How the World Is Marking the 500th Birthday of Protestantism

[Elok]

My take would ultimately be that they probably did, for the reasons you cite and others - but not as many as often as two cultures implacably opposed would like to believe.

Chris Hitchens had a theory--not that I'd consider him a great authority on religious matters--that the special Jewish revulsion towards pork (exceeding that towards other forbidden foods like shrimp) was ultimately rooted in Moloch and the fact that roasting pork smells a lot like roasting human flesh.

Also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Carthage#Archaeological_evidence

Animal bones mixed in with childrens', burnt alike, strongly suggesting sacrifice and not an honored burial place.  Says the tophet of Carthage had about 20K urns over two centuries; unclear if those all contained humans, but if so that's a hundred kids burnt per annum.  Not Aztec rates, but not what you'd call a rarity either.

EDIT: It says animal bones were mixed in, so not the full 20K, but I don't know how big the urns were, if there was just one victim per urn, etc.  Unless human bodies were an extreme minority it seems likely that kid-burning was a semiregular feature of life in Carthage.

[Buster's Uncle]

Dr. My Little Brother did bother to respond, but didn't have anything to add.