When Human Sacrifice Was Necessary

Human sacrifice happened most often during early state formation, when it’s important to establish a new authority structure.

The places where we have the strongest evidence of ritualized human sacrifice are:

• Early Chinese dynasties

• Early Incan Empire

• Early Hawaiian consolidation

• Early Mongol Empire

• Periods of sudden military expansion

Curiously, this mimics what James Frazer suggests in The Golden Bough.

You can check the data yourself, over at Seshat. What do you see?