First Millennium, pages 22-35

Summary: The Vikings had a complex system of penalties and punishments ranging from fines, banishment, to amputations and execution. Druids were secretive religious and scholarly class of the Europeans Celts. They created a wicker man and crammed criminals and sacrifices inside. Sacrifices were done by stabbing the victims in the back with a sword. In ancient China there were many forms of punishments, some of which included whipping the backside with a whip or a bamboo cane, kneeling on chains, and being chained but the neck. The Anglo Saxons' executions were being buried alive, and suffocation together known as 'face down burials'. Bog bodies were bodies thrown in a boggy or watery area that was marked out in a special way. After the the victims had been horrifically killed they were left to rot in bodies of water. At the end of the millennium barbaric tortures continued. People were still being buried alive, abut some others were burning up to their necks, this was known as 'sacrificed for the sun'; they were left to burn in the hot sun. During sacrifices severed limbs were eaten and cannibalism became widespread.

Quote: "The use of execution in religious rituals is older than any written history"(Kellaway 22).

Reflection: Some methods of execution have been common through out early civilization to the first millennium; but some newer harsher punishments have been created.