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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

#151

Post by thedevil »

thedailymail wrote: post #135
stevenwoo wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if this is off topic, but when God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac to prove something to God, that seems to be a mixed message alongside what you are posting.

The Bible may be many things, but consistent it is not.

Yeah, it uh turns out God was was suffering from bipolar disorder. The official diagnosis was originally mentioned in a chapter in revelations. But his PR consultants thought that he probably better pull those verses out before it got published. But the good news is that Jesus got him to seek some good medical advice, and he's been on some great meds and things have been a bit better since, despite occasional lapses, most recently in the early-to-mid-20th century.

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

#152

Post by [deleted] »

yters wrote: post #150

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.

[deleted]

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

#153

Post by adityapurwa »

I wonder whether they put the head there on its skeleton form, or when it still has it flesh, eyes, brains, etc. which make the images more scary. I imagine having a wall made of decapitated head and its bloody mess is very disturbing. Anyone had any reference on information on this?

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

#154

Post by fouc »

walterbell wrote: post #15

Our understanding of Maya language and culture has been rewritten over the past 50 years, thanks to the leadership of an art teacher, Linda Schele, who found that hundreds of years of "accepted archaeology wisdom" was incomplete. There's a documentary and several books about her work: https://youtube.com/watch?v=kF4lue30vgg & https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ag5fGFwWwBU She was invited by NASA to speak at a symposium abou…

Funny how saying an "art teacher" here leads to an automatic assumption that she's just some highschool teacher or similar. Turns out she's a professor.

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

#155

Post by duxup »

avn2109 wrote: post #148
duxup wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 civiliza…

I can get giving people in different situations various levels of leeway as far as comparing my decisions sitting at my computer here to their decisions and such. But damn... what does she even mean by "horrific"... how is that even a thing you would bother to dispute?

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

#156

Post by vinchuco »

erik_landerholm wrote: post #3
defen wrote: post #2

That rendering of the Templo Mayor really evokes a sense of existential dread in me...it’s one thing to see something like that in a video game or horror movie, but knowing it was real is deeply unsettling.

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.

So what? It's history. It doesn't care how you feel about it. Should we abandon the past because 'we know better'?

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

#157

Post by ceejayoz »

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…

> 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.

The sources of that image indicate "several thousand" in the article. Not 100k.

> Combining the two historically documented towers and the rack, INAH archaeologists now estimate that several thousand skulls must have been displayed at a time.

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

#158

Post by JackCh »

erik_landerholm wrote: post #3
defen wrote: post #2

That rendering of the Templo Mayor really evokes a sense of existential dread in me...it’s one thing to see something like that in a video game or horror movie, but knowing it was real is deeply unsettling.

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.

> "I find this almost giddy excitement over human sacrifice to be very off-putting."

Here is the perspective of the article's author: https://mobile.twitter.com/lizzie_wade/status/10101786813340...

I found it to be... illuminating.

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

#159

Post by JackCh »

coldtea wrote: post #113
seneca wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Executions were of condemned criminals. The Western world, and many others, mobilized to stop Nazi Germany. Lynching was an illegal act. I'm not sure those really compare to industrial scale ritual sacrifice as a cornerstone of the society.

> The Western world, and many others, mobilized to stop Nazi Germany. That was more of an effort to avoid Germany getting more powerful (and affecting them) than a humanitarian mission. Besides, half of the "western world" took side with the Nazis, including a full blown pro-Nazi government in occupied France (with tons of sympathizers pre- and during the occupation), Italy (of course), Austria, Bulgaria, Estonia, No…

> "And yet few ever got into prison for it when it was practiced."

Unsurprising since the act was a public display of societal contempt for the legal system. Often the person to be lynched would be torn from a jail by the mob; demonstrating that the judicial system had no power when faced by the will of the mob.

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

#160

Post by mirimir »

duxup wrote: post #155
avn2109 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 civiliza…

I can get giving people in different situations various levels of leeway as far as comparing my decisions sitting at my computer here to their decisions and such. But damn... what does she even mean by "horrific"... how is that even a thing you would bother to dispute?

Because what "horrific" means depends on your culture. So sure, it's horrific for you and me. But it arguably wasn't horrific for Aztecs back then. Or even for their victims. Analogous in the Western tradition is the belief that honorable soldiers should freely give their lives to protect comrades and country. To me, that's also horrific, but whatever.
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