Feeding the gods: Hundreds of skulls reveal massive scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital

The world didn't changed a lot, now we bomb El Assad because he maybe used some gas. We should have left him alone.

 

This thread is interesting in two ways. One, the obvious archeological discoveries will give us a better insight into Aztec culture and two, we get a glimpse in to the right-wing psyche. As we can see from the ops post your typical conservative has both a inferiority and superiority complex. He doesn't understand why liberals embrace other cultures, after all the Aztecs were sacrificing people, and yet there is no love for the Conquistadors. But we must also understand the right wing also practices projection. They don't understand nuance. So the Aztec leadership was sacrificing people, horrific of course, but being completely mature individuals we can understand that this does not represent the entirety of Aztec culture or even the Aztec people, or even people from that region today. The right wing does not understand this. Hence, his confusion. As for his superiority complex, well he thinks the Conquistadors won, they slaughtered, raped and killed more so obviously they were better, because this is the prism from which they view greatness.

As I said. Very interesting thread.

 

Thanks. Agreed. I thought about him but wasn't quite sure if we could call his regime "civilized". Psychotic is probably a better description.

One of my favorite scenes from Star Trek OS was from "A Taste of Armageddon" where a world has "civilized" warfare by using computer simulations and people would voluntarily march into execution machines to satisfy the requirements. Of course this upsets Kirk therefore he upsets their apple cart. When faced with actual Armageddon the leaders of the planet complain his methods are barbaric setting up this scene (which always stuck with me):

ANAN: You realise what you have done?
KIRK: Yes, I do. I've given you back the horrors of war. The Vendikans now assume that you've broken your agreement and that you're preparing to wage real war with real weapons. They'll want do the same. Only the next attack they launch will do a lot more than count up numbers in a computer. They'll destroy cities, devastate your planet. You of course will want to retaliate. If I were you, I'd start making bombs. Yes, Councilman, you have a real war on your hands. You can either wage it with real weapons, or you might consider an alternative. Put an end to it. Make peace.
ANAN: There can be no peace. Don't you see? We've admitted it to ourselves. We're a killer species. It's instinctive. It's the same with you. Your General Order Twenty Four.
KIRK: All right. It's instinctive. But the instinct can be fought. We're human beings with the blood of a million savage years on our hands, but we can stop it. We can admit that we're killers, but we're not going to kill today. That's all it takes. Knowing that we won't kill today. Contact Vendikar. I think you'll find that they're just as terrified, appalled, horrified as you are, that they'll do anything to avoid the alternative I've given you. Peace or utter destruction. It's up to you.

 

And you base that suspicion on what, exactly?

 

Not just the right wing psyche, but also the left wing. Although I think the OP overplays the idea, do you disagree that there are, indeed, some anthropologists who play up the "noble savage" idea while denigrating anything that is Eurocentric?

The truth, as usual is found between the two extremes of left and right.

 

Most aztec people probably thought it was necessary to feed the gods. Anyway, Aztec had barely a country, it was more of a city state, a lot of native american in the regions hated too aztecs and joined the spanish.

I like history, and yes, the history of the world is filled with nameless horrors. We're just living a pause.

 

I'm talking about human sacrifice as a religious practice. Mao and Stalin far eclipsed Germany's kill count, lefties try and ignore that reality because they can't deny that communism is theirs...

 

For the record, if someone is trying to kill me, I don't give a damn is their reason is their religion, my religion, their politics or anything else. I'm going to strongly resent it. Spin that however you like.

 

No, projection is pretty much a symptom of the right wing.

I question their number and relevance in the scientific community. I'm sure their are anthropologists out there that think Aliens built the pyramids, what do the beliefs of fringe crazy people have to do with anything?

Sorry but that is just not the reality of the situation. Not that their aren't extremist left wingers, there are, but the left wing calls them out and the road between mainstream left and extreme left is a long one. The extreme right is not that far off from mainstream right. Hell, the right wing has been saying the same thing about Mexicans today, all over this board. The wish to pretend that violence, poverty and corruption are Mexican values and that the majority of Mexican immigrants want to bring that culture here and the left wants to help them do it. Where is the nuance in that? And that isn't the extreme right, that's Donald Trump.

Yea, I honestly know little about the Aztecs and I was wondering myself whether the sacrifices were a matter of force or their version of Sunday mass.

I love history too, but we're not living in a pause. There are millions dying in conflicts all over the globe, not to mention the millions that die due to poverty or treatable diseases. In a world so rich and with so much reach, those are horrors as well.

 

You're under the impression they didn't succeed?

 

You found some good images on this. Some of these are cold.

 

Then you'll agree, if you are at all consistent, that an alien culture, if it deems itself morally superior to Human Western Civilization, would be right to wipe out every man, woman, and child.

 

Considering the ratio death/number of peope alive, we're living a pause.

 

So they were right to "wipe them out" because they killed people. That is some seriously screwed up logic!

At least it was a quick death and they didn't burn people at the stake - a horrific way to die - like the Spaniards did. And this was 500 years ago. That makes this thread especially inane.

 

Interestimg how easily the conquistadors were able to conquer these people.

 

I'm sure they agreed to the social contract. So all is well.

 

Gave a like because I do agree with some of your points notball, butbthatbis ok. I see it as the more extreme of the right wing the person is the more that person seems to adore the acts of the Conquistators or those in other parts of the new world who did a job on native populations.

 

Ipso facto it's not just a symptom of the left wing...additional proof is found elsewhere in your post.

Agreed. Saying "most" is one thing but "many" can mean anything from 3 to a majority. I have little doubt there are LW nutjobs who are anthropologists just as I have little doubt there are RW nutjobs among them. However, I think both are on the fringe and within the range of mental illness among any group of professionals.

 

Well the Spanish did have higher tec weapons than the native peoples. Not M4's or even Winchesters or Gattling guns but muskets and cannon are superior to bow and arrows and spears. As I recall the Spanish were very aggressive in conquering their targets. Up North the British and French used the encroachment method of one section at a time. I do not recall why and how but the Spanish seemed to have interbred with the native populations with resulted in a hybrid population in Central and parts of South America. The Portugese did not follow that pattern as much in Brazil. The other exception seems to be Argentina.

That is my observation !

 

Stalin succeeded in total numbers (and maybe even Mao), but the level of depraved efficiency attained by the Nazi killing machine hasn't been achieved by either. A difference must be drawn between those run through a process that sorts their belongs, executes them and efficiently disposes of the bodies and those who just use brute force or, as a consequence of actions, causes a side effect where many to starve or die from disease.

 

Agreed. Not quite as lopsided as the Italians using tanks and machine guns against Ethiopian horses and spears but definitely a technological advantage. This doesn't even address the inadvertent advantage attained by conquistadors as disease carriers.

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/o/oldstone-viruses.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
....Smallpox alone, in the twentieth century, has killed an estimated 300 million individuals, about threefold as many persons as all the wars of this century (1). In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, smallpox killed emperors of Japan and Burma, as well as kings and queens of Europe, thereby altering dynasties, control of countries, and alliances (2). Earlier, the successful conquest of Mexican Aztec and Peruvian Inca empires by a handful of Spanish conquistadors led by Hernando Cortes and Francisco Pizarro, respectively, resulted in large part from epidemics of smallpox and measles virus infection that decimated the native defenders. Most of the conquistadors had been exposed to these viruses in Europe, so were immune to (protected from) their effects, but those of the New World were completely vulnerable. In fact, neither the obvious technical superiority of the Spaniards and the superstitions that Quetzalcoatl or other gods would destroy the natives, nor the Spaniards' alliances with tribes subjugated by the Aztecs or Incas accounts for the Spanish victory. History asserts that the Aztecs, once incited to fight, savagely attacked and defeated the Spanish. However, on the very evening that the Aztecs drove the conquistadors out of what is now Mexico City, killing many while routing the rest, a smallpox epidemic began. As it raged in the city (3), not only did the susceptible Aztec forces die in droves, but the psychological aspect of seeing Spaniards, who fought under a Christian god, resist this new malady while warriors of the Aztec gods were dying of infection demoralized the natives even further. The Aztecs could not have known that smallpox was endemic in Europe at this time and that many in Spain exposed to smallpox earlier were resistant or immune to subsequent infection by this virus. The stricken Aztecs interpreted the death of their people while the Spaniards went untouched as a clear indication that the Christian god held dominance over native gods. Therefore, one direct consequence of mass smallpox infection was the subjugation and subsequent exploitation of native Americans and Mexicans by the Spaniards. A second and more lasting effect was destruction of the native culture; as the Spaniard culture assumed sovereignty, millions of Indians were converted to the Christian faith. During the time of the Spanish conquest in the New World it is estimated that more than one-third of the total native population had been killed by smallpox viruses....

 

Well, between the conquistadors, seeking fortune for themselves and spanish royalty, and disease, those fortune and glory seekers pretty much killed off most of the native population, and not just the Aztecs. Should they have done this, only because of the barbarism of a primitive death cult relition? To stop such evil practices? A case can be made for that. If of course western traditional moral principles are a higher good than the moral principles of the Aztecs. Having limits on killing other human beings, in peace time, to apease some god or gods, is a good thing IMO. No human sacrifice to the gods. Because it is wrong morally, and not an intelligent way for human beings to act.

Of course in Star Trek, the prime directive was not to interfere with any other culture. We have no right in that way of thinking to interfere.

 

Thanks for posting. Yes I remember now about the diseases. That was obviously a major factor if the the overriding factor.

 

The promise of free stuff.