Idea Ripper // ArchiveCards: 1555 [Live] | Updated: 2026-10-14
Card #c1206IR // #c1206Synthesis

"we know this act of mass sacrifice never appears in any of the physical evidence discovered to date – the infant cremations there are individual burials, not mass graves." "This kind of mass sacrifice would also have caused a massive rupture in natural population growth that would have ultimately destroyed the city."

— In our words · Source: Carthage: A New History (Eve MacDonald)

[Use when]

The only account of a group comes from its enemies.

[Why it matters]

Diodorus has 200 noble children thrown into a fire in a single day of panic. MacDonald runs two tests. The excavated Tophet holds individual burials only, and a city that did that would have wrecked its own birth rate.

Filed under situations:When your picture of things might be wrong

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