Ritual sacrifice's link to unequal societies

• Autores: Colin Barras
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 3068, 2016, pág. 10
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In traditional Austronesian cultures ritual human sacrifice was key to the emergence of inherited class systems, concludes a controversial new study. In this scenario, societies' elite carried out these killings to control, terrorize and impress the lower ranks. Joseph Watts and Russell Gray at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and colleagues browsed ethnographic data for evidence of past ritual killings in 93 traditional Austronesian cultures. They found that ritual sacrifice increased the rate at which societies with an aspirational hierarchical structure shifted to an inherited class system, and decreased the rate at which hierarchical societies moved to egalitarian ones