Human sacrifice has played a gruesome but important role in ancient history, and thousands of years ago, in ancient China, it probably was used as a tool to solidify social hierarchies.
A team of scientists recently analysed a bronze-age tomb from the Qijia culture (2200BC-1600BC) located in Gansu province in northwest China, and theorised that human sacrifice had become a “culturally sanctioned mechanism” to establish group identity.
In their study published in late June in the book The Poetics of Violence in Afroeurasian Bioarchaeology, the team theorised that the person may have been sacrificed to honour the tomb’s inhabitants, suggesting the occupants were considered of higher social value than the victim.
Jenna Dittmar, a study author and assistant professor of Anatomical Sciences at Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine in the US, told the Post that this research helps scientists learn more about the social conditions under which sacrifice was performed and how it evolved over time.
“An important point that is highlighted in this research is that, even though the practice of human sacrifice was quite widespread throughout the prehistoric world, the reasons why people were sacrificed were highly variable,” she said.
While the scientists cannot be completely sure why the person was sacrificed, his body was treated poorly, with his limbs being purposely separated. He also was not buried with items, like pots, for the afterlife, suggesting “he was of a lower status in a symbolic hierarchy than the people buried properly inside the tomb”.
Another study author, Elizabeth Berger, from the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Riverside, told the Post that the victim could have been an enemy or “some other outsider”.
“Or, if he was from the same society as the other tomb occupants, maybe he was a criminal or had lost his social standing for some other reason,” she said.
Berger said that scientists from Fudan University in China are testing the skeleton’s DNA to determine whether people buried in similar ways were outsiders to this excavation site, named Mogou.
The scientists said the executioners killed the man by stabbing him twice in the back, below the shoulder blades and at the base of the neck, likely penetrating the spine twice.
The injuries also indicated that the man did not move after being stabbed the first time, indicating he was either lying down or kneeling while being supported by something.
The sacrifice and burial differed from other examples from China, where societies placed skulls in the foundation of temples or important buildings as a blessing to the new construction. Instead, the intimate nature of the Mogou killing pushed the team towards the idea that the execution was meant to subordinate the victim to the other people inside the tomb.
“Maybe the people who received the sacrifices were important in the community for some reason, maybe they had distinguished themselves in battle, or maybe they were leaders of some kind, but there is no direct evidence for it,” said Berger.
“Again, that’s why we lean more towards an explanation that it was outsiders and enemies who were sacrificed, not members of the same group.”
Study author Ivy Hui-yuan Yeh, an assistant professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, said human sacrifice emerged in China during prehistoric times. She said it peaked during the Shang dynasty (1600-1046BC) due to the creation of a slave society.
This period of human sacrifice in China was brutal, as excavated oracle bones suggest that at least 14,197 people were sacrificed in various Shang-era state rituals. Those recordings classified prisoners of war as being akin to livestock, a form of dehumanisation exemplified by human remains being co-buried alongside animals.
“Over time, as productivity increased and social structures evolved, human sacrifice began to decline during the Warring States period (475-221BC) and eventually largely disappeared after the Han dynasty (206BC-220), influenced by Confucian practices,” she told the Post.
She added that human sacrifice did re-emerge in China during the Jin (265-420) and Liao (907-1125) dynasties, persisting until the end of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). It was finally abolished during the Republic of China era (1912-1949) through legal reforms and social progress.
