 Animal Sacrifice. Animal sacrifice is the ritual killing and offering of an animal usually as part of a religious ritual or two of these or maintain favor with the deity. Animal sacrifices were common throughout Europe and the ancient Near East until late antiquity, and continue in some cultures or religions today. Animal sacrifice, where it existed, was always much more rare. All or only part of a sacrificial animal may be offered. Some cultures, like the ancient and modern Greeks, eat most of the eatable parts of the sacrifice in a feast, and burnt the rest as an offering. Others, including the ancient Hebrews, burnt the whole animal offering, called a holocaust. Animal sacrifice should generally be distinguished from the religiously prescribed methods of ritual slaughter of animals for normal consumption as food. One of the altars at Ammonedurcadi in Sardinia, where animal sacrifice may have occurred. During the Neolithic Revolution, early humans began to move from hunter-gatherer cultures toward agriculture, leading to the spread of animal domestication. In a theory presented in Homo Nikans, mythologist Walter Burkurt suggests that the ritual sacrifice of livestock may have developed as a continuation of ancient hunting rituals. This livestock replaced wild game in the food supply.