Human sacrifice has always fascinated and repelled us in equal measure. From Abraham’s intended slaughter of his son Isaac to the tales of Druids burning victims inside a wicker man, the idea of ritualised killing has formed part of our cultural upbringing.
When Europeans began to explore the wider world, they brought back tales of human sacrifice on an epic scale — in the case of the Aztecs, of tens of thousands at a single temple dedication — but in recent years these have been decried as ethnic slurs intended to demonise the conquered and justify their subjugation. Archaeology has become a way to test the accuracy of politically incorrect evidence, and the American journal Science has now dedicated an issue to human conflict, with