Jean Piaget held views according to which there are parallels between ontogeny and the historical development of culture, sciences, and reason. His books are full of remarks and considerations about these parallels, with reference to many logical, physical, social, and moral phenomena.This article explains that Piagetian cross-cultural psychology has delivered the decisive data needed to extend the research interests of Piaget. These data provide a basis for reconstructing not only the history of sciences but also the history of religion, politics, morals, culture, philosophy, and social change and the emergence of industrial society. Thus, it is possible to develop Piagetian theory as a historical anthropology in order to provide a basis for the humanities and social sciences.

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The main attractiveness of the games was lying in their horrific character. The pleasure of the Romans into this kind of sports was tremendously brutal and perverse (Grant 1982:91, transl. by G. O.). Roman arena games essentially consisted of gladiator fights on life or death, cruel executions of delinquents, and chases with wild animals. Millions of humans and millions of animals were killed in the arenas during the Imperial period. This article shows that the mentioned elements of the games are found in most pre-modern societies around the globe since the oldest times, both in ancient civilizations and tribal societies. The rise of animal protection, the abolishment of duel cultures and sadistic punishment systems belong to cultural transformations that arise as late as the era of enlightenment and modernization. It can be shown that psychic-cognitive structures account for the ubiquity of the cruel practices in pre-modern societies and for their abolishment during the processes of modernization. Cross-cultural psychology is able to link these historical cognitive structures and transformations to empirical results detected among different contemporary cultures around the globe in the past 70 years.