Art of the Americas

Human sacrifice in pre-Columbian cultures

The practice of human sacrifice in pre-Columbian cultures—particularly those in Mesoamerica and South America—is well documented both in the archaeological records and in written sources. The exact ideologies behind child sacrifice in different pre-Columbian cultures are unknown but it is often thought to have been performed to placate certain deities.

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See also

• ▸Beatrice Farnham
• ▸Gibeah
• ▸Jaguar

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Text from Wikipedia; plate via Wikimedia Commons. Text CC BY-SA 4.0; plate freely licensed (see Commons). Source record. Images and catalogue data are reproduced from open-access collections.