"Sharing is caring." People love sharing things of value - food, drink, flowers, songs, etc. - with friends, family and honoured guests. Only makes sense that the local gods are invited as well.

I mean even the term "sacrifice" has been problematised for some of these reasons. As several people have pointed out, a lot of this stuff could probably better be described as large-scale feasts, to which entire communities were invited - including the gods, who were seen as potential allies, to be swayed with food and drink.

If I host a BBQ in my backyard, I might pay for the meat to be grilled, and in that sense I am in a sense "sacrificing" something - in that I am thereby giving up something of value - but calling the entire BBQ a "sacrifice" would nevertheless be quite wrong.

Scholars who study the idea of "sacrifice" are, these days, very aware of all of this and therefore tend to be quite careful indeed about how the term is used.

> And I’m pretty sure most cultures didn’t consider blood a food or something to be eaten.

If you could list a few examples from the ancient world of cultures where cooking with blood was considered wrong or taboo, I'd love to see them.

> I wouldn’t mind seeing your source on the Gods enjoying it, though.

Sure thing!

In Billie Jean Collins' Pigs at the Gate: Hittite Pig Sacrifice in Its Eastern Mediterranean Context, she describes how in a rite from Kizzuwatna,

> "the petitioner digs a hole in the ground and kills a piglet […] so that its blood flows into the pit. Various offerings of grains and breads are placed into the pit and the primordial deities are invited to eat the food and drink the blood of the piglet."

Furthermore, in Gary Beckman's Blood in Hittite Ritual, he explains how

> "… The syntagm aulin karp- must indicate the positioning of the victim’s throat to receive the fatal slashing. After the blow had been struck, the officiant could control the direction taken by the resultant eruption of blood, sending it upward or downward. It is this distinction that is expressed by the pair of technical terms ‘slaughter up’ versus ‘slaughter down’…"

And he continues:

> "In this regard the Hittites seem to have observed a practice similar to that of the ancient Greeks by which animals offered to celestial and earthly gods were generally killed with their throats upward, while those intended for chthonic deities met their end with throats turned earthward."

Apparently none of these gods had a problem with being sprinkled with blood - quite the opposite!

As mentioned, Odysseus' sacrifice of the ram and the ewe is described in the Odyssey - the relevant passages are 10.504-540 and 11.13-50.

Oh and another example from the Greek world - in Pindar's Olympian 1, the deified Pelops is explicitly said to receive "blood-sacrifices" at his "much-frequented tomb."

Likewise, Menander Rhetor describes a happy birth thusly - "every relative and friend was full of hope; they sacrificed to the gods of birth, altars ran with blood, the whole household held holiday."

There are many, many more examples of altars being smeared with blood. Picking a few examples at random, you've got the Hyndluljóð, where the young king smears the sacrificial hǫrgr with ox blood - as does a princess in Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks, and an injured hero in Kormáks saga.

I mean I could go on and on, but yeah - there are plenty of examples.

> things that are considered taboo/unfit for human consumption (like blood)

To be clear, that is not a universal taboo.

As mentioned, the Spartans (as an example) used pig's blood for their famous "black soup" - surely they weren't alone in thinking of blood as potential food.

That is true.

I still wonder which specific 1st century BCE religions the person had in mind, though - would have loved to learn more!

Right, sure, I'm not denying any of that.

The other gentleman, however, didn't make the claim that the blood of the sacrificial animal was drained because it makes the meat more pleasant to consume for humans, but because not doing so "would be an insult to God" - a very different explanation.

I don't understand what you are trying to say.

Earlier, you wrote the following:

> the priest makes sure the knife is as clean as possible. The blood drains completely etc. Anything else would be an insult to God.

Are you saying that the insult would be to include any of the sacrificial animal's blood as part of the offering? Or that the insult would be to include only a part but not all of the sacrificial animal's blood?

Also, you mentioned an "insult to God," but you still haven't specified which "God" this would be. It's all terribly unclear.

> The parts reserved for the gods are the parts humans don't eat.

Which parts are you talking about? The blood? If so, that makes no sense at all. Gods and men alike could consume blood - it was considered perfectly fine food. Blood was famously a main ingredient in the "black soup" of the Spartans. Surely they weren't alone in this. Folks back then could ill afford to discard any part of a slaughtered animal.

EDIT: I don't mind the downvotes, at all, but would much prefer counter-arguments of some kind. Anyone?

Sorry, which specific religions are you talking about?

FWIW, it may be worth noting that you can find plenty of sacrificial traditions wherein the blood is commonly included as part of the offering. The Hittites used to pour blood into sacrificial pits. At least in the Luwian-Hurrian sacrificial tradition as attested from Kizzuwatna, the blood of the sacrificial animals was specifically given to the gods to drink. In the Odyssey, Odysseus is similarly said to pour the blood of a ram and a ewe into a pit in the ground, presumably as offerings to chthonic deities, in order to consult the dead. And so on and so forth.

> Also the priest makes sure the knife is as clean as possible. The blood drains completely etc. Anything else would be an insult to God.

Sorry in which religion is this the case?

> Imagine just having to walk everywhere with all your shit all the time having no way to convently carry any thing you manage to accumulate except for the muscles on your back.

People had wagons long before they figured out how to ride horses. Pack animals, too.

Precisely. Very well-put.

If folks were riding horses all through the Bronze Age, one suspects that this would have left at least some trace in the written record.

But no.

Not a single text from that era describes horse-riding as something “normal,” at home or abroad, among the rich or among the poor. It’s always wild, crazy, dangerous, comical, irresponsible or absurd.

I’ll add one more example.

In the fifth book of the Odyssey, at one point Odysseus survives a shipwreck by straddling a plank of wood. As he is helplessly thrown hither and thither by the waves, he is compared to a man on horseback. Now think about that. The image only makes sense if, to Homer and his contemporaries, a rider on horseback was in no way, shape or form in control of the situation. The animal, much like the raging ocean, was seen as a wild, headstrong, violent thing, heeding no command and obeying no orders. Think rodeo, not cavalry. That stuff came later.

All of which strongly supports the idea of Proto-Indo-Europeans engaging in chariot-driving, but none of which supports the idea of Proto-Indo-Europeans riding on horseback.

Yes but as a stunt, as a joke or on a dare, to impress his buddies or the local girls. Think rodeo, not cavalry. "Good riding" - where the rider is actually in control of the animal - seems to have appeared rather late.

Believe it or not, but the Egyptian horses at that battle were - at the time - actually considered to be quite big!

Earlier pharaohs had to make do with an even smaller breed, the Central Asian Akhal-Teke. Ye olde Egyptians didn't get their hands on thoroughbred ("pur-sang") Arabian horses until the reigns of Thutmose III and Amenhotep II.

The Mesopotamians first referred to horses as "fast-donkeys" or "mountain-donkeys."

Hmmmmm.

The earliest written evidence seems to suggest that horse-riding was, for the longest time, considered a bit of a reckless, foolhardy "circus act" - something wild and dangerous, fit for clowns, fools and daredevils.

We have letters from one Mesopotamian lord to another, scolding him for riding on horseback - basically saying "cut it out dude, don't be a fucking clown - and next time, drive a chariot like a proper gentleman."

In the Iliad, too, horse-riding is described as a dangerous activity one does in front of a paying crowd - all the Homeric heroes go into battle either on chariots or on foot (and often first on chariot and then on foot).

In the Vedas, too, the only instance of horse-riding I know of seems to have a comic, ribald (and perhaps even mocking?) tone - the Maruts are described as "spreading their legs like women" in order to mount their horses. In all other descriptions of their heavenly rides to and fro, they drive in chariots, as do practically all other Vedic gods.

All of which makes me wonder if perhaps this skeleton might have been that of an acrobat or a clown of some sort, rather than a shepherd, a warrior or a lord?

Strongly disliked that show, actually, but yeah she was certainly very beautiful in it.

Would KILL to see Daddario in a Lynch-directed movie, series - anything really...!

Not much of a joke though eh?

Good point.

I'll add, however, that a Norwegian law book dating from the 12th century demands a higher fine for killing a "lap dog" than for killing a "hunting dog." This could, perhaps, be seen as a possible indication that at least not long after the end of the Viking Era itself, old-timey Scandinavians put a premium on "unemployed" dogs, i.e. pets.

Many, many, many people do not follow ice hockey.