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

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

#141

Post by dTal »

jcims wrote: post #63

When I see a bunch of skulls in one place like this, or in the catacombs, it makes me think of the accumulated experience of people. Not because of the brains in the skulls or whatever, but just that each skull represents a single human life. Most of the time these are adult skulls, guessing 30+ years each. That's a lot of living. I just asked google to solve a couple of problems for me. What is the current populatio…

You inspired me to calculate the total amount of human experience, ever. I arrived at a figure of about 2.7 trillion years, ten times as many years as there are stars in the Milky way. In seconds it's 10^20 - 0.1% of all the stars in the entire universe.

I can't even comprehend the scale.

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

#142

Post by henrikschroder »

75dvtwin wrote: post #140

It is difficult to celebrate historical achievements of our ancestors, when we read about them, passages similar to this. ".... Other Mesoamerican cultures also engaged in human sacrifice and built tzompantlis. But, "The Mexica certainly brought this to an extreme," says Vera Tiesler …." "... Gomóz Valdás found that about 75% of the skulls examined so far belonged to men, most between the ages of 20 and 35—prime warr…

If you ever visit Chichen Itza, you can see murals depicting their ceremonies. One of them shows how two teams would compete in some kind of sport involving hoops and balls, and the leader of the winning team would be sacrificed.

And everyone involved thought this was awesome, because it was a great honour something something the gods something sacrifice for your people something.

With our modern sensibilities and rationality, it's absolutely mindboggling.

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

#143

Post by PakG1 »

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.

If God in Genesis really wanted the sacrifice to happen, he wouldn't have stopped Abraham before it happened. Hebrews chapter 11 has a more detailed explanation of what was happening there in Genesis 22. You can't understand the story until you understand the whole context of what and who Isaac was supposed to be. It was never about child sacrifice, and it's countered by many comments by the same that child sacrifice is bad.

Besides that, this is getting off-topic as to the point that it was likely a widespread thing in the world.

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

#144

Post by henrikschroder »

coldtea wrote: post #13
erik_landerholm wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahhh..the good ole days. Articles like this always speak of these acts with almost a sense of awe or reverence. Sorry, but these societies were some of the most disturbing and violent ever and I find this almost giddy excitement over human sacrifice to be very off-putting.

> were some of the most disturbing and violent ever and I find this almost giddy excitement over human sacrifice to be very off-putting. Heck, until past century the crowds gathered to watch hangings, guillotines and other executions all over Europe. And just past century the Germans burned to death 6 million Jews, gypsies, leftists, and homosexuals. Then there are the lynchings as a means of justice (in the West) an…

> 6 million Jews, gypsies, leftists, and homosexuals.

It was worse than that. The total number of holocaust victims was about 17 million, the Jews were just the biggest group at around 6 million.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_victims

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

#145

Post by avn2109 »

5DFractalTetris wrote: post #123
pasabagi wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's dismaying that user 5DFractalTetris' comments here are so heavily downvoted, since they're clearly civil, literate, grammatical, and made in good faith.

Personally I find 5DFractalTetris' claims to be preposterous and wrong, but IMHO downvotes should be reserved for something other than "I disagree with this comment."

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

#146

Post by adventured »

henrikschroder wrote: post #142
75dvtwin wrote: post #140

It is difficult to celebrate historical achievements of our ancestors, when we read about them, passages similar to this. ".... Other Mesoamerican cultures also engaged in human sacrifice and built tzompantlis. But, "The Mexica certainly brought this to an extreme," says Vera Tiesler …." "... Gomóz Valdás found that about 75% of the skulls examined so far belonged to men, most between the ages of 20 and 35—prime warr…

If you ever visit Chichen Itza, you can see murals depicting their ceremonies. One of them shows how two teams would compete in some kind of sport involving hoops and balls, and the leader of the winning team would be sacrificed. And everyone involved thought this was awesome, because it was a great honour something something the gods something sacrifice for your people something. With our modern sensibilities and ra…

It's really not mindboggling at all, in regards to modern sensibilities. It's still regularly going on today.

It's identical to blowing yourself up to kill infidels (argued as a great honor by those advocating it, you're the chosen one). And it's similar to crashing your plane into a ship as part of the Shinpū Tokubetsu Kōgeki Tai, commiting suicide, sacrificing your life to defend the empire and emperor. To be clear, I'm not adding any commentary on the practices, merely noting the historically recent nature of very similar concepts.

One of the most universal tenets of popular religions, and typically most spiritual belief in general, is self-sacrifice.

With these forms of suicide, it's an other-world calling that is meant to be greater than the value of your own life. Modern sensibilities perhaps make it more shocking, however I don't see anything changing about this core concept and its practice in the next century. So long as most religions function on degrees of self-sacrifice, somewhere someone will be taking that to the next step and demanding people sacrifice their lives to some proclaimed higher calling.

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

#148

Post by avn2109 »

duxup wrote: post #60
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…

I'm imagining numerous editorials "I don't know how to tell you to stop sacrificing children...."

Speaking of editorializing, the article's author took to Twitter [0] to defend her article's reverent/respectful tone and (nowadays-common) unspoken premise that all cultures and ideologies are equally good and valid.

You'd think it'd be easy to use ritual vivisection, human sacrifice at scale, organized child murder, and cannibalism [1] as an absolutely unambiguous black-and-white line by which to demarcate civilization from barbarian savagery. But amazingly she's willing to defend the latter in writing.

In my opinion this constitutes dispositive evidence that the article's author is absolutely batty.

[0] https://twitter.com/lizzie_wade/status/1010178681334050822

[1] She has conveniently omitted from her article any mention of the American natives' widespread and well-documented cannibalism.

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

#149

Post by yters »

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.

Based on this premise 56 million abortions a year is also ritual sacrifice, on a greater scale than any form of human sacrifice in the past.

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

#150

Post by yters »

I submit that if we are any different today, it is only in degree or manner, not in kind. 56 million abortion a year worldwide is still a ritual killing of human beings. Only difference is stage of development, and not building edifices or masks out of the remains. On the other hand, we still engage in a manner of adornment by reusing the fetal remains in our medical research, and other profitable consumer goods.
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