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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

#121

Post by sorokod »

narrator wrote: post #56
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…

As a literary reader of the bible, I noticed that there are literally one hundred different passages in the bible where God says that he absolutely does not want his followers to sacrifice children to him or condemns other religions for this practice. https://www.openbible.info/topics/human_sacrifice That they had to repeat it over and over again gives me the impression that this practice was disturbingly widespread…

That Genesis 22 bit (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+22%3A1-...) provides a more nuanced view on the god of the old testament than you make it out to be.

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

#123

Post by 5DFractalTetris »

pasabagi wrote: post #115
beaconstudios wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. What god is capital punishment meant to appease? It's supposedly there for people who are too dangerous to keep alive right? Human sacrifice seems to me like it was meant to bring better harvests or otherwise give the illusion of controlling a chaotic/random natural process.

I don't think so. I think it's current justification is typically framed in the form of 'punishment', and its historical justification was purely religious. And, coincidentally, was at least partially about giving the punished person a fair shot at redemption by punishing them while they were still on earth - which is literal god-appeasement. Regardless, I think equating capital punishment with ritual sacrifice is a…

I consider all distinguishing characteristics between people or groups of people to be projections utilized by human minds to motivate and bring forth highly-ritualized purifying violence, which ranges in intensity from inconsequential name-calling to full-scale genocide. My best historical example of this from pre-modernity was the 13th Century Cathar Purge, where the War refrain "Kill them all and let God sort them out" originates, and continues forth until this day. Records point to a similar practice within the Aztec regime, with self-sacrifice a common action to sustain the empire.

Given the advanced bureaucratic practices common to empires in precolonial America, it seems the Aztecs simply required regular sacrificial deaths (via suicide or homicide) to maintain their office, in addition to regularly liquifying prisoners or the enslaved. Like a death camp which ran on self-motivated suicide, for reasons of cosmic accounting.

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

#124

Post by badminton1 »

dang wrote: post #69
badminton1 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Would you please stop it with the flamewar about human sacrifice?

It was not my intention to create a flamewar and I will stop commenting on this.

The reason I am defensive when it comes to these articles is because they are actively used by hate groups to validate a perspective of the world where some nations are unworthy of their lives, freedom and right to self determination. Presenting these articles without an accompanying them with the context of the time does not help that situation.

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

#125

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#126

Post by tptacek »

remarkEon wrote: post #33
tptacek wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth keeping in mind that whatever else Cortez's ship represented, it certainly wasn't the welfare of the next 10 generations of Native Americans in Mexico.

I think it's also worth keeping in mind that Cortez and those who got off his ships would've been rightly disturbed by the scale of human sacrifice and savagery displayed by the Aztecs. That doesn't justify enslavement, certainly, but their mindset would've been one of fear and defense and that's totally understandable to me.

And, a generation later, their domination of the area firmly established and plainly evident, what then was their mindset? Was it their "fear" and "defensiveness" that led them to continue wholesale rape and slaughter across Central America?

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

#127

Post by simonsarris »

narrator wrote: post #56
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…

As a literary reader of the bible, I noticed that there are literally one hundred different passages in the bible where God says that he absolutely does not want his followers to sacrifice children to him or condemns other religions for this practice. https://www.openbible.info/topics/human_sacrifice That they had to repeat it over and over again gives me the impression that this practice was disturbingly widespread…

That's a good point. There are similar laws in the Bible, like the law that you should definitely not shave your head to mourn a death, which seems silly without the context that its something Egyptians did.

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

#129

Post by graeme »

felipemnoa wrote: post #93
InTheArena wrote: post #65

Threads that are respectful, interesting and insightful like this are why I adore HN. Please don’t ever change. That aside, As a historian, I think our skepticism of primary sources has gone way way way to far. Plutarch is ignored, because Roman. Cortez was ignored because Spanish. Do they have reason to exaggerate? Sure and they at times do. But the archeological evidence on both Carthage and Cortez was really clear…

>>were probably a big reason why Spain so quickly supplanted the Aztecs. Maybe, maybe not. It didn't hurt that the Spaniards had powerful biological weapons on their side that decimated [1] the Aztec population. Same as what happened here in the United States with the native population. Had it been the natives spreading new infectious diseases to the arriving europeans, history would probably have been quite differen…

Even more than that. If news was able to make it back, the viruses also surely would have made it back to the European mainland at sime point, bringing Europe to its knees.

Native societies all across the americas were struck by plague even before Europeans got there, as the disease moved faster than colonists into the interior.

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

#130

Post by jpmoral »

sorokod wrote: post #121
narrator wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a literary reader of the bible, I noticed that there are literally one hundred different passages in the bible where God says that he absolutely does not want his followers to sacrifice children to him or condemns other religions for this practice. https://www.openbible.info/topics/human_sacrifice That they had to repeat it over and over again gives me the impression that this practice was disturbingly widespread…

That Genesis 22 bit ( https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+22%3A1-... ) provides a more nuanced view on the god of the old testament than you make it out to be.

His point wasn't about how to view the 'god of the old testament'. It was that child sacrifice was so widespread that it had to be mentioned several times.
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