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akodo1 t1_jd09pke wrote

Reply to comment by half3clipse in Saudi Arabia stone ruins were pilgrimage sites, where an ancient cult gathered to sacrifice animals about 7,000 years ago by marketrent

If you don't give something up, it's not a sacrifice. Pouring whiskey on the grave of a deceased friend is a kind of sacrifice. Taking a drink in his honor is not.

If it was a sacrifice then no, it or at least parts of it were not eaten. If all the normal bits were eaten then it would be a feast in honor of x not a sacrifice to x. Note it's likely that a few high value but also symbolic parts were wasted rather than eaten. Lots of sacrifice is of the heart which is burnt (otherwise it's good vitamin rich food) or blood which soaks into the ground (rather than caught in bowls and made into foods like blood pudding)

But humans like to play games, lots of sacrifices were of bits like bones or hooves that had very little use. Or people would sacrifice a proxy, maybe make a little clay cow, and throw that in the fire

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StekenDeluxe t1_jd0fli7 wrote

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.

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