Human sacrifice may have helped build and sustain social class systems

Elaborate ritual killings such as being crushed under a newly built canoe and decapitation after being rolled off a house laid the foundations of class-based structures in modern societies, a new study of Austronesian cultures suggests.

Blogger Comment:

In terms of Joseph Campbell's four functions of mythology, this is the sociological function: justifying and maintaining the social order.  The other functions are the pedagogical, cosmological and mystical.