Intellectual History - Term Paper Example

Peter Warren discovered remains of children dating back to 2000 B.C. The buildings found during Warren’s expedition encountered a massive earth quake. According to Warren, the remains were of the children who were sacrificed, in order to prevent the anticipated earth quake. Sacrifice is one of the most striking concepts existing in the history of humankind; animals, humans and sometimes even gods were sacrificed in human history. Human sacrifice is still practiced by many civilizations. In accordance with Hinduism, the wife has to sacrifice herself and burn with her husband in order to stay with her husband after his death.

In Mexico, children were sacrificed to be blessed with plentiful rains for the harvest. Sacrifice is primarily deemed as a link between the divine/spiritual and subordinate humans. It customarily has aspirations like doing away with the wrath of gods and altering the behavior of gods in favor of people offering the sacrifice (The Watson, 134-135). Like the era of the bulls and sacred stones; in India, Indra the goddess was compared to the bull. Bulls were sacrificed in the ancient civilization of Iran.

In North and South America, parts of lands in Pacific Ocean and Mexico, a young girl was beheaded every time a crop was ripe.  Early variant of sacrifices did not involve any kind of animals; in fact the animals were worshiped. Self denial is also an important factor that is entailed in making a sacrifice. Denial of self for the benefit of others and in the way of gods is significantly increasing even in today's times, in order to maintain balance between human and spiritual world. Ancient civilizations like ancient Egypt, Sumer and India followed the philosophy of sacrifice.

Another fundamental concept in faith of people, is belief in sky-gods; the concept of sky-gods. Movement of sun and its relation with change of climate, changing over day into night (referred to as birth and re-birth of sun) was a mystery for humans. Likewise, the moon cycle; its appearance and disappearance and connection to tides in sea and female menstrual cycle made it more mysterious for the humans. The Indian god Dyaus, Roman Jupiter and Greek Zeus all came from a single concept pertaining to sky divinity.

Sun god was considered a symbol of males and moon gods being a female symbol. Sun god was also worshiped by ancient believers of Egyptian religion. The concept leads to another idea that exists in humans known as “afterlife”. Generally after life means existence after the physical death of the body. In ancient Egyptian religion, bodies were buried along with food, water and other necessities; adopting the concept that after burial, body will be alive again. As sun and moon appear and disappear; In the same way some sort of post-mortem existed in the minds of people.

This leads to another mysterious concept known as “Soul”.  According to peoples soul is contained in different parts of the body such as eyes, ears, stomach, and above all the heart. Hindus believe that soul is thumb sized and it resides in the heart. Greeks perceived soul as light or fire of the heart. Ancient Egyptians believed that there were two other beings present in addition to body itself, called “Ka” and “Ba”. “Ba”, in medieval Egyptian religion was deemed a soul mirrored by a human headed bird.

“Ka” was the protector of body. Death can manifest only if it had permission from “