The Gods Thirst for Human Blood

There is something terribly wrong with the human brain that invents phantasy gods, makes human images from wood and believes that they thirst for human blood, and if not supplied, they would be terribly punished. Crops would fail and there would be famine and epidemies, and the worst, they would be defeated and massacred in the next battle.

This lunacy is universal: human sacrifice was imperative for the Aztecs, the Inkas, African tribes, the Druidic Europeans … and now I am reading that even ancient Sparta did not escape from this craziness. The pic. shows the altar of Artemisia - Orthia, where human blood ran in abundance till historical times. This Spartan cult existed already in the 9th Century BC around a rectangular earthen altar near the river. Later it was upgraded with river stones and surrounded by a wall. The Romans built an amphitheater around to allow tourists to watch in all comfort the sadistic ritual.

Originally, the cult addressed a xoanon (wooden idol) (pic) of malevolent reputation. Pausanias writes that the four villages making up Sparta  fell to quarrelling, which led to bloodshed; many were killed at the altar and the rest died of disease. Whereat an oracle was delivered to them, that they should stain the altar with human blood. He used to be sacrificed upon whomsoever the lot fell, but Lycurgus changed the custom to a scourging of the ephebos, and so in this way the altar is stained with human blood. 

J's Prognosis: More bloodshed to be expected.