I think you are right about the inspirations to the conservation movement, which I would trace back a little further to Uvedale Price and to German foresters in the nineteenth century (sorry I can’t put names to them).

In law it has its genesis in pollution legislation (concern with the human environment) and in resource sharing treaties (concerned with resource depletion) – that is with a conservationist stance. I am not sure of the first legislative attempt to protect nature for its own sake, perhaps it was the migratory bird treaty act of 1918 in the US implementing the convention between the UK and the US?

That is a wonderful phrase about ‘the influence of rationalism upon puritanism’. It makes the humanitarian movement, which has become one of the foundations of international law, seem like a temporary historical quirk.
Also, it makes me wonder what the environmental movement is a product of. Could it be ‘the influence of rationalism upon greed’? Or ‘the influence of romanticism upon rationalism’? Put another way, should we trace it to Malthus or to Ruskin – or to Darwin? I guess there are shelves of books on this, but I have not read them.

It seems that their is a slight difference between the aims of humanitarian conventions and the aims of human rights conventions – the Geneva Convention forms part of international humanitarian law rather than international human rights law, although it seems both are derived from the humanitarian movement.

The humanitarian movement is said to be “a product of the influence of rationalism upon puritanism”.

If, as must be, we are going to allow extreme sports, in which I would include boxing, rugby, motorbike racing and fox hunting, then I don’t see why even more dangerous sports should not be allowed. Are they not human rights? And, if not, when did they stop becoming human rights?
The first item on the list of human rights is the Right to Life. Does it mean that hungry humans can clear all the rain forests and kill all the elephants? Dominion over ‘all the earth’ implies that humans have a right to take these actions.
There is also a big problem as to whether human rights are universal or relative.
Much though I oppose the things which human rights legislation opposes, I worry that they are a European conception which will not stand the tests of time. They relate to the Three Cs: Christianity, Capitalism and Civilization (which transmute into the Republican Party’s Three Gs: God, Guns and Gays)

But of course this is more easily said than done, as many modern atrocities have demonstrated.

Saying this strategy was successful in preventing the sacrifice of captured warriors of war in temples – it is possible to imagine that some other initiation rite of equivalent seriousness would have to take its place within the cultural adaptation in order for the rite of passage to marriage to continue. Given that Aztec warriors captured the other tribes warriors in one-on-one combat with weapons capable of decapitation, something as serious as a boxing match at the Olympic level might be the standard required?

I have a friend who comments that although the conquistadores are perpetually castigated for destroying Aztec civilisation, it is his view that the Aztecs had such a bloody civilization that it was good for it to be destroyed. I know this is not a politically correct view – but he is a Russian emigree and knows that the best thing is to say what one thinks.

Having recently finished reading a book on the Aztecs this is much more apparent.

As young warriors had to capture another warrior in battle, who were then sacrificed at the temple – prior to them being able to marry. It was in effect an initiation rite. It seems that these gods were recognised as demons – rather than good spirits – by the indigenous informants
(in anthropology).

Of course, these understandings are not always entirely clear. But there is certainly a sense in Buddhism, where the religion of Bon, was associated with demons rather than good spirits. Perhaps a greater abstraction and cross cultural comparisons are needed so that these concepts can be revisited?

I should have paid more attention in my Bible classes at school. My understanding is that the ban on graven images was both a call to monotheism and a call to worship the reality of God rather than images of gods. Whichever, the inception of Christianity certainly led to the mass destuction of images of pagan gods of the kind hitherto displayed in Roman palace gardens (and still to be seen in the Palatine Museum, for example).

I am not sure that we are particularly prone to creating other gods in modern times, although during the French Revolution they probably came close!
[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_Reason ]