Percy Amaury Talbot

thumb| Percy Amaury Talbot (26 June 1877 – 28 December 1945) was a British anthropologist and plant collector, active in Nigeria. Quotes The impression which the members of the expedition carried away from Benin town, as the City of Blood, was no doubt largely due to the number of corpses seen by them in the Arho Ogiuwu...which they thought were the bodies of slaughtered victims, whereas they were really those of executed criminals and of persons who had died from infectious disease, etc., to whom decent burial was denied. If also, as stated, all the human sacrifices consisted of criminals, these would probably have preferred death as an offering to the gods or ancestors than in any other form....The most abhorrent to modern ideas were the sun and rain sacrifices in which the victims were tied to trees, but it must be remembered that these were always wizards and witches, and so guilty, in native eyes, of the worst possible crime. The idea of Benin rule, therefore, as one of blood-stained despotism appears at variance with the truth. The Peoples of Southern Nigeria (London, 1926) p. 90. Quoted in George Brandon, Santeria from Africa to the New World: The Dead Sell Memories (Indiana University Press, 1997) p. 201. See also: A. M. Boisragon External links Percy Amaury Talbot at French Wikipedia Category:1877 births Category:1945 deaths Category:Anthropologists from England