The historian A.J.P. Taylor wrote one of the most powerful openings of any book. “In the state of nature which Hobbes imagined, violence was the only law, and life was ‘nasty brutish and short’,” he wrote in The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848-1918. “Though individuals never lived in this state of nature, the Great Powers of Europe have always done so. Sovereign states have distinguished European civilisation, at any rate since the end of the fifteenth century. Each individual state in...
Imagine, for a moment, that you lived in ancient China, with a rival state threatening your people’s very existence. In the quest for any advantage, one strategy might involve performing a ceremony to invoke assistance from the ancestors. However, life and politics are not static; old rivals can transform into close allies. This transformation raises an intriguing question: do ancient war ceremonies simply fade away when they lose relevance? A recent discovery in China indicates that, at least...
From the ancient Aztecs’ efforts to appease the sun god to Apollo’s demands in the Iliad, human history is permeated with traditions of sacrifice, and China was no exception. In Zhejiang province, eastern China, scientists recently announced the discovery of a horse’s head sealed inside pottery at an ancient ritual site, dating back to the Eastern Zhou dynasty (770–256 BC). The Eastern Zhou dynasty encompassed both the Spring and Autumn Period (770–476 BC) and the Warring States Period (475–221...