Hundreds of skulls reveal massive scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by walterbell » Sun, Jun 24, 2018, 10:29 AM UTC

jcims wrote: post #102

scarecrowbob wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is kind of a neat idea. Especially, it feels like fertile ground for speculative fiction about what would happen if it were collectivizable...

Indeed!! We’re closer than we have ever been, and that trend is likely to continue.

Thanks for posting this concept.

To what extent does mass+social media create collective subgroups of consciousness? What's the decay curve of a subgroup and how do subgroups compete, fork, merge or decay?

How do persistent records (oral memories, written records, national holidays, memorials, digital footprints, media archives, censorship) feed back into subgroups of collective consciousness?

How can collective consciousness be measured, monetized, directed, encouraged, suppressed, or otherwise manipulated for specific purposes, within a specific bounded timeframe of a single hour or day?

How do time zones affect the "nature/flavor" of consciousness in each hour, as populations sleep and wake and work and rest and ...?

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

#212

Post by walterbell » Sun, Jun 24, 2018, 10:36 AM UTC

fouc wrote: post #154

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.

At the time of her first visit to Palenque, she had a masters degree in Art and was teaching Studio Art at the university, was not yet a professor, and had no formal background in epigraphy. After her pioneering discoveries, she went back to grad school and specialized in Latin American studies.

> Still attending graduate school, Schele founded the Maya Hieroglyphic Workshop in Texas in 1977 which consisted of 21 consecutive seminars concerning Maya hieroglyphic writing and introduced more people intrigued by the Maya field than many other books from that time that were considered "popular".[6] Twenty years later, the workshop expanded into what is known as the Maya Meetings at Texas, and includes a symposium of research papers by major scholars and the Forum on Hieroglyphic Writing.

> By this time in her life, Schele realized her destiny as a Mayanist; she enrolled as a graduate student in Latin American Studies at the University of Texas shortly before resigning from her position at South Alabama.[7] She was awarded a Doctorate in Latin American studies by the University of Texas in 1980. She continued her teaching career there, in the department of Art/Art History. At the time of her death, she was the John D. Murchison Regents Professor of Art in the department.

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

#213

Post by Ritsuko_akagi » Sun, Jun 24, 2018, 10:38 AM UTC

scarecrowbob wrote: post #81

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…

This is kind of a neat idea. Especially, it feels like fertile ground for speculative fiction about what would happen if it were collectivizable...

human instrumentality project

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

#214

Post by walterbell » Sun, Jun 24, 2018, 10:44 AM UTC

pgrad wrote: post #84

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…

>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. Says who? >She was invited by NASA to speak at a symposium about alien civilizations. Source? Do you want me to buy a book too? Edit: OK, the way you wrote your post got my skepticism alarm…

https://www.amazon.com/Edgewalker-conversation-epigrapher-in...

> she revealed herself as a passionately communicative educator who believed the public deserved to share in the excitement of the work they were funding and delighted in presenting her discoveries directly to them. Others tapped into her inspirational gift for relating an ancient culture to our modern world and, amongst many keynote speeches at conferences and university commencements, NASA invited her to address their key staff on the relevance of understanding another world view. An outsider, in her own words an edgewalker, all her career, Linda had been an artist and teacher when the Maya captured her imagination. She had erupted into the field as a young woman just some strange little painter from Alabama in an academic discipline dominated by male archaeologists, just at the time when the investigation of the so called Mysterious Maya was about to become the most dynamic area in the rediscovery of the ancient past.

> it was to be at Palenque that she was first to play a crucial role in breaking the code of the Maya's hieroglyphic writing system. Her mission was to interpret and explain the historic Maya world of city states, kings, rulers, and religion to her own world. But, by working with the modern Maya peoples of Mexico and Guatemala, she began to understand the links between the Indian peoples own rich indigenous culture and their ancient past; and she began to hand back to these oppressed people the tools to repossess their history. This was what Linda Schele considered her most important work.

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

#215

Post by watwut » Sun, Jun 24, 2018, 10:52 AM UTC

golergka wrote: post #201

watwut wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then again, it makes sense to put things into historical perspective. When we are about to talk about how one group was murderous and cruel, and how odd it makes us feel, it makes sense to point out what was going on elsewhere. Especially when the exact group reporting on those things is involved in cruelties of their own and uses these reports to excuse their own cruelties. Cortez him self was quite cruel, fond of t…

It seems that you're more concerned with giving value judgements to Aztecs and Spanish, and their comparison – but why is it relevant, or even interesting, at all? Just like in a case where article's author took to Twitter to announce that "human sacrifice wasn't horrific" (which it of course was), I just don't understand why people can't discuss history without fixating on moral value judgements. Do you have a horse…

It seems to me other way round. I did not judged either, but I wrote why certain reports could not be trusted. The "this particular thing is likely exaggerated" comments were downvoted at the time I read it - regard less of how factual they were and no they did not claimed Azteks not have human sacrifice at all.

That is discussing history without judgement. If you bring this as proof that Cortez was unfairly disbelieved, which people do, then it is absolutely relevant to bring why, the way he collected evidence and what his goals were. That is part of historical discussion too.

This whole discussion, meaning other (top) threads are primary about making civilization judgement. Except that, only Aztek (or communist for some odd reason) kills are allowed in that discussion. It is literally there, Europeans coming were clearly superior, because we don't talk about facts that break that nice vision - namely that potential victims of sacrifice ended up being tortured in order to extract evidence that they themselves killed people (or have gold).

So no, discussion turned into civilization moral judgement before me and at that point it is perfectly ok to discuss involved civilizations - or at least what they were doing at that time at that place.

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Offtopic: I think you can actually judge past people. You can judge Aztek priest, who is in it in part for own gain or cruel Samurai, Nazi leader or Colombus or whoever specifically. You should not however buy one of these guys woldview, just because he is our tribe remotely, and claim his self serving violence and treatment of commoners are fair due to somebody else's action.

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

#216

Post by pcrh » Sun, Jun 24, 2018, 10:54 AM UTC

Turing_Machine wrote: post #175

shoo wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for people who are dying of starvation versus people who are being explicitly human-sacrificed, from their perspective do you think it particularly matters if they are dying from the neglect and sheer indifference of others, or from direct intentional malice? i would argue that for those on the receiving end, the difference matters very little.

Oddly enough, the people who are actually dying of starvation always seem to be located in Marxist countries rather than the evil capitalist Western countries. Just bad luck, I guess.

It's useful to your argument that you excluded the famines in Ireland and India under the British. Let alone slavery, etc.

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

#217

Post by nmca » Sun, Jun 24, 2018, 10:57 AM UTC

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…

If you dwell on these things, I strongly suggest reading "The Possibility of an Ongoing Moral Catastrophe"

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=th...

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

#218

Post by sonnyblarney » Sun, Jun 24, 2018, 11:00 AM UTC

jacobr wrote: post #192

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…

Regarding Civilization or savagery, which is this: Then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright calmly asserting that U.S. policy objectives were worth the sacrifice of half a million Iraqi children: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RM0uvgHKZe8#

The term 'sacrifice' is used in different contexts. A 'sacrifice' to a god for whatever reason is a literal sacrifice, talking about the 'cost of war' in terms of 'sacrifice' is a metaphor.

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

#219

Post by Steko » Sun, Jun 24, 2018, 11:04 AM UTC

avn2109 wrote: post #166

shoo wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in modern western society, we tend to have a regard for the lives of [certain] individuals in the short term, at the expense of lives of others in the longer term, not to mention relatively little regard for the environment, or other species. other societies may have been held together as engines that required the input of thousands of human lives to be sacrificed to appease the gods, our society functionally appears…

If your cultural relativism/multiculturalism/whatever-you-want-to-call-it leads you to equate/compare "institutionalized torture killing of children" with "pollution," that's a hint that you've made some drastic reasoning errors. It's such a silly, unreasonable ideology that it basically refutes itself when you get anywhere near a corner case like this. Some cultures/ideologies really are better than others. If you n…

> Some cultures/ideologies really are better than others. If you need me, I'll be right here in my Western Civilization, happily not vivisecting anyone.

Good old western civilization, no blood on our hands.

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

#220

Post by sonnyblarney » Sun, Jun 24, 2018, 11:06 AM UTC

beaconstudios wrote: post #89

jack9 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fundamentally a philosophical question. I think it's a surprisingly insightful observation.

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.

"What god is capital punishment meant to appease?"

I have to agree just a shade with the premise.

A lot of punishment is morally oriented, and it's derived from our value system which is headed by 'God', or at least an interpretation of that.

Murderers are executed not just to keep them off the streets, but as a matter of punishment which is fundamentally pleasing to our moral code ... headed by God.

I think old-school capital punishment is at least distantly related to the concept of sacrifice.

Though I wouldn't want to equate the two.