In the , the first ever murder was committed by against his brother Abel out of . In the past, certain types of homicide were lawful and justified. Georg Oesterdiekhoff wrote:
Evans-Pritchard says about the from Sudan: "Homicide is not forbidden, and Nuer do not think it wrong to kill a man in fair fight. On the contrary, a man who slays another in combat is admired for his courage and skill." ( 1956: 195) This statement is true for most African tribes, for pre-modern Europeans, for Indigenous Australians, and for Native Americans, according to ethnographic reports from all over the world. ... Homicides rise to incredible numbers among cultures such as the . When a boy is born, the father has to kill a man. He needs a name for his child and can receive it only by a man, he himself has murdered. When a man wants to marry, he must kill a man. When a man dies, his family again has to kill a man.
In many such societies the redress was not via a legal system, but by , although there might also be a form of payment that could be made instead—such as the which in early could be paid to the victim's family of their right of revenge.
One of the oldest-known prohibitions against murder appears in the Sumerian written sometime between 2100 and 2050 . The code states, "If a man commits a murder, that man must be killed."
In traditions, the is one of the given by God to Moses in (Exodus: 20v13) and (Deuteronomy 5v17). The and subsequent early English translations of the Bible used the term secretly killeth his neighbour or smiteth his neighbour secretly rather than murder for the Latin clam percusserit proximum. Later editions such as and the have translated the Latin occides simply as murder rather than the alternatives of kill, assassinate, fall upon, or slay.
In according to the , one of the greatest is to kill a human being who has committed no fault. "For that cause We decreed for the Children of Israel that whosoever killeth a human being for other than manslaughter or corruption in the earth, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind."[ ] "And those who cry not unto any other god along with Allah, nor take the life which Allah hath forbidden save in (course of) justice, nor commit adultery – and whoso doeth this shall pay the penalty."[ ]
The term assassin derives from , a militant Shi'ite sect, active from the 8th to 14th centuries. This mystic killed members of the , , and elite for political and religious reasons. The cult that plagued was devoted to , the goddess of death and destruction. According to some estimates the Thuggees murdered 1 million people between 1740 and 1840. The believed that without regular offerings of blood the sun god would withdraw his support for them and destroy the world as they knew it. According to , author of Aztec Warfare, "between 10,000 and 80,400 persons" were in the 1487 re-consecration of the .
Southern slave codes did make willful killing of a illegal in most cases.For example, the 1860 case of Oliver v. State charged the defendant with murdering his own slave. In 1811, the wealthy white planter was hanged for murdering several of his slaves on his plantation in the British West Indies.[]
In , was a social code that required Corsicans to kill anyone who wronged their family honor. Between 1821 and 1852, no fewer than 4,300 murders were perpetrated in Corsica.
