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Death Penalty in ancient times

Capital punishment actually has a longer history than people imagine. Historical records show that people in the most ancient times even utilized methods of punishing criminals or wrongdoers.  “A life for a life” has been one of the most basic concepts for dealing with crime since the start of recorded history"(crime museum, 2021).

Today, I am going to introduce some of the early forms of capital punishment and examples.


Early forms of death penalty was made to punish the criminal slowly, so the person can feel the pain until they breath their last. Types of tourtures were different depending on what kind of crime they committed. For examples, law breakers were "put to death by stoning, crucifixion, being burned at the stake, and even slowly being crushed by elephants"(crime museum, 2021). Some other methods in the ancient times were, bites by snakes, devouring by animals, tearing apart by animals and trampling by horses.

Later, the soceities started to realize that those methods were cruel and inhumane, which the penalty changed its design which is faster and less painful punishment such as hanging and beheading with the guillotine. 



Reference 

https://www.crimemuseum.org/crime-library/execution/origins-of-capital-punishment/



Comments

  1. NatsuJuly 25, 2021 at 3:52 AM

    By reading this post, it was surprising for me that death penalty in ancient times is more cruel than now. If I were in that time, I think that I can’t stand on being killed by spending long time. However, in that meaning, I think current death penalty can be said as it is kinder for the people who committed a crime than it used to be. Of course, it is because the effect of respecting human rights. But at the same time, I think that whether we should respect human rights on criminals or not can be another question when we discuss death penalty.

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  2. jodiasJuly 29, 2021 at 11:55 PM

    Actually, putting people to death by stoning--although going back to ancient times--is still practiced in some places today. It's interesting that beheading with the guillotine was once thought to be a humane form of the death penalty. I think part of the dread and cruelty of the death penalty comes from imaging what the process will be like. Considering that, death by guillotine could hardly be more fear-inducing. Anything we know about the pain suffered by those who are put to death is speculative because no one has come back from the dead.

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