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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

#231

Post by adamsea »

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…

> 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.

We might as well add to that list treating humans like property, the mass murder, mass rape, and mass killing of civilians by invading armies, child labor, genocide, things like pogroms and lynchings, separating children from parents at scale, etc ...

So, who is exactly left on the “civilized” side of the line now?

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

#232

Post by coldtea »

henrikschroder wrote: post #144
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…

> 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

Wtf? I have to check the wikipedia article, but I thought even the 6 million total was stretching it a little.

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

#233

Post by adamsea »

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…

Pollution including that of the sort which causes birth defects among children at a mass scale?

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

#234

Post by caf »

golergka wrote: post #200
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…

This seems like an excellent example of postmodernist notion of moral relativism getting too far. Of course Aztecs didn't see this practice as evil - but why would we care? We have our own moral system, and I don't see any reason not to use it in this case.

It's an unprovable, but I'd bet a considerable sum that there were more than a few Aztecs who had some serious doubts about the whole human sacrifice thing.

Voicing those doubts, of course, seems like it would have been an excellent way to find yourself next at the sharp end of the priest's knife.

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

#235

Post by cf498 »

adityapurwa wrote: post #153

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?

>Over two seasons of excavations, INAH archaeologists collected 180 mostly complete skulls from the tower as well as thousands of skull fragments. Now, those finds sit in a lab next to the Templo Mayor ruins, being painstakingly examined by a team led by INAH anthropologist Jorge Gómez Valdés. Cut marks on the skulls leave no doubt they were defleshed after death, and the decapitation technique appears clean and uniform. "[Mexica priests] had extremely impressive anatomical knowledge, which was passed down from generation to generation," Chávez Balderas says.

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

#236

Post by ythn »

stevenwoo wrote: post #134
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 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.

It's almost as if God was helping Abraham understand what He felt like sacrificing His own son (Jesus) to the world.

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

#237

Post by beaconstudios »

int_19h wrote: post #180
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.

"Civic religion" is a concept that some people subscribe to. It doesn't have gods per se, but it has abstract concepts (like e.g. justice) that can be similarly worshiped.

Isn't that just polytheism?

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

#238

Post by PakG1 »

sorokod wrote: post #205
PakG1 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If God in Genesis really wanted the sacrifice to happen, he wouldn't have stopped Abraham before it happened Maybe it really wanted to, but then changed its mind :-)

Perhaps. It's a logical option to consider in a vacuum. It's not logical with context.

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

#239

Post by sorokod »

PakG1 wrote: post #238
sorokod wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If God in Genesis really wanted the sacrifice to happen, he wouldn't have stopped Abraham before it happened Maybe it really wanted to, but then changed its mind :-)

Perhaps. It's a logical option to consider in a vacuum. It's not logical with context.

Correct me if I am wrong - it looks like you rely for context on a new testament book written by an unknown author over a thousand years latter.
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