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Are anatomically accurate sculptures of human organs evidence for human sacrifice? Apparently there are some ancient documents which attest to Etruscan human s
by MichaelCollins 4y ago
Are anatomically accurate sculptures of human organs evidence for human sacrifice?
Apparently there are some ancient documents which attest to Etruscan human sacrifice (writings of Callimachus particularly), but modern scholars debate it. If the bronze organs they found here really are anatomically accurate, that seems likely evidence of human sacrifice to me. Or at least, the artists were witness to some cadaver dissections.
- toyg 4y agoThis site started under Etruscans but went on to be used all the way to Roman adoption of Christianity. It's much, much more likely that these organs were used for anatomical/medicine studies by resident healers.
- MichaelCollins 4y agoI have read that Greek physicians practiced human dissection, but that this practice was banned by Rome. Perhaps the Etruscans practiced it, or Roman physicians did despite the bans, or during periods when it wasn't banned. FWIW, the article claims the bronze organs were used as votive offerings. This seems like the sort of practice that may have evolved as a replacement to earlier human sacrifice, with real organs being removed and used as offerings, which would give those people the experience needed to create anatomically accurate sculptures of human organs.
- carapace 4y agoNot to be gruesome but these folks were constantly chopping each other up with sharp bits of metal. It was the major hobby and profession of much of the adult male population, eh?
- MichaelCollins 4y agoI don't think many soldiers are anatomy experts. Chopping somebody up in combat is different than taking a body apart piece by piece and studying the way the organs are. Accurate knowledge of human anatomy in the modern era can be credited to the sometimes clandestine dissection of cadavers by doctors and other medical researchers, not the armies who merely chopped people up.
- carapace 4y agoI'm just pointing out that we don't have to postulate human sacrifice to account for people knowing what organs looked like. They would have had occasion to see them for themselves often enough during wartime, and cleaning up after battles. > Accurate knowledge of human anatomy in the modern era can be credited to the sometimes clandestine dissection of cadavers by doctors and other medical researchers, not the armies who merely chopped people up. Sure, sure, but we're talking about fairly accurate sculptures (? I haven't looked yet) of organs from an earlier era, eh?
- posterboy 4y agoNot at all. The piacenza liver is a blob for all I know.
- midislack 4y agoEverybody in those days would have butchered their own animals. A pig or deer has the same compliment of organs that a person does. Anatomists were not the first people to discover or catalog organs.