I cannot fathom what it would be like to be tossed into the vastness of a dark, watery hole. I cannot imagine what would go through a person’s mind as they waited to complete their mission, delivering the message to the deity. Ultimately this would end in your death.
Perhaps that’s why some of people used young children as their messengers. The odds of the children understanding death, of realizing what would happen to them, would be less. Of course some of these cultures provided a “relaxant” to the messengers so that the all important plea to the deity could be delivered.
I also cannot fathom what it would be like to know you have given up a loved one to deliver the message and the plea was ignored. Would that mean that the loved one wasn’t worthy? The price paid was not enough for the deity?
Of course I also don’t live in a place where the unexplained things are explained through myth and such. I also do not have to rely on a lot of other people directly for my immediate survival, thus the need to give something for the common good of the rest is not something I have to consider the same way.
It isn’t that we do not give things up, that some of us do not give all that is near and dear to us in order to help others. Some people do this on a regular basis. But it’s different. We don’t gather to toss humans in certain places as a means of sending our messages to the deities. Instead our deities are offered items in different ways, with the great offering mostly being cash. Because obviously every deity needs cash in some way.