myth

The Sacrifice of the Child

The biblical narrative of Isaac’s sacrifice is unsettling from any point of view. God commands Abraham to kill his own son, Isaac. Without questioning, Abraham obeys. He rises early, prepares the fire, carries the wood, and leads his son to the designated place. Only at the very last moment, as Abraham’s hand is raised with the knife over his son, does a divine voice stop him. A ram appears, caught in the thicket, provided by providence as a substitute.

Traditionally, this intervention has been interpreted as the successful passing of a test: God did not truly desire the actual sacrifice, only the demonstration of obedience. But this reading raises a disturbing paradox. For God, who would later command ‘thou shalt not kill’, here demands exactly that.

The answer might lie in the fact that the killing of children is more acceptable than that of peers, let alone parents. Like domesticated animals, children occupy a subordinate place within the group. The ram thus emerges as a figure that condenses in itself the fate of the child, occupying the same place, the same sacrificial role. The story, covertly but eloquently, is telling us that indeed, parents sacrifice their children just as they sacrifice domesticated animals — precisely because we ourselves are domesticated animals.

The story also reveals a deep ethical conflict. It does not erase the violence of the sacrifice, but rather dramatizes it to process it culturally. It shows us how humanity began to recognise the immorality of child sacrifice. It is, in a certain sense, a moral advance. The tale does not deny that the sacrifice existed, but it begins to signal it as a problem, as something that must be overcome, whilst also seeking to absolve the obedient father. The myth, as so often, speaks the truth in disguise: it keeps the practice alive in cultural memory, yet masked under the form of a moral lesson that allows society to move forward.

Marriage Disguised as Sacrifice

The story of Iphigenia in Greek mythology exposes this same logic with even greater transparency. Agamemnon, to appease Artemis’s wrath and allow the winds to carry his fleet to Troy, must sacrifice his daughter. But instead of facing the horror of the act directly, he employs a stratagem: he deceives his wife Clytemnestra and Iphigenia herself by telling them the young girl is to marry Achilles.

Thus, the marriage rite — a ceremony that, in itself, entails the father giving away his daughter — overlaps with the act of sacrifice. Here, the parallel is stark: the daughter is offered as the property of the father, transferred to another authority (a husband, a goddess), under the justification of duty and honour. What appears to be a social act of continuity (marriage) conceals its sacrificial underside: the absolute surrender of the daughter’s body and life to patriarchal order. Both stories, the biblical and the Greek, point to a common undercurrent: the real and symbolic possibility of sacrificing one’s own children in the name of a higher order.

An Ancestral Practice: Sacrificing the Children

Throughout human history, the real sacrifice of children has been practised as an extreme form of offering or ritual. The examples span millennia.

Around 800,000 years ago at Gran Dolina (Atapuerca), there is clear evidence of human cannibalism, including remains of children with systematic defleshing marks. In Gough’s Cave (England, ~15,000 years ago), children’s bones show signs of being butchered and even turned into ritual containers. At Herxheim (Germany, ~7,000 years ago), bodies of adults and children were dismembered during collective ceremonies. Later, in historical civilisations such as Carthage, the Mexica, or the Inca Empire, child sacrifices were institutionalised to appease agricultural gods or to promote the fertility of the land.

These examples confirm that the instrumentalisation of children as resources — as lives belonging to the group — is not merely a mythical construct, but a material reality of our evolutionary and cultural history.

As orally transmitted myths, the stories of Isaac and Iphigenia draw from much older currents stemming from the ritual sacrifices of the Bronze Age, when the actual practice of human sacrifice began to decline and become taboo. In this sense, it is not so much the precise date of these narratives that matters, but the awareness they reflect: the passage from a bloody and real practice to a dramatized, mythical representation, and finally to symbolic or sublimated forms. These tales thus mirror a particular stage in our species’ moral evolution: the transition from the acceptance of human sacrifice to the cultural search for ways to process its ethical weight.

This process culminates, within the very Abrahamic tradition, with the figure of Jesus Christ, who not only embodies the son destined for sacrifice but voluntarily embraces that fate, entirely shifting the burden of sacrifice onto himself. Jesus is like a new Isaac, but one who walks of his own will to the altar. Moreover, he takes the sublimation of sacrifice to its ultimate symbolic extreme, offering his own flesh and blood to others so that they might quite literally feed on him. It is the height of symbolic transposition, almost sarcastic: the son becomes not only the food but also the feeder, evidencing the self-domestication I have discussed.

The Child as a Domesticated Animal

Many anthropologists have puzzled over this seemingly aberrant practice, but from my point of view, it is entirely understandable. In previous entries on this blog (beginning here), I have proposed that the human species arose through intentional self-domestication. This is no mere metaphor: just as we domesticate animals and plants to gain their cooperation and productivity, we have applied the same logic to our offspring. Domestication means control: control of reproduction, of growth, of autonomy, and of life itself.

As with non-human animals, this implies a profound emotional ambivalence. We love our children as we love our pets, precisely because they depend on us. Their dependence is a source of genuine affection, but also of exploitation. Through this bond — ambivalent, yes, but also deeply compassionate — we have cooperated and built a more complex and, in many ways, better world. Yet we cannot ignore the other side of this coin: we want our children to carry on our projects, to integrate into the system we have built. The child thus becomes a living resource, valuable yet subordinated, serving the continuity of lineage or community.

It is no coincidence that the great narratives of child sacrifice coincide historically with the rise of animal husbandry and domestication. As agricultural societies learned to raise and exploit animals, they also developed a keen awareness that their own children were being treated under similar principles. The tales of sacrifice, like those of Isaac and Iphigenia, are not mere legends or poetic metaphors: they are the direct expression of a real, structural tension within our species.

From Mother Goddess to Virgin Mother: The Evolution of Motherhood in Myth

Motherhood has always been central to human culture and mythology, but its meaning and significance have transformed profoundly over time. From ancient fertility goddesses who embodied the raw power of life and creation to the subdued maternal figures of patriarchal religions, myths about mothers reveal not only societal values but also deep conflicts between genders and shifting power dynamics. Far from being merely nurturing figures, mother goddesses were often sites of control, conflict, and sacrifice, embodying both creation and destruction.

The Early Mother Goddesses: Creation, Fertility, and Power

In early societies, mother goddesses played a central role in mythological systems. Figures like Inanna, Ishtar, Demeter, and Pachamama embodied the cycles of birth, growth, death, and renewal, celebrating women’s roles as life-givers and caretakers. These goddesses were intrinsically tied to fertility and sexuality, seen as sacred rather than taboo. They represented both the nurturing and the untamed aspects of nature, often wielding immense power over life and death.

Unlike later maternal figures, these goddesses were not confined to domestic roles or passive nurturing. They could be warriors, protectors, or even destructive forces when crossed. Cybele, the Magna Mater of Phrygia and later Rome, exemplifies this duality. As a goddess of life and fertility, she was celebrated with wild, ecstatic rituals led by her priests, the Galli, who castrated themselves as an act of complete devotion to her. This self-castration mirrored the myth of Attis, Cybele’s consort or devotee, who was driven mad by the goddess’s jealous love and castrated himself before dying. Attis’ fate tied him to the cycles of vegetation, death, and rebirth, further cementing Cybele’s association with both creation and destruction.

To the Romans, this aspect of her worship was shocking. While they adopted Cybele as a protector of Rome, they were uncomfortable with the wildness of her cult and the perceived threat it posed to their patriarchal ideals. Far from an idealised maternal figure, Cybele embodied profound ambivalence: both nurturing and castrating, life-giving and life-consuming. This tension between reverence and fear speaks to the broader ‘battle of the sexes’ embedded in her myth, as her power over male sexuality challenged patriarchal norms.

The Rise of Patriarchy and the Subjugation of Motherhood

The transition from hunter-gatherer societies to agricultural civilizations marked a profound transformation in the role of women and mothers. The control of women’s reproductive power coevolved with a concept of property, inheritance, and governance that became central to social organisation. This shift diminished the power of mother goddesses, replacing their autonomous and multifaceted roles with ideals of chastity, modesty, and submission.

Fertility goddesses, once celebrated for their sexual and life-giving power, were either suppressed or reimagined. In the Abrahamic religions, for example, the Virgin Mary became the dominant maternal figure. Unlike Ishtar or Cybele, Mary was defined by her virginity and obedience to divine will. While she retained nurturing qualities, her role as a mother was divorced from sexuality, reflecting patriarchal ideals that sought to control and regulate female drives.

This emphasis on virginity also highlights the conflict between male-dominated societies and the unrestrained power of earlier mother goddesses. By redefining motherhood in terms of purity and obedience, patriarchal systems sought to resolve the tension between reverence for maternal power and fear of its potential autonomy and dominance. Mary’s miraculous motherhood, free of sexual agency, contrasted sharply with the earthy, sensual fertility of earlier goddesses, marking a definitive shift in the cultural conception of motherhood.

Motherhood as Sacrifice: Rhea Silvia, Creusa, and Cybele

While the early mother goddesses were powerful and awe-inspiring, myths from patriarchal societies increasingly portrayed motherhood as an act of sacrifice. In Roman mythology, Rhea Silvia, the mother of Romulus and Remus, exemplifies this theme. Forced into celibacy as a Vestal Virgin, Rhea Silvia is impregnated by the god Mars and later separated from her children. Her ambiguous fate—whether death, reunion with her sons, or transformation into a river goddess—underscores the sacrifices maternal figures are often forced to make in patriarchal narratives. Her absence becomes a catalyst for her sons to fulfil their destiny, founding Rome and transforming her sacrifice into the foundation of a civilization.

A similar theme appears in the story of Creusa in Virgil’s Aeneid. As Troy falls, Creusa, Aeneas’ wife, dies during their escape, her death marking the end of one epoch and the beginning of another. Before her death, Creusa prophecies Aeneas’ destiny to found a new city, Rome. Her sacrifice becomes a symbolic reincarnation: though she is lost, her spirit lives on in the foundation of a new homeland. Rome itself becomes a ‘motherland,’ inheriting and transforming the nurturing and protective qualities of these maternal figures.

Cybele’s connection to Troy further deepens these themes. As a Phrygian goddess, she was intrinsically linked to the city of Troy, which the Greeks symbolically ‘murdered from within,’ like alienated children, severing their bond with the womb through the Trojan horse. In adopting Cybele as a protector of Rome, the Romans crafted an opposing narrative of origins, aligning her with their own survival and continuity. Like Creusa, Cybele represents the maternal sacrifice necessary for Rome’s foundation. Her mythology of control and renewal parallels the themes of loss and rebirth in the Aeneid, where the death of Aeneas’ wife enables his journey to a new future.

Myth and the Legacy of Motherhood

The evolution of motherhood in myth mirrors the shifting dynamics of human society. Early myths celebrated the mother as a powerful and autonomous force, embodying both the nurturing and destructive aspects of nature. With the rise of patriarchal civilizations, this autonomy was replaced by ideals of purity and submission, transforming maternal figures into symbols of sacrifice rather than strength.

However, even in patriarchal myths, the mother’s absence or sacrifice often serves as a foundation for renewal and creation. Rhea Silvia’s forced celibacy and Creusa’s death become catalysts for the founding of Rome, while Cybele’s ambivalent power challenges societal norms, reminding us of the primal, untamed forces that motherhood once represented. These stories reveal the deep ambivalence surrounding motherhood in human culture: it is both revered and feared, celebrated and controlled.

Countries Do Not Exist

I hate to break it to you, but [insert the name of your country] does not actually exist. Basically, it doesn’t make any sense that something a group of people decide to imagine ‘exists’. If a group of children gets together to play doctors, why is their hospital not real but that of adult people is? We may answer that adults engage in serious or large-scale activities, but this is not a fundamental or qualitative difference.

Many would argue that the activity resulting from the belief in a country proves its existence. However, this fallacy implies not only that the children’s hospital also exists, but that it exists all the more, given that countries lack the observable, physical integrity of a hospital. Besides, hospitals are for curing people, but what are countries for? Sure, some great geographical areas can be called countries based on their natural attributes, but that is not the same thing as the political regions I am here referring to.

It is no accident that the countries in a continent share frontiers. You never see a country here and a country there surrounded by no man’s land. The land is always someone’s. Once upon a time, people A came and declared, “this is the people’s land”, and their land just didn’t get as big as the continent because they couldn’t beat people B, who claimed exactly the same.

Yuval Noah Harari has noticed this and written a best-seller, Sapiens, on how human beings have come to dominate the planet because these sorts of declarations are the way in which they linguistically ‘cooperate’. Yet, clearly, this kind of activity isn’t exactly cooperative.

Most adult people love to feel reassured in their illusions of punishment and reward, just as most children love to believe in Santa Claus. But their country does not exist, and it is not cooperative. One of the ways in which thinkers such as Harari continue to reassure you is by speaking of functional social fictions like money. Still, you do not see a single money being used by the entire planet, which would seem to be the rational thing for a cooperative animal. On the contrary, you see a multiplicity of ‘moneys’ that benefit people A or people B; and this works because people A largely believe in ‘money A’, people B largely believe in ‘money B’, neither believes in the other’s ‘money’, and both want the other to believe in theirs. As I have explained, this is because those things aren’t really money but credit. Gold and silver are money, and so are bitcoins and cowrie shells. What happens is that the dollar, the ruble and other forms of credit are made in the image of money, just like Monopoly money.

Let’s explore this way of confounding social properties with natural ones a bit further by quoting Harari:

States are rooted in common national myths. Two Serbs who have never met might risk their lives to save one another because both believe in the existence of the Serbian nation, the Serbian homeland and the Serbian flag. Judicial systems are rooted in common legal myths. Two lawyers who have never met can nevertheless combine efforts to defend a complete stranger because they both believe in the existence of laws, justice, human rights, and money paid out in fees.

The problem with this account of large-scale ‘cooperation’, again, is ignoring the relation of the Serbian myth, which divides people, to the myth of ‘laws, justice, human rights, and money’, which presumably unites them. The two lawyers cannot help the complete stranger but within a legal framework based on a national myth such as Serbia. These ethnic or tribal properties become imbued with a sense of universality: not everyone is Serbian, but everyone should be ‘just’. Therefore, somehow everyone should be Serbian. In the same way, Harari talks about religious myths involving natural laws such as there being heaven and hell. Like justice, these laws apply to all humans because they are ‘natural’ but only Christians will play by them; and if you are not a Christian, well, you know what happens.

The key word in this broader game is socialisation, that is, the transmission of norms of acceptable behaviour, which happens primarily when we are children. This is why most people stay in their country of origin and obey its rules for life, or at least try to. Harari is quick to point out that myths ‘aren’t lies’. Of course they are. They are just the kind of lies that contain truth, and that reward you with a sense of belonging in a society that expands and makes more copies of your genes. Who doesn’t like that.

The thesis of Sapiens is therefore mythical in itself. Harari likes to see humans as gods who are in the process of creating some sort of planetary nation, teeming with artificial life even (this reminds me of Santa’s beard). Yet this does not seem to be where the world is going. The illusions of the 20th Century are finally being abandoned, as ideological conflict increases due to the inevitable collapse of the financial system.

Besides, the true forces of globalisation are not based on myths. The youth do not ‘believe’ in the English language, or in the languages of mathematics and music. Computers do not ‘believe’ in the TCP/IP protocol that runs the internet, or in the Bitcoin protocol that carries value all over the internet. Air travel does not involve incompatible local technologies, and wishes there were no customs upon arrival. We are actually on our way to ridding ourselves of this shameful impediment that is myth. We are on our way to genuine cooperation.

Harari’s work is nevertheless interesting for the way it has captured people’s attention. The myth of a planetary state is not going to become true, less so artificial life. But it is true that our species is special in its linguistic ability to exert evolutionary change, and that our curiosity is unstoppable.

Our article ‘Children’s pretence: A scientific perspective on social reality’ illustrates how the belief in myths continues to affect academia.

A closer look at the nature of language reveals the developmental roots of this phenomenon: The nature of kinship terms: From dad and mum to god and society.