Throughout Europe, the earliest Germanic and Celtic tribes killed adults and children on altars. The practice is found not only in the earliest phases, but also in more advanced stages: the Greeks were engaging in the practice as late as 480 B.C., when Themistocles slew sacrificial victims on the evening before the Battle of Salamis. The Romans, panicking as Hannibal advanced on the city during the second Punic War, gave human offerings to their idols.
North, Central, and South America saw plenty of human sacrifice, not only among the Incas, Aztecs, and Maya, but also among the Zapotec, Olmec, Nazca, Moche, and Chavin civilizations. India engaged in the practice also.
What about China? China seems often to be historically on a different track. Might China perhaps have avoided this atrocity? Sadly, that is not the case. As historians Patricia Ebrey, Anne Walthall, and James Palais explain,
in addition to objects of symbolic value or practical use, the Shang interred human beings, sometimes dozens of them, in royal tombs. Why did they do this? From oracle bone texts, it seems that captives not needed as slaves often ended up as sacrificial victims. Other people buried with the king had chosen their fate; that is, his spouses, retainers, or servants could decide to accompany him in death. Those who voluntarily followed their king to the grave generally had their own ornaments and might also have coffins and gave goods such as weapons. Early Shang graves rarely had more than three victims or followers accompanying the main occupant, but the practice grew over time. A late Shang king's tomb contained the remains of ninety followers plus seventy-four human sacrifices, twelve horses, and eleven dogs. Archeologists often can identify sacrificial victims because they were decapitated or cut in two at the waist.
The 'oracle bones' were bone fragments on which texts were written or inscribed; the bones were then heated, and the cracks which developed as jagged zigzags on the surface of the bone would intersect the text. Priests attempted to discern, from the locations of such intersections, a divine meaning. In this case, the meaning might dictate who would become a sacrificial victim.
From roughly 1500 B.C. to 1045 B.C., the Shang dynasty dominated China. While the practice of burying victims with kings in royal tombs can be construed as a type of human sacrifice, a much clearer form of human sacrifice is when victims are offered directly to idols.
Human sacrifice occurred not only at burials. Divination texts refer to ceremonies where from three to four hundred captives were sacrificed. In 1976, twelve hundred victims were found in 191 pits near the royal tombs, apparently representing successive sacrifices of a few dozen victims. Animals were also frequently offered in sacrifice. Thus, a central part of being a Shang king was taking the lives of others and offering the victims up on the altars.
The example of the Shang dynasty in China, then, strengthens the hypothesis that human sacrifice was a universal, or nearly universal, practice in the ancient world. This, in turn, highlights the significance of Abraham and the Hebrews as the first culture to reject this practice.
