Yabby… you must have been experiencing a too quiet a Sunday afternoon, so you decided to liven it up by doing a bit of pot stirring.

It looks like Sancho bit LOL

And runner

Not sure about UOG …his posts are too obtuse to bother to read

An Antonios has come along side… yes my ancestors were primitives too Antonios… the difference between us is … I have evolved beyond them.

And btw Yabby, re difference to other primates… you forgot the opposing thumbs

That humans sacrificed their children existed in Europe till at least 600 AD when Christianity changed that evil practise. The problem with the article is not that humans ate children it is the claim that they did it 800,000 years earlier and dropped the idea a few centuries or so later. If human sacrifice existed 800,000 it also extended till 600 AD in Europe and till 1900 AD in Irian Jaya. The problem is the credibility of the dating to exclude all dates more recent when the practise was happening.

Christianity transformed pagan European practises of them inserting a coin into the pudding fed to the children during winter solace to identify the chosen child to be sacrificed to the god of fertility and new life. Vestage of this practise remains today in the coin in the Christmas pudding and is supposed to mean a blessing to the child now spared from sacrifice.

Philo,
About the coin in the Christmas pudding. You have provided me with another piece of useless, but interesting, information to add to my brain.

Now I know why mum used to make sure ALL the kids had a threepenny bit in their pudding, under the custard. Good mother!

Philo,

The Romans objected to the Eucharist because it symbolised cannibalism. Herein, I suspect it was the remains of Latin world view that carried both Christianity and remnant customs into the seventh century Europe.

Oliver,
The Romans syncrinistic adaption of Christ teachings, is not what he said at all his teaching was not literal eating of his flesh and blood as he was with them in flesh and blood. What he meant was the partaking of his spirit in attitude and action.

I have among my friends at Church a former New Guinea citizens whose grandfather was a tribal head hunter. There has been no genetic development to now make him an intelligent educated citizen of Australia. Also I have had uni students who have boarded with me from West Papua with degrees in economics, micro-biology, nursing, business management, and teaching; whose parents still live in primitive conditions in the highlands. Whose grandparents ate human flesh as a delicacy. No dramatic genetic developments have taken place in one generation only the knowledge of Christ and their conversion.

We have the usual cries of anthropoligists who say their culture should have been left like it was. Is this evolution?

You're far too kind, Banjo.

>>About the coin in the Christmas pudding. ["pagan European practises of them inserting a coin into the pudding fed to the children during winter solace to identify the chosen child to be sacrificed to the god of fertility and new life"] You have provided me with another piece of useless, but interesting, information to add to my brain.<<

Useless, yes. Interesting? Perhaps.

True? Not at all.

You may now feel free to discard it, along with all those sightings of sightings of UFOs, those intestinal probings that occur when you are abducted by aliens (they just buy you a good dinner and discuss Jimi Hendrix. Honest) and the existence of the tooth fairy.

It's just a piece of Philo whimsy, a bit of manufactured propaganda against us pagans.

If you would like to check out a few facts on the topic, as opposed to swallowing Philo's calumnies whole, try looking into "The strange world of human sacrifice" by Jan N. Bremmer.

It's a fun, exciting, and entirely pudding-free read.

The coin was hidden in the pudding - often with other symbols, like a thimble and a ring - simply to "bring good luck" to the person who finds it.

The tradition was in fact invented by dentists, to drum up trade in the otherwise dog days of winter.

Well, all right, maybe not.

But my theory at least has the advantage of plausibility