Comments on: Al-Kadada evidence for 5,500 year old human sacrifice https://gregladen.com/blog/2013/07/28/al-kadada-evidence-for-5500-year-old-human-sacrifice/ Tue, 30 Jul 2013 21:09:32 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.8 By: Edgar Carpenter https://gregladen.com/blog/2013/07/28/al-kadada-evidence-for-5500-year-old-human-sacrifice/#comment-488933 Tue, 30 Jul 2013 21:09:32 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/?p=17311#comment-488933 As for alternate interpretations – it could be the burial of attendees at a potluck who died from a particularly virulent bout of food poisoning, or it could be the burial of several community members who died of flu, or . . .

All that is certain is that they died, and they were buried.

]]> By: Edgar Carpenter https://gregladen.com/blog/2013/07/28/al-kadada-evidence-for-5500-year-old-human-sacrifice/#comment-488932 Tue, 30 Jul 2013 20:46:51 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/?p=17311#comment-488932 The video cites no evidence for human sacrifice – no cut marks on bone, no broken necks, no evidence of any kind. Only an archaeologist’s speculation that some buried people were “sacrificed”, based on their burial positions.

This is way too typical of archaeology – there is no way to know what all this meant to the people involved, or whether or not the people were killed and buried to accompany a high status person into death.

This is also way too typical of journalism – this barely mentions that the conclusions are totally speculative, and then the rest of the piece is written as if the ‘sacrifice’ is true and proven.

]]> By: Greg Laden https://gregladen.com/blog/2013/07/28/al-kadada-evidence-for-5500-year-old-human-sacrifice/#comment-488931 Sun, 28 Jul 2013 18:18:42 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/?p=17311#comment-488931 Note: This is not new. But no, I did not commit the Mortal Internet Sin of only paying attention to things that happened within the last 12 hours! This is posted for another reason that will become clear in due time.

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