> Oxford and others released a paper in 2014

I'm familiar with the Oxford research. It's not conclusive and I don't think most archaeologists have signed on. We'll see how it holds up over time. Even if you accept Oxford, it's still the case that child sacrifice, if it did take place, was rare and reserved only for the very wealthy. The idea of Carthaginians all gathering in a stadium and hurling children into a pit of fire for Moloch is pure (Roman) myth.

It was only moderate sensible levels of child sacrifice!

Does this kind of question depend on what you consider to be the baseline of normal human behaviour? That defines what side of an argument evidence is required. Surely it is possible that human sacrifice was common throughout human history, and that the last couple of thousand years were the exception. How can you know?