuals were relatives of the king or other high status individuals,

[01:05:19] [SPEAKER_01]: which would further imply that being chosen for this sacrifice was seen as an honor rather than a punishment.

[01:05:25] [SPEAKER_01]: Even though this was thousands of years later and thousands of miles away, the Chinese practices seem to have evolved in much the same way the Egyptian practices did.

[01:05:34] [SPEAKER_01]: Either for reasons economic or moral or some combination of the two, the sacrifices became symbolic and their kings were buried with representations of the people they would command in the afterlife.

[01:05:45] [SPEAKER_01]: The Chinese went big on this, though.

[01:05:48] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I know that one, but that's with the soldiers.

[01:05:50] [SPEAKER_01]: The terracotta army.

[01:05:51] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:05:51] [SPEAKER_01]: That's well, that's what I was just going to ask if you'd ever heard of them.

[01:05:54] [SPEAKER_01]: Come on.

[01:05:54] [SPEAKER_01]: I've read books.

[01:05:55] [SPEAKER_01]: I've seen things.

[01:05:56] [SPEAKER_01]: I never realized how the scale of this, though.

[01:05:58] [SPEAKER_01]: Like I had heard of it.

[01:05:59] [SPEAKER_03]: It's like a football field.

[01:06:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:06:01] [SPEAKER_01]: The terracotta army is one of those archaeological discoveries that sounds like Tomb Raider or Indiana Jones or something.

[01:06:07] [SPEAKER_01]: You know there's a guy at the end just being like, I got to fuck another one.

[01:06:10] [SPEAKER_02]: You know what I mean?

[01:06:11] [SPEAKER_02]: It's just like, how far does this go?

[01:06:12] [SPEAKER_01]: I think they're considered, I don't know how many wonders of the world there are now, but the eight wonders of the world.

[01:06:17] [SPEAKER_01]: It's one of like eight.

[01:06:18] [SPEAKER_01]: Always seven.

[01:06:19] [SPEAKER_01]: Seven?

[01:06:19] [SPEAKER_01]: No, because I think these are the eighth wonders of the world.

[01:06:22] [SPEAKER_03]: Everyone, the fuck, they called the Luxor Hotel the eighth wonder of the world.

[01:06:26] [SPEAKER_03]: Like, I just, I feel like.

[01:06:27] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, these guys count.

[01:06:28] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if the Luxor Hotel is quite on the scale.

[01:06:31] [SPEAKER_03]: I feel like the eighth wonder of the world is like a saying.

[01:06:35] [SPEAKER_03]: I think it's always seven, like the seven wonders of the ancient world and the seven wonders of the modern world, whatever, right?

[01:06:40] [SPEAKER_03]: Are they numbered in like order?

[01:06:42] [SPEAKER_03]: No, I think it's just seven items.

[01:06:44] [SPEAKER_03]: It's not like Colossus of Rhodes is the best one or the Hanging Gardens of Babylon is number three on the podium.

[01:06:50] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, yeah.

[01:06:51] [SPEAKER_01]: The most widely recognized list is the seven wonders, including the Great Pyramid of Egypt, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Temple of Artemis, Ephesus.

[01:06:59] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I said one of those.

[01:07:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:07:01] [SPEAKER_01]: Colossus of Rhodes is on there too, I bet.

[01:07:02] [SPEAKER_01]: Yep.

[01:07:03] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, someone did take classics in high school.

[01:07:05] [SPEAKER_01]: I did.

[01:07:05] [SPEAKER_01]: So anyway, the initial discovery of the terracotta army was just something that Chinese farmers stumbled upon while they were working the fields in 1974.

[01:07:15] [SPEAKER_01]: So really recently.

[01:07:16] [SPEAKER_01]: They were digging a well when they hit what they thought was a buried brick kiln.

[01:07:21] [SPEAKER_01]: But after they dug a little further, they unearthed pottery fragments and bronze arrowheads.

[01:07:26] [SPEAKER_01]: And then they found something truly extraordinary, pieces of terracotta figures.

[01:07:30] [SPEAKER_01]: So they reported the find to the local government and the excavation was put underway.

[01:07:35] [SPEAKER_01]: And what the excavation uncovered was just one part of the massive mausoleum complex of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China.

[01:07:43] [SPEAKER_01]: The burial site was actually described about a century after his death in 210 BC.

[01:07:49] [SPEAKER_01]: But scholars generally believe the account was exaggerated or mythical.

[01:07:54] [SPEAKER_01]: Like the skulls.

[01:07:54] [SPEAKER_01]: Like the skulls.

[01:07:55] [SPEAKER_01]: And again, it wasn't.

[01:07:57] [SPEAKER_01]: While the mausoleum is still being excavated to this day, the find that made headlines around the world was an army, a literal army of over 8,000 life-size terracotta statues.

[01:08:09] [SPEAKER_01]: And that's just the soldiers.

[01:08:11] [SPEAKER_01]: The mausoleum also includes 130 chariots with 520 horses and 150 cavalry horses, along with sculptures of officials, acrobats, strongmen, and musicians.

[01:08:22] [SPEAKER_01]: Each figure is unique with different facial features, hairstyles, and clothing details.

[01:08:27] [SPEAKER_01]: And some archaeologists believe that these may have been based on real individuals in the emperor's army.

[01:08:33] [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, the fact that they're all life-size and people at home who maybe don't, who can't picture this.

[01:08:36] [SPEAKER_03]: It's like, imagine statues that are life-size statues.

[01:08:39] [SPEAKER_03]: Like a terracotta figure makes it sound like it's small.

[01:08:42] [SPEAKER_03]: It's in your head.

[01:08:42] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, no.

[01:08:43] [SPEAKER_03]: Like they're fucking big.

[01:08:44] [SPEAKER_03]: Like there's so many of them and it's all life-size.

[01:08:47] [SPEAKER_03]: It's to the point where I'm like, this is magic.

[01:08:50] [SPEAKER_03]: Like people were turned to stone.

[01:08:52] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[01:08:52] [SPEAKER_03]: Like this was not carved by people.

[01:08:54] [SPEAKER_03]: Like that's why they all have different outfits and shit.

[01:08:56] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, how long would it have taken?

[01:08:58] [SPEAKER_01]: Again, like 8,000 statues.

[01:09:01] [SPEAKER_01]: This guy dies, right?

[01:09:02] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:09:03] [SPEAKER_01]: So you're either, to have those statues ready by the time he died, I feel like he would have had to start before he was born.

[01:09:09] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, or he was like a massive collector and died with his collection.

[01:09:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but even then, 8,000.

[01:09:15] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, how many can you make in a week?

[01:09:17] [SPEAKER_01]: One?

[01:09:18] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, with one spell, I think you can turn 8,000 things into stone.

[01:09:22] [SPEAKER_03]: You know how hard Medusa's fucking working?

[01:09:24] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's true.

[01:09:25] [SPEAKER_01]: While they're all the same muted brown color now, close study of the warriors reveals they were originally painted in bright colors and equipped with real weapons, including bronze swords, spears, and crossbows.

[01:09:37] [SPEAKER_01]: It's an unbelievable amount of wealth.

[01:09:39] [SPEAKER_01]: So I guess it's nice to know that when a society decides to stop sacrificing people en masse, they can make an army of fake dead people instead.

[01:09:49] [SPEAKER_03]: Or VCRs, if you think about Japan, which is a different country, but they can't amass an army after World War II, so all that money that would go into defense goes into whatever the fuck VCR, your VCR budget, and you get an unbelievable amount of excellent electronics came out of there.

[01:10:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, thank God.

[01:10:06] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, if we were still sacrificing people, we wouldn't—well, I was going to say maybe we wouldn't have cell phones, but we have people throwing themselves to death off the top of those buildings.

[01:10:15] [SPEAKER_01]: We've installed suicide nets.

[01:10:17] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:10:22] [SPEAKER_01]: But anyway, back to willing human sacrifices.

[01:10:25] [SPEAKER_01]: I think that the most famous example of a willing human sacrifice didn't occur in some obscure religion or in a far-flung part of the globe.

[01:10:34] [SPEAKER_01]: I think the most famous willing human sacrifice would have to be your friend and mine, the Honorable Jesus H. Christ.

[01:10:40] [SPEAKER_01]: You are obsessed with poking this bear.

[01:10:41] [SPEAKER_01]: But it's true!

[01:10:43] [SPEAKER_01]: As we discussed in our episodes on cannibalism, Christianity has a lot more in common with ancient pagan practices than some modern Christians would like to admit.

[01:10:52] [SPEAKER_01]: And Christ allowing himself to be crucified, I think, is another example.

[01:10:57] [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't make his sacrifice any less brave or real or not real.

[01:11:00] [SPEAKER_01]: That's up to you to decide.

[01:11:02] [SPEAKER_01]: But it certainly puts it in a different context, especially when you consider Christianity's just horror at the practice of human sacrifice in other religions and the way it was used to justify overthrowing entire civilizations.

[01:11:15] [SPEAKER_01]: It's more than a little rich that the central heroic act of their belief system is an act of human sacrifice.

[01:11:22] [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, it's in the context of the death penalty and is presented as an unjust punishment that the Romans forced upon Jesus.

[01:11:29] [SPEAKER_01]: But also, that doesn't change the fact that it was really part of God's plan that Jesus sacrificed himself on the cross.

[01:11:35] [SPEAKER_01]: So it was at the hands of the Romans, but it was really at the hands of his own father who said, you have to die to cleanse humanity of its sins.

[01:11:43] [SPEAKER_01]: Or himself, if you're Catholic, I guess.

[01:11:44] [SPEAKER_01]: Or himself.

[01:11:45] [SPEAKER_01]: And so that kind of got me wondering, you know, how do Christians justify the double standard on sacrifice?

[01:11:51] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think they justified the way you just did by saying it's not a sacrifice, it's a punishment.

[01:11:56] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I looked this up on a couple of different Christian websites, and according to gotquestions.com backslash human sacrifice, I'm quoting here,

[01:12:05] [SPEAKER_01]: if God hates human sacrifice, how could Jesus' sacrifice be the payment for our sins?

[01:12:10] [SPEAKER_01]: Quote, the Bible makes it quite clear that God hates human sacrifice.

[01:12:14] [SPEAKER_01]: The pagan nations that surrounded the Israelites practiced human sacrifice as part of the worship of false gods.

[01:12:19] [SPEAKER_01]: God declared that such worship was detestable to him and that he hates it.

[01:12:24] [SPEAKER_01]: Deuteronomy 12.31

[01:12:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Furthermore, human sacrifice is associated in the Old Testament with evil practices such as sorcery and divination, which are also detestable to God.

[01:12:34] [SPEAKER_01]: So if God hates human sacrifice, why did he sacrifice Christ on the cross, and how could that sacrifice be the payment for our sins?

[01:12:40] [SPEAKER_01]: There is no doubt that a sacrifice for sin was necessary if people are to have any hope of eternal life.

[01:12:46] [SPEAKER_01]: God established the necessity of shedding blood to cover sin, Hebrews 9.22.

[01:12:51] [SPEAKER_01]: In fact, God himself performed the very first animal sacrifice to cover, temporarily, the sin of Adam and Eve.

[01:12:58] [SPEAKER_01]: This next part's new to me.

[01:12:59] [SPEAKER_01]: After he pronounced curses upon the first couple, he killed an animal shedding its blood and made from it a covering for Adam and Eve, thereby instituting the principle of animal sacrifice for sin.

[01:13:12] [SPEAKER_01]: When God gave the law to Moses, there were extensive instructions on how, when, and under what circumstances animal sacrifices were to be offered to him,

[01:13:20] [SPEAKER_01]: and this was to continue until Christ came to offer the ultimate, perfect sacrifice, which made animal sacrifice no longer necessary.

[01:13:28] [SPEAKER_01]: Quote,

[01:13:29] [SPEAKER_01]: But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

[01:13:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Now, what is the Lamb of God?

[01:13:37] [SPEAKER_01]: He takes away the sins of the world.

[01:13:39] [SPEAKER_03]: But that's Jesus.

[01:13:41] [SPEAKER_03]: Yes.

[01:13:41] [SPEAKER_03]: So by virtue of using that term, it's an animal sacrifice, which God has approved and not a human sacrifice.

[01:13:48] [SPEAKER_01]: This next part tells us there are several reasons why the sacrifice of Christ on the cross does not violate the prohibition against human sacrifice.

[01:13:56] [SPEAKER_01]: First, Jesus wasn't merely human.

[01:13:59] [SPEAKER_01]: If he were, then his sacrifice would have also been a temporary one because one human life couldn't possibly cover the sins of the multitudes who ever existed.

[01:14:07] [SPEAKER_01]: It was a temporary one.

[01:14:08] [SPEAKER_01]: He fucking woke up three days later.

[01:14:10] [SPEAKER_01]: Neither could one finite human life atone for sin against an infinite God.

[01:14:15] [SPEAKER_01]: The only viable sacrifice must be an infinite one, which means only God himself could atone for the sins of mankind.

[01:14:22] [SPEAKER_01]: Only God himself, being an infinite being, could pay the penalty owed to himself.

[01:14:27] [SPEAKER_01]: This is why God had to become a man and dwell among men.

[01:14:31] [SPEAKER_01]: No other sacrifice would suffice.

[01:14:33] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to try and use this with the fucking electric company.

[01:14:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Now, look, I was going to say, we've all written movies here.

[01:14:40] [SPEAKER_01]: This, I don't want to be a jerk, but this sounds like me trying to explain a plot hole to an exec who just made a good point.

[01:14:47] [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, well, you know, he has to sacrifice himself to himself for the penalty that he owes himself.

[01:14:53] [SPEAKER_01]: So it can't be the guy.

[01:14:55] [SPEAKER_01]: It's got to be him because otherwise it doesn't.

[01:14:58] [SPEAKER_01]: It's I mean, technically, yes, that makes sense, but only in a very roundabout way.

[01:15:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Secondly, this website also tells us that God didn't sacrifice Jesus.

[01:15:10] [SPEAKER_01]: Rather, I thought it was going to say the Romans did.

[01:15:13] [SPEAKER_01]: No, rather Jesus as God incarnate sacrificed himself.

[01:15:18] [SPEAKER_01]: No one forced him.

[01:15:20] [SPEAKER_01]: He laid down his life willingly as he made clear speaking about his life.

[01:15:23] [SPEAKER_01]: No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.

[01:15:26] [SPEAKER_01]: I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again.

[01:15:30] [SPEAKER_01]: So I guess the loophole here is that it is sacrifice, but it's actually God's sacrifice, not human sacrifice, because God is sacrificing himself as a human and as God.

[01:15:43] [SPEAKER_03]: And my Lamb of God thing I thought was clever for coming up with on the spot.

[01:15:46] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[01:15:46] [SPEAKER_03]: And that.

[01:15:47] [SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, it's interesting.

[01:15:49] [SPEAKER_03]: But I also never looked at it.

[01:15:50] [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I guess it is a sacrifice, but I do think they have the out of also just blaming the Romans.

[01:15:54] [SPEAKER_03]: Because it's not a human sacrifice.

[01:15:56] [SPEAKER_03]: It's just the death penalty is punishment for a crime on their in their books.

[01:16:01] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:16:01] [SPEAKER_01]: If you ask me, I think really what's going on here is that I think the Christians looked at all the sacrificial bloodlust going on around them.

[01:16:09] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think they were like, hey, this works like people like this.

[01:16:13] [SPEAKER_01]: And they probably noticed or knew or intuited or whatever that it like enforced social structures and enforced those hierarchies.

[01:16:21] [SPEAKER_01]: And to me, it's kind of like they just went like, what if we just like did one more?

[01:16:26] [SPEAKER_01]: And then we said, that's it.

[01:16:28] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, like this guy's going down and then he counts forever.

[01:16:33] [SPEAKER_01]: He's a no backsies.

[01:16:36] [SPEAKER_01]: This is the last one in.

[01:16:36] [SPEAKER_01]: This is the last one in.

[01:16:38] [SPEAKER_01]: And here's this, he's also God.

[01:16:41] [SPEAKER_01]: So it's fine.

[01:16:42] [SPEAKER_01]: Don't worry about it.

[01:16:43] [SPEAKER_01]: Don't worry about it.

[01:16:43] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I also think that the phrasing that it has to be an infinite sacrifice is like they hate sacrifice, but they also want this sacrifice to go on forever.

[01:16:53] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[01:16:54] [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, that's how you read it, though.

[01:16:56] [SPEAKER_03]: It could be an infinite sacrifice could also mean the last sacrifice.

[01:16:59] [SPEAKER_03]: This sacrifice will do for the remainder of sacrifices that were on the ledger.

[01:17:04] [SPEAKER_03]: That could also be how you look at infinite sacrifice, which is this sacrifice will stand in for all other future sacrifices that other people would have deemed necessary.

[01:17:14] [SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[01:17:14] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:17:15] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, and I think that's basically the logic of it from a cultural standpoint.

[01:17:20] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, but now you're getting it from me.

[01:17:21] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, and that means so much more.

[01:17:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.

[01:17:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it should.

[01:17:24] [SPEAKER_01]: It means so much more.

[01:17:25] [SPEAKER_01]: It should.

[01:17:25] [SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, who wants to end the episode talking about theology?

[01:17:28] [SPEAKER_01]: I think we can squeeze in one more horrific blood and gut sacrifice before we decide where human sacrifice goes on the fear tier.

[01:17:40] [SPEAKER_01]: We can go from the divine to the need of a disclaimer.

[01:17:43] [SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

[01:17:44] [SPEAKER_01]: So, Mr. Disclaimer, if you want to step in here and let the people know, stunt on them.

[01:17:50] [SPEAKER_01]: Let them know what they're in for.

[01:17:52] [SPEAKER_06]: Disclaimer.

[01:17:53] [SPEAKER_06]: The following story occasionally features graphic descriptions of what Ed calls how did you think this was a good idea type of violence.

[01:18:01] [SPEAKER_01]: This sacrifice comes to us published in volume 28 of American Anthropologist, which I have a scan of it from JSTOR.

[01:18:11] [SPEAKER_01]: It's noted as a new series, I guess, because there wasn't a lot of anthropology going on in America maybe before.

[01:18:17] [SPEAKER_03]: Well, volume 28.

[01:18:18] [SPEAKER_03]: What was the volumes?

[01:18:19] [SPEAKER_03]: Is it monthly?

[01:18:20] [SPEAKER_03]: Yearly?

[01:18:20] [SPEAKER_01]: It seems like they were quarterly because this one's for July, September.

[01:18:24] [SPEAKER_03]: Okay.

[01:18:24] [SPEAKER_03]: So, 28.

[01:18:25] [SPEAKER_03]: It's a pretty new one to their run.

[01:18:27] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[01:18:27] [SPEAKER_03]: What year is this?

[01:18:28] [SPEAKER_01]: This is July to September 1926.

[01:18:31] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, wow.

[01:18:32] [SPEAKER_01]: That's older.

[01:18:32] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:18:33] [SPEAKER_01]: And so, this is a description of a Native American sacrifice.

[01:18:38] [SPEAKER_01]: 1928?

[01:18:38] [SPEAKER_01]: Is there some words we're going to have to fucking change?

[01:18:40] [SPEAKER_01]: No.

[01:18:42] [SPEAKER_01]: No, no, no.

[01:18:44] [SPEAKER_01]: These were anthropologists.

[01:18:46] [SPEAKER_01]: I think these are people that probably, even at the time, were much more...

[01:18:49] [SPEAKER_03]: They understood what the situation...

[01:18:51] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[01:18:51] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:18:52] [SPEAKER_01]: Although, there is, I believe, a photo of this online, because the last of these had occurred

[01:18:58] [SPEAKER_01]: in, I think, like, 18...

[01:19:00] [SPEAKER_01]: In the 1860s or the 1880s.

[01:19:03] [SPEAKER_01]: So, we would have had a camera.

[01:19:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:19:04] [SPEAKER_01]: And there's a photo of one of these sacrifices.

[01:19:08] [SPEAKER_03]: I hope it was after they died, because you have to hold still for so long for those photos

[01:19:12] [SPEAKER_03]: to fucking process.

[01:19:13] [SPEAKER_03]: They could only do it after they died.

[01:19:15] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[01:19:15] [SPEAKER_01]: That's probably how they started testing the film.

[01:19:17] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, you see this blur?

[01:19:19] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:19:19] [SPEAKER_01]: That was the guy who was getting killed.

[01:19:20] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:19:21] [SPEAKER_01]: So, this is called The Origin of the Skitty Pawnee Sacrifice to the Morning Star by Ralph Linton.

[01:19:28] [SPEAKER_01]: It says,

[01:19:29] [SPEAKER_01]: The skitty pawnee sacrifice of a captive girl to the Morning Star has probably aroused more

[01:19:35] [SPEAKER_01]: popular interest than any other purely tribal Indian ceremony except the Hopi snake dance.

[01:19:40] [SPEAKER_03]: Okay.

[01:19:40] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[01:19:41] [SPEAKER_03]: So, this is...

[01:19:41] [SPEAKER_03]: That's really funny to me.

[01:19:42] [SPEAKER_03]: For some reason.

[01:19:43] [SPEAKER_03]: It's just funny to me because there's an idea of this is the most popular thing that I've

[01:19:49] [SPEAKER_03]: never heard of in my life.

[01:19:50] [SPEAKER_03]: But according to this magazine, this thing was like, I mean, obviously, it's no this other

[01:19:55] [SPEAKER_03]: thing that we all know.

[01:19:57] [SPEAKER_03]: Right.

[01:19:57] [SPEAKER_03]: Like, this is the lesser known story.

[01:20:00] [SPEAKER_01]: I think I've heard of the Hopi snake dance.

[01:20:02] [SPEAKER_01]: That certainly has, I feel like, persisted through history a lot more strongly than the

[01:20:07] [SPEAKER_01]: skitty pawnee sacrifice to the Morning Star.

[01:20:10] [SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to say right now, these are the first I've ever heard any of these words.

[01:20:12] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to bring it back, though, right now.

[01:20:14] [SPEAKER_01]: This article says,

[01:20:15] [SPEAKER_01]: It's been described a number of times and it seems unnecessary to do more than summarize

[01:20:20] [SPEAKER_01]: its most important features here.

[01:20:22] [SPEAKER_01]: The sacrifice was performed...

[01:20:24] [SPEAKER_01]: And also just say, I read that and thought,

[01:20:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Nah, we're not going to get much out of this article.

[01:20:28] [SPEAKER_01]: It then goes on and becomes like a terrifier sequel by the end of this thing.

[01:20:35] [SPEAKER_01]: The cliff notes by their own admission.

[01:20:38] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:20:38] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:20:39] [SPEAKER_01]: The sacrifice was performed only in years when Mars was Morning Star and usually originated

[01:20:44] [SPEAKER_01]: in a dream in which the Morning Star appeared to some man and directed him to capture a suitable

[01:20:50] [SPEAKER_01]: victim.

[01:20:51] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh my God.

[01:20:51] [SPEAKER_01]: So the language here already, it appears to some guy and directs him to capture a suitable

[01:20:58] [SPEAKER_03]: victim.

[01:20:58] [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it's giving serial killer.

[01:21:01] [SPEAKER_03]: It is.

[01:21:02] [SPEAKER_03]: But also, isn't Morning Star one of the names for the devil?

[01:21:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Devil, yes.

[01:21:06] [SPEAKER_03]: Interesting.

[01:21:06] [SPEAKER_03]: Yes.

[01:21:07] [SPEAKER_01]: The dreamer went to the keeper of the Morning Star bundle and received from him the warrior's

[01:21:12] [SPEAKER_01]: costume kept in it.

[01:21:14] [SPEAKER_01]: Zelda-ass mission.

[01:21:15] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, but I was going to say, open this trunk.

[01:21:17] [SPEAKER_01]: He then set out, accompanied by volunteers, and made a night attack upon an enemy village.

[01:21:23] [SPEAKER_01]: As soon as a girl of suitable age, young, was captured, the attack ceased and the war

[01:21:29] [SPEAKER_01]: party returned.

[01:21:29] [SPEAKER_01]: Don't bring back anyone who can't fit in the box we got this outfit out of.

[01:21:33] [SPEAKER_01]: The girl was dedicated to the Morning Star at the moment of her capture and was given

[01:21:37] [SPEAKER_01]: into the care of the leader of the party who, on its return, turned her over to the chief

[01:21:42] [SPEAKER_01]: of the Morning Star village.

[01:21:44] [SPEAKER_01]: During the time preceding the sacrifice, she was treated with kindness and respect, but

[01:21:49] [SPEAKER_01]: it was forbidden to give her any article of clothing.

[01:21:51] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh my God.

[01:21:52] [SPEAKER_01]: Which sounds like the opposite of being treated with kindness and respect.

[01:21:56] [SPEAKER_03]: She's like, hey, can I get up just in anything?

[01:21:58] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:21:58] [SPEAKER_01]: No, no, no, no.

[01:21:59] [SPEAKER_01]: Only the leader of the war party and the chief of the Morning Star village could touch

[01:22:03] [SPEAKER_01]: her after her dedication.

[01:22:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Don't like that there's two people allowed to touch.

[01:22:06] [SPEAKER_01]: A man who broke this rule was thought to have offered himself in her place, and if he died

[01:22:11] [SPEAKER_01]: before the time of the sacrifice, she would be released.

[01:22:14] [SPEAKER_01]: Wait, wait.

[01:22:14] [SPEAKER_01]: I thought it would be replacement.

[01:22:17] [SPEAKER_03]: Not like, I mean, just outlive her sacrifice and you're fine?

[01:22:20] [SPEAKER_03]: No.

[01:22:21] [SPEAKER_01]: That's a bullshit rule.

[01:22:22] [SPEAKER_01]: If you touch her, if you're a man and you touch her, you have to take her place.

[01:22:28] [SPEAKER_01]: No.

[01:22:28] [SPEAKER_01]: That's not what you said.

[01:22:29] [SPEAKER_01]: But if you die before the time of the sacrifice, then she's released.

[01:22:35] [SPEAKER_04]: But if you touch her and now you're taking her place, how is she not just released?

[01:22:39] [SPEAKER_04]: You've taken her place.

[01:22:41] [SPEAKER_04]: That's what I'm saying.

[01:22:42] [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, I see.

[01:22:43] [SPEAKER_04]: Well, I think, but I think what they're saying-

[01:22:44] [SPEAKER_04]: The idea that someone's going to die just in the next day, it's a bullshit rule.

[01:22:48] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:22:49] [SPEAKER_01]: I guess it is kind of a bullshit rule.

[01:22:51] [SPEAKER_01]: All right.

[01:22:52] [SPEAKER_01]: Bullshit rule.

[01:22:53] [SPEAKER_01]: We call foul on this.

[01:22:54] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you pieces of shit.

[01:22:56] [SPEAKER_01]: The ceremonies preceding the sacrifice occupied four days, the victim being killed on the

[01:23:01] [SPEAKER_01]: morning of the 5th.

[01:23:02] [SPEAKER_01]: The rites performed during the first three days are not fully known, but apparently consisted

[01:23:06] [SPEAKER_01]: in the singing of songs relating the exploits of the Morningstar and in the offering of

[01:23:11] [SPEAKER_01]: smoke and dried meat to the Morningstar bundle.

[01:23:14] [SPEAKER_01]: At the beginning of the ceremony, the girl was purified with smoke, painted red, and dressed

[01:23:19] [SPEAKER_01]: in a black costume, which was kept in the Morningstar bundle between sacrifices.

[01:23:23] [SPEAKER_01]: At least she got some clothes.

[01:23:25] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:23:25] [SPEAKER_01]: Her captor was also dressed in a costume from this bundle.

[01:23:28] [SPEAKER_01]: And throughout the ceremony, the two seemed to have personified respectively the evening

[01:23:33] [SPEAKER_01]: and morning stars.

[01:23:34] [SPEAKER_01]: This fucking bundle, by the way.

[01:23:35] [SPEAKER_01]: Is it like a shed?

[01:23:37] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, basically-

[01:23:37] [SPEAKER_01]: It keeps getting bigger and bigger in my mind.

[01:23:38] [SPEAKER_01]: Basically, this sounds like the Always Sunny episode with the Nightman and the Dayman, except

[01:23:44] [SPEAKER_01]: they tear Charlie open at the end of something.

[01:23:48] [SPEAKER_01]: A fire of four logs laid with their points together and their ends extending towards the

[01:23:52] [SPEAKER_01]: four directions was kept burning during the four days.

[01:23:55] [SPEAKER_01]: About sunset on the fourth day, the spectators were excluded from the lodge while the officiating

[01:24:00] [SPEAKER_01]: priest drew four circles on the floor, one for each of the four world quarters.

[01:24:04] [SPEAKER_01]: They were then readmitted and the priest sang a song descriptive of the journey of the Morningstar

[01:24:10] [SPEAKER_01]: in search of the Eveningstar, while one of the priests danced about the lodge with a

[01:24:14] [SPEAKER_01]: war club and obliterated the circles.

[01:24:17] [SPEAKER_01]: The priest then began to sing a long series of songs believed to have been given by the

[01:24:22] [SPEAKER_01]: Eveningstar.

[01:24:23] [SPEAKER_01]: As each song was finished, a tally stick taken from a bunch kept in the Morningstar bundle

[01:24:28] [SPEAKER_01]: was laid down.

[01:24:29] [SPEAKER_01]: There it is.

[01:24:30] [SPEAKER_01]: Out of Felix's bag came yet another thing.

[01:24:32] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:24:32] [SPEAKER_01]: Dr. G.A. Dorsey concludes that the idea underlying this part of the ritual was that the girl

[01:24:39] [SPEAKER_01]: at first belonged to the world of human affairs, but that as each song was sung, she became

[01:24:45] [SPEAKER_01]: farther removed from it until when the last tally was laid down, she had been won from

[01:24:50] [SPEAKER_01]: the people like a stake in a game and belonged to the supernatural powers.

[01:24:54] [SPEAKER_01]: When the songs were finished, one of the priests undressed the girl, painted the right half of

[01:24:59] [SPEAKER_01]: her body red and the left half black.

[01:25:02] [SPEAKER_03]: Her body was already painted red, so I guess you're just painting the left half black.

[01:25:06] [SPEAKER_03]: Let's see why you want to waste fucking paint.

[01:25:08] [SPEAKER_03]: Wash her off.

[01:25:08] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I don't know.

[01:25:10] [SPEAKER_03]: She didn't get to keep those clothes long though, huh?

[01:25:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, no, no, no.

[01:25:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Then once she's repainted, then they redress her.

[01:25:15] [SPEAKER_01]: The whole assembly then set out for the place of sacrifice.

[01:25:19] [SPEAKER_01]: At the place of sacrifice, a scaffold had been erected on the afternoon of the fourth day.

[01:25:23] [SPEAKER_01]: The selection of the site, cutting of the timber for scaffold, being attended by special ceremonies.

[01:25:29] [SPEAKER_01]: The scaffold consisted of two uprights and five cross pieces, four below and one above.

[01:25:34] [SPEAKER_01]: The two uprights symbolized night and day, the four lower bars, the four directions, and

[01:25:40] [SPEAKER_01]: the upper bar, the sky.

[01:25:41] [SPEAKER_01]: Below the scaffold was a pit lined with white feathers, which symbolized the evening star's

[01:25:46] [SPEAKER_01]: garden in the west, the source of all animal and plant life.

[01:25:49] [SPEAKER_01]: Two men led the girl from the lodge to the scaffold by thongs fastened around her wrists.

[01:25:55] [SPEAKER_01]: She was kept in ignorance of her fate as long as possible, and it was thought an especially

[01:26:00] [SPEAKER_01]: good omen if she mounted the scaffold willingly.

[01:26:03] [SPEAKER_01]: So this is cruel as shit.

[01:26:06] [SPEAKER_01]: Although, at this point, you gotta be wondering if something's up.

[01:26:10] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's been four days, they're painting you and repainting you.

[01:26:14] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[01:26:15] [SPEAKER_03]: They're doing like everyone who's cutting down a tree has a whole song and dance about it.

[01:26:19] [SPEAKER_03]: And every one of those songs, if you're listening, is like, we're doing this because we're killing

[01:26:23] [SPEAKER_03]: you.

[01:26:24] [SPEAKER_01]: Like, this definitely.

[01:26:25] [SPEAKER_01]: The men leading her removed her clothing and tied her hands to the upper bar and her feet

[01:26:30] [SPEAKER_01]: to the highest of the four lower bars.

[01:26:32] [SPEAKER_01]: The procession was timed so that she would be left alone on the scaffold at the moment

[01:26:36] [SPEAKER_01]: the morning star rose.

[01:26:38] [SPEAKER_01]: When the morning star appeared, two men came from the east with flaming brands and touched

[01:26:42] [SPEAKER_01]: her lightly in the armpits and groins.

[01:26:45] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, I don't think any amount of light or not light you're feeling a brand.

[01:26:49] [SPEAKER_01]: Four other men then touched her with war clubs.

[01:26:52] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm sorry.

[01:26:52] [SPEAKER_03]: We're not supposed to be touching this.

[01:26:53] [SPEAKER_01]: There are two fucking people who are allowed to touch.

[01:26:56] [SPEAKER_01]: But now the touching can happen because they're getting ready to kill it.

[01:27:01] [SPEAKER_01]: This is a series of bullshit rules.

[01:27:01] [SPEAKER_01]: Four other men then touched her with war clubs.

[01:27:04] [SPEAKER_01]: The man who had captured her then ran forward with the bow from the skull bundle.

[01:27:09] [SPEAKER_01]: It's a separate bundle.

[01:27:10] [SPEAKER_01]: It's a separate bundle that I think is being mentioned for the first time.

[01:27:13] [SPEAKER_01]: I've never heard skull bundle and I've been keeping track of all bundles.

[01:27:15] [SPEAKER_01]: You need like the playthrough guide like for Resident Evil that you get at like Sam Goody

[01:27:21] [SPEAKER_01]: or whatever.

[01:27:21] [SPEAKER_01]: You need that for this to understand.

[01:27:23] [SPEAKER_01]: To find out how many typewriter spools we need for her.

[01:27:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Can you keep in the skull bundle?

[01:27:27] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:27:28] [SPEAKER_01]: The man who had captured her then ran forward with the bow from the skull bundle and a

[01:27:32] [SPEAKER_01]: sacred arrow and shot her through the heart while another man struck her on the head

[01:27:36] [SPEAKER_01]: with the war club from the morning star bundle.

[01:27:38] [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, so these were before this we had brands and clubs that were simply touching her.

[01:27:42] [SPEAKER_03]: We don't know the level of impact.

[01:27:44] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you're jabbing her in the groin with a flaming brand.

[01:27:48] [SPEAKER_01]: Why didn't you just say that?

[01:27:50] [SPEAKER_01]: I did say it.

[01:27:51] [SPEAKER_03]: We just said, yeah.

[01:27:52] [SPEAKER_01]: They make it sound nice, but...

[01:27:54] [SPEAKER_01]: No, yeah.

[01:27:54] [SPEAKER_01]: Not nice, but it's a gentle wording.

[01:27:57] [SPEAKER_01]: This is a quarterly periodical, so...

[01:28:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so this description's got to last you another couple months.

[01:28:03] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:28:05] [SPEAKER_01]: The officiating priest then opened her breast with a flint knife and smeared his face with

[01:28:10] [SPEAKER_01]: the blood while her captor caught the falling blood on dried meat.

[01:28:14] [SPEAKER_01]: All the male members of the tribe then pressed forward and shot arrows into her body.

[01:28:19] [SPEAKER_01]: They then circled the scaffold four times and dispersed.

[01:28:23] [SPEAKER_01]: The priests remained.

[01:28:24] [SPEAKER_01]: One of them pulled out the arrows and laid them in four piles about the scaffold.

[01:28:28] [SPEAKER_01]: The body was taken down and laid on the ground with the head to the east, and the blood-soaked

[01:28:33] [SPEAKER_01]: meat was burned under the scaffolding as an offering to all the gods.

[01:28:38] [SPEAKER_01]: Finally, songs were sung describing the eating of the body by various animals and its final

[01:28:43] [SPEAKER_01]: turning into earth.

[01:28:44] [SPEAKER_01]: This is awful.

[01:28:45] [SPEAKER_03]: What they're doing is awful, and I can absolutely see how they would use this story against

[01:28:49] [SPEAKER_03]: them when they've colonized this country.

[01:28:52] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[01:28:52] [SPEAKER_03]: But I will also say two things.

[01:28:55] [SPEAKER_03]: One, it's nice that they're donating.

[01:28:56] [SPEAKER_03]: Donating.

[01:28:57] [SPEAKER_03]: It's nice that they're sacrificing this person to all the gods.

[01:29:01] [SPEAKER_03]: It's not just like, I'm just using your heart for one god.

[01:29:04] [SPEAKER_03]: You know what I mean?

[01:29:05] [SPEAKER_03]: These are people who are famously used all the buffalo.

[01:29:07] [SPEAKER_03]: And then the other thing is, this person was stolen from another tribe.

[01:29:12] [SPEAKER_03]: Because a guy had a dream about Mars.

[01:29:15] [SPEAKER_03]: Yes.

[01:29:16] [SPEAKER_03]: Which, the only other person we could think of with a dream about Mars is Elon Musk.

[01:29:21] [SPEAKER_03]: But, so who knows what the fuck he's gonna do to make some rockets now.

[01:29:24] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[01:29:24] [SPEAKER_03]: Based on this material.

[01:29:25] [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, God.

[01:29:26] [SPEAKER_03]: That said, words gotta get back of what happened to this person from your tribe.

[01:29:30] [SPEAKER_03]: So I can't imagine this helped with diplomacy.

[01:29:33] [SPEAKER_03]: Like, you must have another tribe, you know what I mean?

[01:29:36] [SPEAKER_03]: Being like, we're gonna tear you to the ground for what we heard you just did to one of our

[01:29:40] [SPEAKER_03]: people.

[01:29:40] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, I think what's interesting too is that when I was reading about this particular

[01:29:45] [SPEAKER_01]: sacrifice.

[01:29:46] [SPEAKER_01]: It's just this one tribe did.

[01:29:48] [SPEAKER_01]: It's just this one tribe, yeah.

[01:29:50] [SPEAKER_01]: And, I mean, other tribes did do human sacrifice, but this particular one was only the Skiddy Pawnee.

[01:29:58] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:29:58] [SPEAKER_03]: Not a tribe I'm really familiar with.

[01:30:00] [SPEAKER_03]: No, although it sounds a little bit like the Skibitty Pawnee.

[01:30:03] [SPEAKER_03]: Which is a mix of Parks and Rec and Skibitty Toilet.

[01:30:07] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[01:30:07] [SPEAKER_03]: So I guess in a lot of ways they came back in pop culture, but I don't think there's any

[01:30:11] [SPEAKER_03]: casinos these guys have now.

[01:30:13] [SPEAKER_03]: I feel like they probably got eradicated by like other tribes who were sick and tired

[01:30:16] [SPEAKER_03]: of their members being stolen for this insane, I don't want to use any fucking words that

[01:30:22] [SPEAKER_03]: like vilify.

[01:30:22] [SPEAKER_03]: No, but it's like insanely brutal way of doing things.

[01:30:26] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[01:30:27] [SPEAKER_03]: There's gotta be a few people in the fucking Skiddy Pawnee or whatever who are like,

[01:30:31] [SPEAKER_03]: oh, don't love this day when it comes around.

[01:30:33] [SPEAKER_03]: Skiddy, Skiddy, Skiddy Pawnee, Skiddy Pawnee.

[01:30:36] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[01:30:36] [SPEAKER_03]: There's gotta be at least one or two people who are like, I'm gonna leave this fucking

[01:30:39] [SPEAKER_03]: tribe.

[01:30:40] [SPEAKER_03]: This sucks.

[01:30:40] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:30:41] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, well, the social cohesion element though.

[01:30:43] [SPEAKER_01]: That's true.

[01:30:44] [SPEAKER_01]: Everyone gets an arrow.

[01:30:45] [SPEAKER_01]: Once you're in, you're in.

[01:30:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:30:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Everyone gets an arrow.

[01:30:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Everyone becomes...

[01:30:48] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I do think it's interesting that a lot of these sacrifices that we've talked

[01:30:51] [SPEAKER_01]: about on this episode, there does seem to be a little bit of a double standard at play

[01:30:56] [SPEAKER_01]: in most of them, even the willing ones where like, it is kind of acknowledged that you probably

[01:31:03] [SPEAKER_01]: didn't really want to be doing this.

[01:31:05] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, like there weren't a lot of people who it seems like it was still a, you had to

[01:31:09] [SPEAKER_01]: be chosen.

[01:31:10] [SPEAKER_01]: You had to be given up.

[01:31:12] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I guess that's why it's a sacrifice.

[01:31:13] [SPEAKER_01]: Like, it can't just be completely positive.

[01:31:17] [SPEAKER_01]: But I think that's important to note when you talk about like willing sacrifices that,

[01:31:21] [SPEAKER_01]: you know, it's not like they were going into these situations, I would imagine, fearless

[01:31:26] [SPEAKER_01]: or thrilled.

[01:31:28] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:31:28] [SPEAKER_01]: It was still a sacrifice.

[01:31:30] [SPEAKER_01]: It was like, oh, it'll be for the greater good.

[01:31:32] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:31:33] [SPEAKER_03]: At the absolute best case scenario in terms of the mental view of the sacrificee, best case

[01:31:41] [SPEAKER_03]: scenario is they're going into this saying, this is my duty as a good citizen.

[01:31:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:31:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:31:47] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't think they were necessarily.

[01:31:49] [SPEAKER_03]: I don't think that erases their fears and issues with it.

[01:31:52] [SPEAKER_01]: No, no.

[01:31:53] [SPEAKER_01]: And most of these societies did eventually evolve out of it again, either because they were

[01:31:58] [SPEAKER_01]: just killing off too many important people or because, you know, there was some recognition

[01:32:03] [SPEAKER_01]: of like, this seems pretty awful.

[01:32:05] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, at some point it was registering with people that it wasn't the best way to

[01:32:11] [SPEAKER_01]: be operating your society.

[01:32:13] [SPEAKER_01]: But again, I do think it's interesting that we have, you know, we've like reverse engineered

[01:32:19] [SPEAKER_01]: from human sacrifice ways that are akin to human sacrifice in different ways of keeping

[01:32:26] [SPEAKER_01]: society in line now.

[01:32:28] [SPEAKER_01]: It's just apps now, dude.

[01:32:29] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I mean, the level of, you know, we've built these societies that there's a certain

[01:32:36] [SPEAKER_01]: amount of unavoidable death built into the upkeep of our preferred lifestyles.

[01:32:44] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:32:44] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, and it's actually a movie that I just wrote that is a very, hopefully very fun

[01:32:50] [SPEAKER_01]: movie that will actually maybe seeing the light of day is kind of about how, you know, there's

[01:32:56] [SPEAKER_01]: no version of modern life where at the end of the day, you aren't exploiting, exploiting

[01:33:01] [SPEAKER_01]: and literally sacrificing people.

[01:33:05] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, what else is it?

[01:33:06] [SPEAKER_01]: The kids who die digging up minerals for our phones.

[01:33:10] [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it's not day to day.

[01:33:12] [SPEAKER_03]: That's not like it's not part of one stupid thing where it's like, we're going to host

[01:33:16] [SPEAKER_03]: the World Cup in the way to do this is to like take everyone's passports, work them

[01:33:20] [SPEAKER_03]: to death to make fucking stadiums.

[01:33:22] [SPEAKER_03]: We're never going to use again in three years.

[01:33:24] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[01:33:25] [SPEAKER_01]: It's literally just, you know, we're not saying, hey, you need to do this so that the gods are

[01:33:31] [SPEAKER_01]: happy.

[01:33:31] [SPEAKER_01]: But we are saying, hey, you need to do this so that the system keeps going.

[01:33:36] [SPEAKER_03]: It's a little bit like that Neil Gaiman, American Gods type of thing where it's like there used

[01:33:40] [SPEAKER_03]: to be gods like Odin and stuff.

[01:33:42] [SPEAKER_03]: And now the gods are like money and knowledge.

[01:33:46] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[01:33:46] [SPEAKER_03]: And whatever.

[01:33:47] [SPEAKER_03]: And it was like, we're still sacrificing to the gods and sacrificing to the gods of commerce

[01:33:51] [SPEAKER_03]: by putting these kids in these nickel mines.

[01:33:54] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, it really, it really is.

[01:33:56] [SPEAKER_01]: And so I think it's, you know, and at the end of the day, even though to just to continue

[01:34:00] [SPEAKER_01]: with the same example, even though the mining of those minerals for our phones isn't literally

[01:34:06] [SPEAKER_01]: used to enforce social hierarchies.

[01:34:08] [SPEAKER_01]: And that's not the purpose of why those minerals are being mined.

[01:34:13] [SPEAKER_01]: At the end of the day, the thing that keeps people working hard and trying to get ahead

[01:34:17] [SPEAKER_01]: and in countries where you can do that, you know, is because you don't want to fall down

[01:34:23] [SPEAKER_01]: the ladder to a place where you may end up having to do something dangerous to keep the

[01:34:28] [SPEAKER_01]: system moving.

[01:34:29] [SPEAKER_01]: Don't be a screenwriter.

[01:34:30] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:34:31] [SPEAKER_03]: You will tumble back down into those fucking wells so quickly.

[01:34:34] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[01:34:35] [SPEAKER_01]: So, Ed, I guess as we get to the end of this episode here, it is time to place human sacrifice

[01:34:40] [SPEAKER_01]: on the fear tier.

[01:34:41] [SPEAKER_01]: And I know this episode was very history heavy.

[01:34:44] [SPEAKER_01]: Which is fine with me.

[01:34:45] [SPEAKER_01]: I love learning.

[01:34:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Like I said, there's so much to this topic.

[01:34:49] [SPEAKER_01]: And even these examples, a lot of these are sort of just like the ones that I found interesting

[01:34:54] [SPEAKER_01]: as I was reading about them.

[01:34:55] [SPEAKER_01]: But there's dozens of other kinds and, you know.

[01:34:58] [SPEAKER_01]: And Nia Jones and movies and cultural uses of it.

[01:35:02] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:35:03] [SPEAKER_01]: So we've barely scraped the surface, but I do think we still need to put human sacrifice

[01:35:07] [SPEAKER_01]: on the fear tier.

[01:35:08] [SPEAKER_01]: So what are you thinking?

[01:35:10] [SPEAKER_03]: I'm thinking pretty low.

[01:35:11] [SPEAKER_03]: I'm not attractive or deformed enough for a lot of these.

[01:35:15] [SPEAKER_01]: We're too average to be bog bound.

[01:35:18] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:35:18] [SPEAKER_03]: Or hog tied.

[01:35:20] [SPEAKER_03]: Exactly.

[01:35:21] [SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, I would put it as like a two in being like most dangerous game or just regular run

[01:35:28] [SPEAKER_03]: of the mill human sacrificed.

[01:35:29] [SPEAKER_03]: But I would put it as like a five on my fear tier worry scale.

[01:35:34] [SPEAKER_03]: Fuck it.

[01:35:34] [SPEAKER_03]: Like a seven on my fear tier worry scale that it's out there in its old style way still.

[01:35:41] [SPEAKER_03]: And so I would say for me personally, I don't see myself getting snatched up.

[01:35:46] [SPEAKER_03]: Or as I said in the last episode, like getting hooded or whatever the fuck it was.

[01:35:49] [SPEAKER_03]: Or getting sacked.

[01:35:50] [SPEAKER_03]: I don't see myself getting snatched up.

[01:35:52] [SPEAKER_03]: But I do feel like the old ways are probably alive places.

[01:35:57] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:35:57] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, Midsommar is a great horror movie that examines a society based around sacrifice.

[01:36:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Do you remember the lottery?

[01:36:05] [SPEAKER_01]: That like short story?

[01:36:06] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[01:36:07] [SPEAKER_03]: That's a great sacrifice story.

[01:36:08] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:36:09] [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, that's probably the premier modern sacrifice story, the lottery.

[01:36:14] [SPEAKER_03]: They made a sliders episode that's based on the lottery.

[01:36:19] [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, did they?

[01:36:19] [SPEAKER_03]: That's excellent.

[01:36:20] [SPEAKER_03]: And it's one of the places they slide into the ATMs are free.

[01:36:25] [SPEAKER_03]: Like anyone can just take out money.

[01:36:27] [SPEAKER_03]: So they're just like, you know, the sliders just slid in and don't understand the culture.

[01:36:31] [SPEAKER_03]: They're just like, fucking money's free.

[01:36:33] [SPEAKER_03]: I'm taking all this money.

[01:36:35] [SPEAKER_03]: And they don't understand that.

[01:36:37] [SPEAKER_03]: Like, why is everyone poor here?

[01:36:38] [SPEAKER_03]: Just fucking money's free.

[01:36:40] [SPEAKER_03]: And they don't understand that the more money you take out is the more times your name is put in the lottery.

[01:36:45] [SPEAKER_03]: Oh.

[01:36:45] [SPEAKER_03]: Oh.

[01:36:46] [SPEAKER_03]: And so they are obviously kind of fucked at the end of the episode because they have more tickets in the game.

[01:36:51] [SPEAKER_03]: They got to slide the fuck out of there.

[01:36:52] [SPEAKER_03]: But it is interesting to see, like, they don't take a moment to really stop and go, like, why is everyone poor if money's free?

[01:36:58] [SPEAKER_03]: Right.

[01:36:58] [SPEAKER_03]: Because everyone knows, like, you take out exactly what you need because you don't want to end up in the lottery where you're killed.

[01:37:04] [SPEAKER_03]: Right.

[01:37:04] [SPEAKER_03]: Right.

[01:37:04] [SPEAKER_03]: Right.

[01:37:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Do you remember the show Wishbone?

[01:37:06] [SPEAKER_01]: With the dog?

[01:37:07] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:37:08] [SPEAKER_01]: Sort of.

[01:37:08] [SPEAKER_01]: They should have had him read the lottery.

[01:37:10] [SPEAKER_05]: They should have done it with him.

[01:37:12] [SPEAKER_05]: Why was he?

[01:37:13] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, is that what it's about?

[01:37:15] [SPEAKER_03]: Well, Wishbone, they put the dog in the stories.

[01:37:18] [SPEAKER_03]: So.

[01:37:18] [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, wow.

[01:37:19] [SPEAKER_03]: So, yeah, that's I don't remember Wishbone enough to remember.

[01:37:22] [SPEAKER_03]: He, like, axed them out.

[01:37:23] [SPEAKER_03]: Got you.

[01:37:24] [SPEAKER_03]: Fuck.

[01:37:24] [SPEAKER_03]: That would have been sad.

[01:37:26] [SPEAKER_03]: So, anyway, where is it on the fear tier for you?

[01:37:29] [SPEAKER_03]: Now that you've brought up putting a dog through a thresher?

[01:37:32] [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know what the fuck you were just talking about.

[01:37:33] [SPEAKER_03]: But.

[01:37:34] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I would put it.

[01:37:35] [SPEAKER_01]: I would guess I would put it in a two.

[01:37:37] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, a movie like Midsommar does bring it into a modern context and makes me think

[01:37:41] [SPEAKER_01]: about the places where it might still be happening in some way.

[01:37:44] [SPEAKER_01]: And, of course, the, you know, slightly askew modern version of sacrifice is something

[01:37:50] [SPEAKER_01]: that, you know, our society faces on a daily basis.

[01:37:54] [SPEAKER_01]: But as far as, like, personally, the idea of getting snatched up and having my skull added

[01:38:01] [SPEAKER_01]: to the wall is pretty low.

[01:38:03] [SPEAKER_03]: Where, if you were to be snatched up, do you think it's for some sort of old god agriculture

[01:38:08] [SPEAKER_03]: thing or some sort of, like, Illuminati eyes wide shut party?

[01:38:13] [SPEAKER_01]: It's a good question.

[01:38:15] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, yeah, I guess it probably in this day and age, the old gods agricultural version

[01:38:23] [SPEAKER_01]: is probably less likely than some sort of, you know, the lizard people need to eat kind

[01:38:28] [SPEAKER_01]: of ritual.

[01:38:29] [SPEAKER_01]: Sure.

[01:38:29] [SPEAKER_01]: I guess I worry more about the Illuminati style sacrifice.

[01:38:35] [SPEAKER_01]: But again, it would have to be, I would find that it'd be so...

[01:38:39] [SPEAKER_01]: It'd be surprising they chose us.

[01:38:40] [SPEAKER_01]: I'd be surprised if they chose us.

[01:38:42] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't think I have anything in my...

[01:38:43] [SPEAKER_03]: To attend the party or be killed at the party.

[01:38:45] [SPEAKER_03]: I think we're off the invite list in every way.

[01:38:48] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I do.

[01:38:48] [SPEAKER_01]: I like the fact that you have pointed out that we are both too average to be chosen for sacrifice.

[01:38:54] [SPEAKER_01]: It's nice.

[01:38:54] [SPEAKER_01]: It is nice.

[01:38:55] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:38:56] [SPEAKER_01]: We can just sort of coast through life.

[01:38:58] [SPEAKER_01]: No one's swiping right on us in that sense.

[01:39:01] [SPEAKER_01]: In the knifing, in the put you on your back on the altar sense.

[01:39:05] [SPEAKER_01]: It's average privilege.

[01:39:06] [SPEAKER_01]: It's average.

[01:39:06] [SPEAKER_01]: It's average privilege.

[01:39:08] [SPEAKER_01]: So on that note, this has been the human sacrifice episode of Scared All the Time.

[01:39:13] [SPEAKER_03]: An interesting historical look at something that we're not afraid of today, but is very

[01:39:17] [SPEAKER_03]: scary.

[01:39:18] [SPEAKER_01]: And very associated with Halloween, by the way.

[01:39:20] [SPEAKER_01]: I guess the other reason I bring it up.

[01:39:22] [SPEAKER_01]: So there you have it.

[01:39:23] [SPEAKER_01]: I've been Ed.

[01:39:24] [SPEAKER_01]: I've been sacrificed.

[01:39:26] [SPEAKER_01]: No, that's it for us this week.

[01:39:29] [SPEAKER_01]: You know where to find us.

[01:39:30] [SPEAKER_01]: Patreon, Supercast, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.

[01:39:34] [SPEAKER_01]: Come at us.

[01:39:35] [SPEAKER_01]: And until then, this has been Scared All the Time.

[01:39:38] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm Chris Killari.

[01:39:39] [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm Ed Ficola.

[01:39:40] [SPEAKER_01]: And we will see you next week.

[01:39:42] [SPEAKER_01]: Bye.

[01:39:43] [SPEAKER_03]: Scared All the Time is co-produced by Chris Killari and Ed Ficola.

[01:39:47] [SPEAKER_03]: Written by Chris Killari.

[01:39:48] [SPEAKER_03]: Edited by Ed Ficola.

[01:39:50] [SPEAKER_03]: Additional support and keeper of sanity is Tess Feifel.

[01:39:53] [SPEAKER_03]: Our theme song is the track Scared by Perpetual Stew.

[01:39:57] [SPEAKER_03]: And Mr. Disclaimer is B***.

[01:39:59] [SPEAKER_03]: And just a reminder, you can now support the podcast on Patreon.

[01:40:02] [SPEAKER_03]: You can get all kinds of cool shit in return.

[01:40:04] [SPEAKER_03]: Depending on the tier you choose, we'll be offering everything from ad-free episodes,

[01:40:07] [SPEAKER_03]: producer credits, exclusive access, and exclusive merch.

[01:40:10] [SPEAKER_01]: So go sign up for our Patreon at ScaredAllTheTimePodcast.com.

[01:40:14] [SPEAKER_01]: Don't worry, all scaredy cats welcome.

[01:40:17] [SPEAKER_06]: No part of this show can be reproduced anywhere without permission.

[01:40:19] [SPEAKER_06]: Copyright Astonishing Legends Productions.

[01:40:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Good night.

[01:40:22] [SPEAKER_00]: We are in this together.

[01:40:24] [SPEAKER_00]: Together.

[01:40:24] [SPEAKER_00]: Together.

[01:40:25] Together.

[01:40:25] Together.