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Hundreds of skulls reveal massive scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital

sciencemag.org

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Re: Hundreds of skulls reveal massive scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital

#71

Post by red75prime »

coding123 wrote: post #23
roel_v wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a 'soul'? What animals have one?

Apologies for that terminology, I personally believe in that, so for anyone else, scratch that note and replace with (start seeing animals that have the same right to live here as humans) and being more pedantic, if you believe humans being animals, scratch the distinction, and replace with animals of the species of human. I'm sure I'm offending more people in trying to fix this comment lol.

Extending the right to live to cattle, will quickly kill large part of them off, as businesses will stop providing food and care to them with no expected returns and the cattle isn't adapted enough to survive in the wild.

Extending the right to live to wild animals is essentially void (if we aren't going to exterminate all the carnivores) and will probably cause a couple of ecological disasters as population control hunting will be off limits too.

Re: Hundreds of skulls reveal massive scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital

#72

Post by topspin »

coding123 wrote: post #20

I know this comment won't be accepted too well here, but as people become vegetarians/vegans even, but more importantly start seeing animals as other beings with souls - it becomes clear how barbaric our society STILL is. Again, only visible to some people that have rejected some pretty common norms. It is interesting because in those times it was politically and socially acceptable to be OK with other humans being s…

> but more importantly start seeing animals as other beings with souls

Let's stipulate that non-human animals have a "soul," whatever you believe a soul to be.

How to you judge the soul of, say, a raccoon; a creature than has been called the psychopath of the animal world? A raccoon is never happier than when it's slaughtering a nest full of cute, helpless babies. Red-tailed hawks are such a menace to other species that crows make it their business to hound these magnificent raptors incessantly, injuring and killing when possible.

Is there a place for these creatures in your moral paradigm? What solution do you offer for the utterly ubiquitous violence that has been occurring among all these "souls" for hundreds of millions of years?

We manage deer populations, factoring in hunting and other predation, disease, losses to automobiles, etc., and we thus have stable populations of deer. There is no rational reason to indulge some great sadness when a car hits a deer.

Re: Hundreds of skulls reveal massive scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital

#73

Post by spanxx »

badminton1 wrote: post #38
throwaway43532 wrote: post #19

Despite the many issues, I'd still suggest anyone interested in the Aztec empire at the time of the Spanish conquest to read The Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Díaz del Castillo. Díaz was present not only on the Cortés expedition, but on the earlier expeditions led by Córdoba and Grijalva. The article mentions, plausibly so, that the issue of human sacrifice was often exaggerated by the Spaniards. Nevertheless, it i…

The Spanish themselves conducted many religion-motivated rituals of human sacrifice in Europe and in the Americas. In Europe, there was the Inquisition, with ritualistic torture using medieval torture devices, burning people to death, etc. Motivated by religious beliefs, just like the ones in the Americas. The Spanish also conducted campaigns of extermination. Some recent ones: the Reconcentrado policy in Cuba, and t…

Do you really think that human sacrifices were so common in Spain? Have you any impartial sources (not Black Legend backed) to defend your arguments?

Re: Hundreds of skulls reveal massive scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital

#74

Post by spanxx »

azborder wrote: post #30
abrowne wrote: post #11

Interesting timing soon after a review of a recent book about Cortés: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/05/24/mexico-curse-of-c... The review says that "most estimates of the frequency of human sacrifices in Tenochtitlan come from an unfounded assertion by the Franciscan friar Diego Valadés, who was born twenty-two years after the city fell. Valadés claimed that between 15,000 and 20,000 people were sacrificed in…

That entire review is ridiculous. So much bias and selective use of historical information to suit the writer’s opinion.

Why is ridiculous?

Re: Hundreds of skulls reveal massive scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital

#75

Post by elteto »

badminton1 wrote: post #38
throwaway43532 wrote: post #19

Despite the many issues, I'd still suggest anyone interested in the Aztec empire at the time of the Spanish conquest to read The Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Díaz del Castillo. Díaz was present not only on the Cortés expedition, but on the earlier expeditions led by Córdoba and Grijalva. The article mentions, plausibly so, that the issue of human sacrifice was often exaggerated by the Spaniards. Nevertheless, it i…

The Spanish themselves conducted many religion-motivated rituals of human sacrifice in Europe and in the Americas. In Europe, there was the Inquisition, with ritualistic torture using medieval torture devices, burning people to death, etc. Motivated by religious beliefs, just like the ones in the Americas. The Spanish also conducted campaigns of extermination. Some recent ones: the Reconcentrado policy in Cuba, and t…

“La Reconcentración” was a policy enabled by Gen. Weyler to force people in rural areas to move to nearby cities where they could be monitored, hoping to cut off the underground support network of the rebel Cuban forces fighting in the mountains. It had nothing to do with human sacrifices.

Re: Hundreds of skulls reveal massive scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital

#76

Post by [deleted] »

patrickg_zill wrote: post #52
badminton1 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Spanish themselves conducted many religion-motivated rituals of human sacrifice in Europe and in the Americas. In Europe, there was the Inquisition, with ritualistic torture using medieval torture devices, burning people to death, etc. Motivated by religious beliefs, just like the ones in the Americas. The Spanish also conducted campaigns of extermination. Some recent ones: the Reconcentrado policy in Cuba, and t…

This is whataboutism, I think.

[deleted]

Re: Hundreds of skulls reveal massive scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital

#77

Post by User23 »

dnomad wrote: post #64
InTheArena wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this is still debated by a few hold outs, This is one where Wikipedia is out of date. Oxford and others released a paper in 2014 and it is now generally held by historians and archeologists that it did in fact happen. Archeoloists questioned Plutarch, and Plutarch won. Check out Antiquity 2012, 2014, and 2017.

> 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…

It was only moderate sensible levels of child sacrifice!

Re: Hundreds of skulls reveal massive scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital

#78

Post by hessenwolf »

coginawheel wrote: post #26
coding123 wrote: post #20

I know this comment won't be accepted too well here, but as people become vegetarians/vegans even, but more importantly start seeing animals as other beings with souls - it becomes clear how barbaric our society STILL is. Again, only visible to some people that have rejected some pretty common norms. It is interesting because in those times it was politically and socially acceptable to be OK with other humans being s…

Do you believe all other forms of life have souls? I'm curious because you made the vegetarian and vegan argument which I always find interesting. I was raised Hindu (now atheist) and the religion has a belief that all forms of life have a soul and have consciousness. As a consequence of this you accept that in order to live, your life relies on extinguishing other forms of life. I always find it weird that when peop…

I had the fortune to grow up simultaneously in a few variations of christianity. None of them dealt adequately with the argument why animals don't have souls, nor referred to the bible. It was just stated.

Also, none of the dealt with why a person who had never encountered the bible would go de facto to hell.

If we were really made in god's image, then he'd expect us to follow logic, thank you.

Re: Hundreds of skulls reveal massive scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital

#79

Post by 5DFractalTetris »

kimmk wrote: post #40
azeotropic wrote: post #18

They dismiss Cortez and his men as exaggerating the number of skulls when they claimed 130,000, but if you start calculating how many are in the image of the reconstruction in the article, it's easily close to 100,000. This reminds me of how the academic consensus was that child sacrifice in Carthage was merely Roman propaganda, until they dug up the massive infant necropolis near the temple to Moloch (yes, that Molo…

Romans very rarely practiced ritual human sacrifice (outside of gladiator games). The specific case of burying two Gauls and a Greek alive was an exception done by consulting the Sibylline books, a collection of prophetic instructions only to be used during extreme crisis like after the battle of Cannae during the second Punic War.

Disagree completely. Capital punishment has always been little more than ritual sacrifice. War itself may be little more than ritual sacrifice.

Re: Hundreds of skulls reveal massive scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital

#80

Post by ggm »

5DFractalTetris wrote: post #79
kimmk wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Romans very rarely practiced ritual human sacrifice (outside of gladiator games). The specific case of burying two Gauls and a Greek alive was an exception done by consulting the Sibylline books, a collection of prophetic instructions only to be used during extreme crisis like after the battle of Cannae during the second Punic War.

Disagree completely. Capital punishment has always been little more than ritual sacrifice. War itself may be little more than ritual sacrifice.

Contextually conflating capital punishment with ritual is I think wrong.
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