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

This article doesn't specifically mention cannibalism, but in my twenties I read a book that posited that "the lamb" of Christianity being a symbol of peace, as well as the Hindu reverence for the cow, were based on their ability to provide food security because they are grazers who are able to turn grass into protein. Grass is not a human food source. So this means they don't compete for the same food sources we do.

Aztecs had cook books full of recipes for things like "human ribs with hot peppers." Some old temples had bread fruit trees lining the avenue up to the temple. Bread fruit is another source of protein.

IIRC, the book posited that the Aztecs were cannibals because South America had no native animals like cows or sheep that fed predominantly on grass. Thus they were chronically short on protein and this helped make them a very war like people. If you are all going to die anyway because there is not enough food, dying in battle is both psychologically better for the culture and offers the chance that we win, we take we what we need and we feed our people.

Most wars are ultimately rooted in resource shortages. Real peace is ultimately rooted in problem solving to make sure there are enough resources to go around and that those resources get more or less equitably or "fairly" distributed, in some sense and to some degree. Society can survive economic inequality, but there comes a point past which economic inequality is too much of a hardship on some groups and this routinely goes bad places.

Edit: I confess to being an Ugly American who has a bad habit of lumping South America and Central America together and not making clear distinctions in that regards. Substitute "the lands of the Aztecs" for South America.

I would read about the inquisitions first. The Spanish Inquisition killed about 5,000 as an execution of the civil law, not a religious ritual. The law was bad, but the interrogations were in an attempt to only censure or punish the “guilty,” and to the correct degree. It’s quite a different situation. Here is a link to the Wikipedia article: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition

You can get protein from other sources than large mammals feeding on grass. In fact, they’re one of the less efficient ways to produce proteins if that’s what you are worried about.

Yes, I've had similar viewpoints.

I personally think tying of the soul to intelligence seems a weird distinction. Does that mean that if person goes into a vegetative state, they have lost their soul? Do animals that are less intelligent have a less likelihood of a soul? If you can breed animals without mental faculties are they soul-less? Does the fact that we can't understand if plants are intelligent meant they lack souls? These seem like petty distinctions.

To me there is a notion that life has some intrinsic value to it. In parallel there is a notion that to exist as life, humans have to rely on destroying life. To me these are equally important, recognizing that life has worth but also to exist you must end life. I find this paradoxical duality to be beautiful.

Now from a practical point of view there are social rules for how you end life. So some cultures thought it was ok to eat all forms of life as long as that life wasn't part of your tribe (societies with cannibalism), other societies thought it was ok to eat all forms of life except for your pets (most Americans), some exclude animals based on religious beliefs (pork in Islam and judaism, meat and beef in Hinduism), and some think it is ok to eat all forms of life that are non-animals (vegetarians).

I think its hard for any of these groups to claim moral superiority. The truth is in order to exist we need to destroy life, but at the same time, most can see that life is precious.

Knowing what I know these days, a bigger reason for eating meat is that it is hard to get adequate B vitamins from a vegetarian diet. In most cases, it's not that hard to get adequate protein from a vegetarian diet.

I don't remember the book very well. I read it around 30 years ago. Back then, protein was generally considered to be The Big Issue. It was the basis for Diet for a Small Planet. When the book first came out, it emphasized protein complementarity to solve this issue for vegetarians. It was a political tome. Half of the book was about civil wars and the like (causing starvation). The other half was vegetarian recipes. The follow up book indicated the author had since concluded that it wasn't as challenging as she once thought to get adequate protein from a vegetarian diet.

So it is possible this book I read was basing its hypothesis on the dominant thought of that era that protein was some big limiter. Perhaps protein per se was not the critical detail. We (probably) won't ever really know.

What we do know is that the Aztecs were a very warlike people, human sacrifice was very widely practiced and they also routinely ate their victims, not solely as some barbaric religious ritual, but for dinner.