Human sacrifice: Did you mean...?

Xolotl was the dog god of the Mexica people, commonly known as the Aztecs. He is represented in codices, statuary, and other extant examples of Aztec art as a dog or a god with the head of a dog. While this figure might seem obscure, his...

Passover is a Jewish festival celebrated since at least the 5th century BCE, typically associated with the tradition of Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt. According to historical evidence and modern-day practice, the festival was...

The Denisovans are an extinct group of fossil humans who, along with their sister group the Neanderthals, also share an ancestor with Homo sapiens. Thus far, they are known only from Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains in Siberia, where...

The gods of the Mesopotamian region were not uniform in name, power, provenance or status in the hierarchy. Mesopotamian culture varied from region to region and, because of this, Marduk should not be regarded as King of the Gods in the same...

In May 2010, after years of intense discussions surrounding possible fossils of mixed Homo sapiens and Neanderthal descent floating around the scientific community, a team led by Svante Pääbo of the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology...

Homo sapiens ('wise man'), or modern humans, are the only species of human still around today. Despite having invented countless ways of labelling the world around us, we have so far done a surprisingly poor job at defining ourselves. Originating...

In Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Abraham is a venerated patriarch whose relationship with God provides the foundational story for God's beneficial relationship with humanity. According to biblical tradition (and some say myth), Abraham...

Hummingbirds, called huitzillin ("wee-TZEEL-een") in the Nahuatl language of the Aztecs, are one of the most recognizable and striking species in the avian world. While these pollinators are known in the Western imagination for their vibrant...

The Templo Mayor or Great Temple (called Hueteocalli by the Aztecs) dominated the central sacred precinct of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan. Topped by twin temples dedicated to the war god Huitzilopochtli and the rain god Tlaloc it was a...

The act of voluntary death was never condemned in antiquity. In fact, The English word "suicide" comes from the Latin for "self-slaying." The reason for a voluntary death had to be one that was honorable and necessary to remove any element...