This past week Sara and I were in Mexico touring the Mayan ruins; royal houses, city centers, ancient ball courts, and temples, spanning over a thousand years from the 5th century BCE until the 10th century CE.

Though there is not much rain during half the year and these ancient cities were not generally built on rivers, life was facilitated by naturally occurring watering holes called cenotes.  Cenotes were used for drinking and irrigation, and some, for human sacrifice.  Cenotes were not enough to irrigate the corn fields, so in worship of the Mayan rain god, Chaac, young boys and girls were sacrificed and drown in the cenote to honor and nourish this god so he would bring rain.

Other forms of human sacrifice among the Mayans included the ritual sacrifice of one’s defeated enemy, often with heart and head and other parts dismembered, and the captain of the Mayans’ grand, but well structured ball game, was at the end of the game ritually sacrificed; though researchers are in doubt as to whether it was the captain of the losing or of winning team who won the honor of being sacrificed for the good of the gods and the people.

For us who live in the 21st century Western world idolatrous human sacrifice seems primitive, ignorant, and cruel.   It brings to mind what my good friend, a well known economist, once remarked to me: “About the time they were bringing human sacrifices, the Jewish people were writing the Talmud.”   The Mayans though, were were very advanced thinkers in the realm of mathematics and astronomy, and wrote volumes of codices, (most of which were burned by the church).

We often think of the classical Greeks who lived a world away from the Mayans as more civilized, but the Greeks too, while being advanced in philosophy and the arts, in addition to their cruel gladiator games and oedipal stories, engaged in human sacrifice to Zeus.

Perhaps polytheism always leads to human sacrifice.  Satisfying god sufficiently is a tricky business and bringing rain is vital, so why not use the largest arrow in one’s quiver to satisfy the gods?

The most gaping dichotomy is not that between the civilized and uncivilized, but separating polytheism and monotheism.   Polytheism is a way of controlling an uncontrollable universe, something all humans wish for.   To climb above this basic need demands a very different kind of worldview, a God who is not human, does not have human desires, and indeed, according to the Maimonides, does not want sacrifice at all (Guide to the Perplexed, 3:32).  Perhaps the most radical notion is the idea of one, intelligent, indefinable God who can not be manipulated, tempted, and satisfied, in the ways we can. A God who is not at all like us, who is totally outside the system of his creations, is perhaps the most radical, most civilizing notion of all.