WI: No Human Sacrifice in Aztec/Mesoamerican Culture

I just remembered something. I once heard that Aztec weapons weren't designed to kill, but rather to incapacitate for later sacrifice. If they didn't have human sacrifice, maybe they'd be compelled to make deadlier weapons?

As someone who's seen footage of an obsidian-bladed macana slicing halfway through a side of beef...at the ribs, yea, they're designed to kill...with a lot of blood loss from even minor cuts. It's like lining a cricket bat with surgical-grade scalpel blades.
 
I've no problem with the 40,000 number for a few reasons.

First, the Aztecs wrote that number down themselves after the Conquest. They were told to prepare a history of their people and they had no reason to lie because they already knew the disgust in which the Spanish viewed human sacrifice. If anything, they may have understated the numbers involved.

Second, most of us seem to be laboring under the assumption that the temple dedication only lasted for a day, a long weekend, or some other minor amount of time. The dedication process could have taken any amount of time during which slightly different dedication sacrificial ceremonies took place. Once the "magic" number of dedication sacrifices was reached, the "ordinary" or "everyday" sacrificial ceremonies could then be performed on the altars.

The local allies who formed the vast majority of Cortez' army during the conquest of Tenochtitlan performed human sacrifices too and yet you hear little about how "evil", "bloodthirsty", and "savage" they were. The human sacrificial component of Mesoamerican religions was simply used as an excuse by the Spanish and, if it didn't exist, the Spanish would have come up with something else.

Finally, I'd like very much to remind you all out that human sacrifice is a universal human cultural practice and not something confined in time or space to Mesoamerica. Such sacrifices are as old as humanity. Also there are cultural practices that evolved from them and the ideas behind them with us to this day.


Bill

P.S. Obsidian is still used to this day for certain surgical instruments. It's definitely sharp enough to kill. It was how obsidian weapon were used that made the difference in the flower wars-style combat.
 
I disagree with the first part of your post, but agree completely with the second. For the first part, you seem to be going under the assumption that we consider the number to be a Spanish lie, but I for one do not. From what I've heard over the years, it was an Aztec lie. At the time it was written they still didn't believe their culture was inferior and immoral, they still believed sacrifice was perfectly normal. But the number was highly exaggerated (I've heard claims of 80,000 too) too make themselves look stronger. The same sources told me that it was realistically more like 20,000 or so.

But that is irrelevant. The second part of your post is completely correct. I've still heard from people saying the Mesoamericans were monsters for ritually killing people, but hear nothing from them about the Celtic or Norse, or the Romans especially. The Spanish themselves killed thousands in the name of religion, which you could call sacrifice. The whole issue about Mesoamerican sacrifice is irrelevant to whether or not they'd get conquered. You hear people claim the Aztecs fought the Spanish to capture them, but this is false. Not every battle was fought to capture, and the Aztecs quickly learned the futility in trying to take a Spaniard captive.
 
I've no problem with the 40,000 number for a few reasons.

First, the Aztecs wrote that number down themselves after the Conquest. They were told to prepare a history of their people and they had no reason to lie because they already knew the disgust in which the Spanish viewed human sacrifice. If anything, they may have understated the numbers involved....

Bill

Bill, they hae every reason to lie to Spaniards. They were trying to convince the Spanish priests they were no longer heathens/pagans, and part of that included exagerrating their past sinfulness.

Happens all the time in confessionals, revival meetings and the like. The sinner who was a drunk is determined to let everyone know just how horrible a drunk he was, "embellishing" sometimes without realizing it. The time he had ten drinks becomes twenty drinks, etc.
 
if there was no human sacrifice, then the Spaniards would've still commited genocide/mass murder because the locals bled themselves repeatedly (ie, the Mayans)
Just one question, did Gustavus Adolphus commit genozide in Northern Germany and Bohemia? The brutalities of the Spaniards in the Americas were not different from other brutalities of the era. If you do not consider that the swedes committed genocide/mass murder in Germany, you cannot consider the conquest of Mexico as genocide/mass murder.
 
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