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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

#221

Post by sonnyblarney »

adventured wrote: post #146
henrikschroder wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 think that such self sacrifice among the Aztecs is very different to the politically and militarily oriented sacrifices you mention.

The former has no reasonable or practical reasoning.

The later - does, as I think any service member will understand. Every mission has some degree of likelihood that one will face death, some are just willing to up the ante to . a much greater level. The belief in some kind of 'special heaven' is not really the motivating force, it just kind of makes it easier to do.

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

#222

Post by sonnyblarney »

tptacek wrote: post #126
remarkEon wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The Europeans did not remotely come close to killing Central and South Americans at the rate they killed themselves, moreover, the term 'rape' is not a useful pejorative, as there were no real natural resources of value that were removed from that area that would have affected the ability of the aboriginals to live.

Gold was removed in vast quantities, but has only a commercial value to those who have ascribed to it such arbitrary value. Otherwise it's just a pretty rock.

Of course - the masses who died from imported disease notwithstanding.

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

#223

Post by sonnyblarney »

gjkood wrote: post #6
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.

Watching Mel Gibson's Apocalypto gave me chills. I don't know if there are any other movies that depict the times so realisticly (atleast from a movie watcher's perspective though not from a historian's one). The last scene showing Hernan Cortez's ship is the bridge between the old world and the "new world". The start of the decline of the Aztecs.

Apocalypto is a brilliant film designed as an emotional mass market play, but the production design was so great it's award worthy.

Mel Gibson's films usually give some insight into the nature of power and politics, which is really fun because so few attempt to bother with that kind of stuff.

Listen to the DVD voice-over with he and the director of that film, they give you some amazing information as to the backstory of the political setup of the city in which the scenes took place.

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

#224

Post by otalp »

Steko wrote: post #219
avn2109 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The genocide of native americans, Stalin, Hitler, Churchill starving million in India because he thought them to be less human, the transatlantic slave trade....all just minor blemishes in an otherwise great culture.

Perhaps the whole idea of "culture/ideology" is flawed and progress happens not within a culture but by specifically rejecting cultural and ideological norms.

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

#225

Post by otalp »

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.

Marx was literally a part of western civilisation.

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

#226

Post by belorn »

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…

> how a grown man can do stuff like this, especially to a woman..., staring into their eyes.

Why would the gender of the victim make the killing easier or harder? The act of ritualistic killing an other human being and pulling out their beating hearth uncomprehendable regardless of what gender the victim is. What ever method the priests used to bring themselves to perform such act its questionable if gender was any factor.

How do you know that the priest was all male? The Aztec had both female and male gods, and Wikipedia talks about male and female priests. The article does not claim that all the priests were male.

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

#227

Post by klibertp »

mirimir wrote: post #196
mirimir wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

OK, here's another example. For about 40 years, the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in a global game of nuclear chicken. The winning strategy was Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). And it was only luck that an exchange wasn't triggered by accident. So imagine how people in 2600 (if there are any) will see that. If anthropologists discover some artifact that brings it to general attention, anyway. "Horrifi…

I don't think cockroaches will evolve their own archeologists as soon as 2600...

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

#228

Post by tomrod »

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…

> defend her article's reverent/respectful tone and (nowadays-common) unspoken premise that all cultures and ideologies are equally good and valid.

The "Dogma of Otherness"[0] is important for humanity, but needs to be carefully applied to resist Popper's paradox of tolerance.[1]

[0] http://www.davidbrin.com/nonfiction/dogmaofotherness.html

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

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

#229

Post by klibertp »

seneca wrote: post #106
coldtea wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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 did not believe in concentration camps for a few years after the war ended, IIRC, so it's impossible for them to mobilize to stop Holocaust - if that's what you mean.

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

#230

Post by klibertp »

hessenwolf wrote: post #78
coginawheel wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

There's literally nothing in the scriptures (that I've read) supporting this, while there's plenty of evidence God itself is batshit insane, or at least suffers from bipolar disorder, paranoia, and obsessive jealousy. As such, it's entirely plausible to me that we are, indeed, made in such a god's image...

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