With the decline of totemism arose the need for human sacrifice - the only means of re-establishing the broken tie of kinship when the animal species was no longer akin to man.
If tradition is any guide, human sacrifice seems in many important areas to be of secondary character; in spite of the great development of the rite among the Aztecs, tradition says that it was unknown till two hundred years before the conquest; in Polynesia human sacrifices seem to be comparatively modern; and in India they appear to have been rare among the Vedic peoples.
On the whole, human sacrifice is far commoner among the semi-civilized and barbarous races than in still lower stages of culture.
Among the forms of human sacrifice must be reckoned religious suicide.
Their idolatry (polytheistic) was unaccompanied by human sacrifice.
