“There is no such thing as ‘Human Sacrifice’”

This is a fascinating article!

Apologies for the double message, forgot to include this: https://end1492.blogspot.com/2015/08/a-bloody-history-within-bloody-shoe.html?m=1, this post mentions the truth about the Tlaxcalas and some great historians like Indigenous Scholar Guillermo Bonfil Batalla who reminds me Indigenous Scholars like Jack Forbes, Vine Deloria Jr. Then we have Roberto “Dr. Cintli” Rodriguez, him and his wife Patrisia Gonzales made the 2005 thought provoking documentary “Amoxtli San Ce Tojuan, We Are One.” While looking up this documentary, I read comments saying Rest In Power to Dr. Cintli. Had no idea he passed away in 2023. Remember him on fb, his posts and brief chats. All these great scholars minus Patrisia Gonzales have passed away and luckily all have a wiki page with alot of info. Giving thanks for their knowledge.

Looked up the author, found her article pretty thorough and relevant to this discussion.
www.theguardian.com/film/2007/jan/08/2
”Maya archaeologist Elizabeth Graham on Apocalypto
Mon 8 Jan 2007”

are u a sigma for liking aztec?

And Europeans would like people to think that Europeans weren’t involved in human sacrifices and cannibalism. Now didn’t their God sacrifice his own for their bad behaviour already once? People shouldn’t talk about how disgusting the backyards are of others while not looking at just how gruesome their yard is first!

I find this article interesting and an original take from the stereotypical viewpoint of Aztecs being uncivilized. “Uncivilized” enough to perform human sacrifices to their fake gods, from a Spanish viewpoint since they were majority Catholic. “History is always written by the winners” - Winston Churchill. Majority of our context derives of a Spaniard account. And current factual points from present day studies. However there is a correlation between fact and context. It is factual of finding of mass graves of skulls. However what is the factual story context of it from a primary source NOT the winners account. Time and time again we see the dehumanization of a region population to easier target them. Dehumanizing aztecs by conveying a message of savages who sacrifice humans with the idea that the Gods would reward them is easier to accept why the mass murder and stealing of land happened to this indigenous group. Along with converting their beliefs with monotheistic views forcefully. The idea that Spaniard are the peaceful civilized culture to “help” the indigenous to steer them in the right path of God (monotheism) and abandon the human sacrifices provided a clear winners story. Actual ancestors of Aztecs, those who kept their families stories alive through generations, agree that was not the case. They are primary sources and should be considered first as oppose to those who colonized and erased a big portion of their history. Aztecs pyramids have a house like structure at the top. That was to house a man who spent 365 days staring at the constellation. This was crucial to serve the purpose of knowledge for agriculture. Understanding the stars can guide one with knowledge of the rotation of the earth: seasons, weather, time. I would agree with your article that the skeletons of those “human sacrificed” were not near that definition. But rather a story to convert a group as uneducated and blood thirsty. The Aztecs were far more knowledgeable than given credit. As this is easier to allow the narrative of the mass murder and colonization of them. This story is done and nothing can change the fact that it occurred. But it’s also important to remember the stories the victorys say. As this would greatly affect the group being dehumanized and easier to target. It is currently occurring in modern time 2023. Those who disagree with this article so strongly, why is the meaning of your close mindedness? Is it a trigger to learn those who colonized indigenous group create fake propaganda and create their own account of another group. Why not listen and educate on primary sources to provide an equal interpretation of both sides.

interesting how only comments supporting this foolish pop-article are allowed to be posted. Any statement with actual facts are blocked........ The author knows nothing of Aztec sacrificial offerings. Foolish article base on feelings rather than facts.

Thank you for this informative article! Up until I read this, I believed the Aztecs did know about human sacrifice. I also thought they were much more bloodthirsty than the medieval Europeans. thank you for the information.

Awesome article! I do not know why some people are trying to hate. Death is apart of every civilization. The opposers are trying to say that human sacrifice for Gods is so taboo... What about the crusades? Not to mention the disgusting death penalty euros had... This is an awesome website!! Ignore all the haters who do not know how to friendly critique.

An answer to your answer...
You focus on this “exact number” thing, but it’s not the point. The remains of hundreds or thousands on a same site IS proof of mass sacrifice: much more than what other pre-Columbian cultures like the Maya or the Inca used to do. If you can title “no such thing as human sacrifice” out of that and still pretend you like to call “a spade a spade”, then you have big unresolved issues with the dictionary.
Same thing for “sacrifice”: in no culture, sacrifice is a free act of “cruelty and punishment” — in fact, it’s sacred, by definition, so always surrounded by a lot of attention. The definition of a “sacrifice” is to “kill an animal or a person and offer them to a god or gods” (Cambridge Dictionary). It totally fits the Aztec case. The claim that sacrifices were just a war thing is bogus, as Aztecs literally believed the fate of the cosmos was at stake if they ever stopped sacrificing...
”It’s just rather sad that you narrow-mindedly suggest that we want to portray the Aztecs as a ‘pure civilisation”
Because whitewashing is what you’re doing, and yes I agree it’s sad... Blatant, proof-alien denial of a negative key aspect of any civilization is called negationism, when applied to History, and people who do it always are politically motivated. Sorry to pick this example, but who do you think Holocaust deniers care the most about? Their ideological bias or historical truth?
I somehow think you can still become honest with yourselves. This is why I bothered answering your rather disdainful answer I could’ve sworn was written by a 6th grader, given its maturity... If you care the slightest bit about historical truth, you will. Otherwise... well let’s just say the alternative would be very worrying mentality to adopt for people writing articles about a past civilization...

I’m curious re your take on these discoveries
https://www.science.org/content/article/feeding-gods-hundreds-skulls-reveal-massive-scale-human-sacrifice-aztec-capital

Ridiculous comments wanting to argue human sacrifice never happened or as if the Aztecs (Mexica) were some free loving hippie jedi knights. Humans killed other humans for power resources or other means. It’s in our nature for 100s of thousands of years, grow up and face the reality. Humans killed each other and different cultures did it in unique ways, grow up, stop romanticizing history. History can get ugly accept it don’t try and change it.

Heated arguments in the comments aside (i’m trying to learn over here...) I am curious about something I heard spread around and would like to know if it is true. There’s a popular belief that sacrifices were also randomly picked among the general population with a lottery system and I feel that kinda contradict what we know of most mesoamerican civilizations. Was this a Spanish myth or is there some truth to it?

I am saddened by these comments. To those who are posting that this is rubbish, you can really on Hispanics so much? I would love to see a series that tries it best to tell all history, the facts that can be proven, all the myths that exist, and I dont care that a group of marginalized are portrayed evil if they were evil, but you commentors seem to have a problem with new modern perspectives from ignored perspectives of the time? This isnt about politics, me personally I hate the Left and the Right equally, I just listen to truth of old.

I believe that there is ample evidence to show that Aztecs (along with many other civilizations, performed human sacrifice. And not one of those civilizations prospered as long as they may have otherwise.
Your sarcastic remarks (telling people that their words are “cool” when in disagreement with your whitewashed, politically correct version of history) do not say much for your “ability to debate as a “scholar”. Instead, it is the hallmark of a petulant child who simply retorts to name-calling when cornered or threatened. It isn’t” rubbish” solely because you disagree with a body of work/study that isn’t in line with your naive attempts to alter history so that humans, any humans, seem less barbaric. Humans have always been barbaric, and may be so now more than any other time in history. Because by now we should and do know better. And yet atrocity thrives and shows no sign of stopping or slowing down.
I’m no Aztec detractor, and to my knowledge they did not sell their young into sexual slavery, as almost the entire world now does.
Every major civilization does something to bring itself down. I hope what we’re doing to children, animals and the elderly bring about out utter collapse sooner than later.
I mean you no disrespect. It seems as though you have decided on a belief and will brook no argue or evidence to the contrary. That is not scholarship.

I am from Mexico City and I appreciate what this website brings to the table. Just to be clear, anybody who is constantly branding the Aztecs/Mexicas as barbaric, savages is either just biased or absolutely racist and I am sick and tired of it. Nobody likes to discuss the fact that Mexico’s indigenous population was reduced from 12 million to 2 million within 3 generations. I suggest people to read the book “ American Holocaust”. We suffered the biggest genocide and I know this bc DNA test proofed I am mostly Native American which shocked me because I have always been told that. I “ am a Hispanic/Latino”. Genocide is actually defined as destroying or wiping out a person identity with their race. I was indoctrinated with the same belief of them being savages and barbaric until I literally started to question that official narrative. There is NO evidence of human sacrifice. A book came out last year called “The Value of Human Life” written by scholars and professors and one of the chapter in there clearly states how Europeans invented human sacrifice narrative as an excuse to commit all the mass murder and unjustified conquest against the Aztecs and the Indigenous people of Mexico. The Skull Rack/Tzompantli is literally just Ancestor Worship yet till this day it’s interpreted as victims decapitated from “human sacrifice”. Take the words of Bartholomew de la Casas he was the first priest to plead with the Spanish to stop the brutality against the indigenous people. From his words he also said “ “As for this allegation that they sacrificed humans and ate them, as Gómara says, I believe that there is no truth in it, because in that realm of Yucatán I always heard that there were NO human sacrifices,
nor was it known what it was to eat human flesh,
and the statement of Gómara, who did not see nor
hear it, but got it from the mouth of Cortés, his
master, who maintained him, has little authority, as
it is in his favour and an excuse for his crimes; this
is from the talk of the Spaniards and from those who wrote down their horrible deeds, to defame all these nations to excuse the violence, cruelties, robberies
and massacres that they have perpetrated, and that
every day and even today they continue to do”

It’s literally all based on hearsay and archeologists have been trained to interpret every archeological find as “ human sacrifice” activity’s when it is obvious other explanations can be reasoned with. Also scholars have also proofed that the Aztecs were NOT POLYTHEISTS but actually were Monotheism/panentheism. All of these so called Gods are actually just manifestation of natural phenomena such as rain, the fire, wind , and of One Deity which contradicts the narrative that they “worshiped many gods” . Read the book “Aztec Thought and Culture” , “Flayed God”, “Mask of the Spirit: Image and Metaphor of Mesoamerica”, “ Cantares Mexicanos” (Aztec Poetry) “The Humming Bird” by Eva Hunt, Florentine Codex Book 6. It’s been proven that the four popular “gods” Huitzilopochtli, Xipe Totec, Queztalcoatl, Tezcatlipoca are actually just symbols and manifestations of the four cardinal directions which is consistent with other Native Tribes and cultures. I just would love for people to stop this colonization brainwash that discriminates other people’s culture without understanding the whole context. Also Europeans coming to another continent and wiping out most of the inhabitants literally destroys credibility to their testimony when it comes to human sacrifice. Even Matthew Restall, said in his book that the Spanish literally indoctrinated the indigenous people of Mexico to make them believe the lies the Spanish conquistadors and priests constantly said. Ritual killing from enemy warriors was interpreted as” human sacrifice”. In fact Restall admits the Aztecs respected the life of a human being FAR more than the Spaniards did. Aztecs NEVER committed mass murders on unarmed people and yet the Spanish did. Also reading Aztec Poetry and their beliefs also contradicts the whole barbaric bend on murder myth. Nobody likes to discuss the fact the Spanish murdered thousands of unarmed people deceitfully. The indigenous people of this continent have been mistreated and discriminated for over 500 years. I think it’s time people to start recognizing the fact they are NOT on their continent. They need to realize there has been cultures, traditions and civilizations here for THOUSANDS of years. What they have been told by so called experts has an agenda of literally making indigenous people of this continent forget their indigenous roots and their ancestors. They literally do not want people to know the genocide of indigenous Americans.

Some of the comments on this article are so strange.
Evidence of women and children being killed is proof of human sacrifice? What? Women and children also die in war last time I checked. Sometimes they would be captured, sometimes they would be killed off. That’s the nature of wars.
Archaeology can be terrible, by the way. There are plenty of nonsense theories, based on tiny amounts of evidence, fabricated whole-cloth out of the imagination of the”scientists”.
Stories of human sacrifice to the gods are largely myths made up after the fact to justify traumatic experiences. Drought, hunger, disasters. The dead were honored as “sacrifices” to cruel gods. Death was far more common, while grief and trauma were pervasive.
The notion of large scale human sacrifices, particularly of their own family members has always sounded preposterous. Humans behaviors haven’t changed in tens of thousand of years. They would not sacrifice their own children willingly. Nor would communities allow it. Would you? No? They probably wouldn’t have either.
”Human sacrifice” as a concept is almost certainly to cover for the real pain of life, and or ex post facto justifications for bad behavior as the article implies. It’s a form of scapegoating to help the community carry on in the face of adversity.

The Spanish expedition contained numerous indigenous warriors and tribesmen who were tired of Aztecs over taxation and demands for tribute. The Aztecs had no problems oppressing and plundering their neighbours. They were in turn crushed and plundered by a stronger force. There is no reason to pity or celebrate them. They simply received a dose of their own medicine

One last thing: “the author has a PhD” is a just an ad credibilitam. There has been PhDs saying global warming isn’t a thing or even that Jesus was an alien, so is it even supposed to be a point? PhD claims are like anyone’s claims: they’re relevant when they match facts and logical arguments.
But keep on this way. We’re living at the times of extreme relativism, manichean thinking and pseudo-History to serve identitarianist ideologies, so no doubt your narrative of Aztecs as yet another pure civilization destroyed and misportrayed by evil Europeans will find its public...

The Aztecs killed people as gifts to their gods (to feed them) after elaborate religious rituals, which is the very definition of a “sacrifice”. Presenting victims as mere “delayed war executions” (like when Mongols systematically killed their captives) overshadows this fact, just like it omits some of them weren’t captured in wars (like misshappen folks or misfits). It’s simply a lie.
Archaeological discoveries are consistent with Spanish tales. You may damage control all you want, “they found hundreds of skeletons not thousands “ — which is convenient, since we’ll never find the skeleton of EVERY sacrificed human... but it takes a lot of bad faith to state it isn’t evidence of mass-scale sacrifices.
Nahuatl not differenciating “sacrifice” from “war captive” (malli) is irrelevant. “Debt” and “fault” are the same word in German (Schuld), does that mean they don’t know the concept of “debt”? Words aren’t reality.

This is absolute drivel and unmitigated nonsense.
There is ample evidence to show that local women and children were also sacrificed in an absolute abhorrent manner.
There is evidence on the skeletons that unequivocally verify the accounts of the spaniards.
The unfortunate victim’s hearts were ripped out when they were still alive and limbs chopped off. This is corroborated by the marks found on the skeletons.
Not only that, parts of the victims were consumed by their captors as well as sold in local markets.
These ‘academics’ are an embarrassment to academia in general. The author clearly has a revisionist political agenda. I don’t care how many degrees she has, she is a fraud in my opinion.

https://www.science.org/content/article/feeding-gods-hundreds-skulls-reveal-massive-scale-human-sacrifice-aztec-capital#:~:text=Human%20sacrifice%20occupied%20a%20particularly,and%20the%20world%20would%20end.
Women and children were also sacrificed as proved by the above article dealing with skulls found from sacrifices from the Mexica. So killing warriors only is incorrect.

I see commenters who rely on what conquerors wrote and “documented” and insist we see the words of those conquerors as objective reality.
To respond let me point out a fact of all conquests and wars: the first casualty of such “adventures” is truth.
Every society that ever wished to conquer others have exaggerated the faults of the societies they sought to conquer.
To assuage one’s conscience and to gain support of the public and to gain funding for their conquests from monarchs, there is a need for people to justify acts that we would normally find repulsive and even evil.
Funding wars and expeditions to the other side of the globe is quite expensive, and fiscally responsible monarchs aren’t always anxious to fund conquests if those to be conquered pose no threat or are seen as peaceful.
So, we get war propaganda.
I will note that the author did not say that humans were not taken to the temple to be killed.
She is saying that those who were killed were enemy warriors.
She is saying that those we call Aztecs preferred not to kill enemy warriors on the battlefield but to capture them and bring them back to town where they would later be killed at the temple, or in some cases made into slaves.
So, therefore, she tells us that the enemy soldiers death was delayed.
This is actually an interesting tactic to keep warriors from having the responsibility to kill in the battlefield.
By taking that responsibility from the warriors, the warriors probably re-assimilate into civil society more quickly when a war ends because they don’t necessarily get into the “kill or be killed” mindset.
This probably made it easier for warriors to live peacefully with society at the end of a war.
So, what the author is saying is: however horrible you find “human sacrifice,” it was no worse than the killing we do on the battlefield.
And she’s correct. Killing enemy soldiers is killing enemy soldiers It’s just that the Aztecs delayed the killing of enemy soldiers.

Don’t bother to publish this comment. To call someone naive in a public forum isn’t acceptable anywhere. You belittle every commenter who disagrees with the author. The 1000 words allowed hardly allows space to address the naive drivel presented in this story. The author presents an unsupported opinion. Diaz is corroborated by Landa, Gomara, Cortez himself, Sahagún, Herrera re human sacrifice. Human sacrifice is ubiquitous in every codex. The inane culturally blind Anglo-concept the author presents that “Warrior’s wives,” wouldn’t let their boys go off to war. Pre-Colombian American cultures treated and traded women as property. The soldiers of the Conquest fought over the distribution of captured women. The officers fought over those presented as gifts! Comparing English boys to Indigenous Mexican warriors across the gulf of centuries is ludicrous. The author is presenting an opinion as fact. The site is enjoyable. Your wit is not.

It is so easy sitting in 21st century zeitgeist of negationism and boldly claim everyone who wrote about the Conquest was an embellisher. Everyone but yourself. Ignore the fact, all the 16th century sources corroborate. Like it or not Meso-American cultures not only practiced human sacrifice, they wallowed in it.
Bernal Díaz, a soldier of the Conquest wrote the authoritative account. I was there. This is what I saw. “You have only to read my history, and you see it is true.”
A search of his book reveals 69 mentions of human sacrifice. He doesn’t dwell on it. He is simple astounded. “Indeed, hardly a day passed by that these people did not sacrifice from three to four, and even five Indians...” He compares the Mexica temples to a Spanish butcher shop, “and wooden blocks similar to those used by our butchers for hacking meat...” He was there. His agenda: to set the record straight. More astounding than human sacrifice is the contemporary make-believe world we live in. Say it. Be it.

This article is the epitome of cultural relativism. 20% of human remain were women and 5% were children. Indicating that a sizable portion of those sacrificed weren’t do to wars. To paint human sacrifice the ancient Aztec practiced as continuation of war and devoid or tangential from their religious customs is inaccurate. While it’s true religious reasons were always given to cover for less “noble” reasons, the way they killed their enemies was heavily tied to their actual religious practices. While killing of innocent people is always wrong, there is a tremendous difference between killing someone in the heat of battle than to sacrifice them in what I grant as an insincere religious ceremony. Understanding them as a “death-obsessed” culture, is objectifying. But framing sacrifice as nothing more than “delayed casualties of war” is similarly overly simplistic. It denies the fact that sacrificial-worship culture was a component of Mesoamerican civilization at the time, and a distinctive one at that.

ALL religions throughout recorded history have both a negative and positive aspect about. Not all religions were intolerant of other religions. For example, the Ancient Roman would tolerate alien religions, just so long as it’s practioners accepted the of the authority of the emperor. Even Jesus said “Render unto Caeser that what is Ceasar’s and to God what is God’s”. A well-known passage. It was the intolerance of the Sanhedrin that cost Jesus his life. Was it blind hatred? Or did the Priests and Rabbis did what they thought was best to stabilize a very unstable period of Jewish History? The same could be said of the Roman persecution of the early Christians. Was it out of bigotry that Some Roman emperors persecuted them, or was it for the intent of preserving the social order? Medieval Muslims were very tolerant of their Jewish citizens, and they (The Muslims) flourished in the areas of math and science, and alchemy. Jumping ahead to the Aztecs, before the Spanish invasion, The Aztecs maintained a highly developed empire in the region and made political alliances with other indigenous communities. Human sacrifice when it did occur was only in conjunction with certain rituals guided by celestial influences. It was important for the rain to fall for the crops, the sun to shine for existence. The moon for planting seasons. It was because of their perception of the cosmic order that they obeyed and sacrificed to the gods, it was their responsibility to maintain the cosmic order that their gods had created for them.

History is a two-edged sword. While can condemn the Spanish missionaries and invaders as being solely motivated by “Ignorance, racism, bigotry, and totalitarian practices, we tend to forget that there were Spanish Missionaries who were motivated by intellectual curiosity about these strange people in an undiscovered land. I would point out the Francisican Bernardino de Sahagan, who took on the monumental task of translating the Aztec language into Latin. As well las his pioneering ethnographic work, The Codex Florentine. On the subject of codices, you are right, thousands (Who really knows how many) were thrown to the fire. Yet, a handful did survive, and were held by the libraries of the Vatican and The Italian House of Borgia, from which we get the term “Borgia Group” I am not saying that it was right for the missionaries to burn what they perceived to be books of sorcery and devil worship. In the NT Bible, in the Book of Acts 19, St. Paul exhorted the citizens of Ephesus to bring out their books of magic and sorcery and publicly burn them. I have NO doubt whatsoever that this rather odd Biblical side story would influence in their misguided zeal to convert the Aztecs. Don’t judge these men so harshly, they were creatures of their time, just as we are.

You are asking an armchair historian, not a professor with degrees in Archeology or Anthropology, but I will give it a try. One of the points I found interesting in Deconstructing the Aztec Human Sacrifice, as how put off the Spanish were by what they deemed “idolatry” the statues of gods and goddesses are quite menacing, even to a modern-day observer. I would love to visit Mexico’s Muesum of Anthropology where some of the masterpieces of Aztec sculpture can be seen. Maarten explains that the witchcraft craze was still very prominent in Europe, including Spain. This clouded the Spanish missionaries as the Aztec statues of serpents, giant rattlesnake goddesses (Serpent skirt) a terrifying night deity, skeleton men with exposed entrails. This surely would have fed-in to every dark imagination of late Medieval period clergy. Another point, the misunderstanding of codices which portrayed terrible looking deities and bloody sacrifices, and strange animal images. What the Spanish did not understand, was that codices are for divinatory purposes. Not to taken on face value. Only Priests and Priestesses could interpret them. Once again, we have the breakdown between context and meaning.

I am still reading “Deconstructing the Aztec Human Sacrifice. I would urge anyone interested in Aztec and Mesoamerican history should this article (Available on Academia website, the clearinghouse for thousands of academic papers.) Anyway, this what I come away with regarding the issue of “Sacrifice” and numbers of victims.
1)Language barriers which led to misunderstanding in context. That would be like someone from another planet thinking that we really believe in Santa Clause, just because it is in our collective mythology. Or perhaps the Biblical story of David slaying the Goliath. It’s a metaphor, a story told to impart greater meaning.
2. Misunderstanding the mathematical system of the Aztec which caused some Spanish missionaries to greatly misunderstand numerical values in the Aztec system.
3.For the most part these exaggerations were due to ignorance, not malice.

There is hope for me yet. I humbly apologize.

I accept your challenge. I am currently reading “Deconstructing the Aztec Human Sacrifice” By Maarten E.R.G.N. of Leiden University. The article suggests that Spanish missionaries may have exaggerated the sacrificial numbers. Obviously, The Aztecs were “Devil worshippers” and Books about cannibalism and human sacrifice became very popular in European Incunabula (Early printed books).

I have to hand it to you; I didn’t think you would have the guts to post my replies. I read the number of 250,000 potential victims of Aztec sacrifice on the site “History on the Net” To be fair, the range of actual sacrificial victims is an open question. Bottomline, nobody is 100% sure. On the subject of the Borgia group of codices, The codices are all related to the Aztec veneration of the planet Venus. Clearly this points to an Aztec source. I would recommend you read the articles Susan Milbrath (I am sure you probably already have) and John Pohl. And to an extent, Elizabeth Hill Boone. I am glad I could add humor to your dry, academic website.

John Whittaker You are wrong to say the crusades are religious wars It’s an ethnic issue the romans who fought the arabs and jews, had nothing to do with religion because at that time many Arab-Jewish Christians supported the Abbasid Caliphate.
The Protestant and Catholic wars are more caused by ethnicity, not religion. Protestantism is a mixture of German Christians and Jewish Christians who were sworn enemies of the Greek Romans before Jesus was born. Christianity was created in the fourth century intended to unite the religions of the people who glorified JESUS ​​at that time, JESUS ​​never made religion.

My thanks to DASagent (Sept. 13, -22 for sticking up for me. Mexicolore has no intellectual or scholarly legs to stand on, so it resorts to cheap name calling. You denied facts that are uncomfortable to you. Aztecs were blood-thirsty warriors. (Which I greatly admire)

Archeologists have discovered that at least 250,000 indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica were sacrificed. Also, where is YOUR scientific evidence. This article is a silly opinion piece, not to be taken seriously. By the way, in reference to another post I made, The Codex Borgia (Borgia Group) IS Aztec in origin. You need to check your facts.

I appreciate the author’s attempt to challenge the mainstream narrative regarding human sacrifice among the Mexica. From the sources I’ve read/seen I do not doubt that the Mexica had ritual killings and that it played a role in society - but I am suspicious of the mostly colonial european voices documenting these events. I think we’ve fetishized the Mexica into stereotypes based off the colonial spanish misunderstandings and propaganda. I’m glad there are scholars willing to challenge these stereotypes. It seems the cultures were wonderfully colorful, intricate, full of philosophy, poetry, architectural and agricultural marvels, that we only understand the smallest bit of the civilization. My lack of understanding of the Mexica is actually the reason why I wouldn’t want to pigeonhole them as “the people who committed human sacrifice”.
This scholar is appropriately skeptical of the mainstream narrative.

I always appreciate the work of historians to talk about the mentality of the people in ancient eras, but it seems that this article has the intention of downplay the horror of humans sacrifices in an attemp to clean the face of the aztecs. But the top of the cake was the insult to the commenter Todd Holmes, ignoring the discovered made by the INAH in 2020, and said that his answer has an agenda ¿Who’s agenda, who’s benefits for?, ¿The aztecs? They’re long gone, and the now mexico inhabitants are more likely to descends from the indigenous people who helped Hernán Cortes.

A lot of the evidence for human sacrifice amongst the Aztecs comes from the relations of the conquistadors (like Bernal Diaz, who describes one hundred thousand human skulls being on display), right? I might be wrong. But I’ve always wondered if there are any reliable writings from Aztecs who lived near or during that time about Aztec religion. What did they say about this topic? This conversation reminds of the one surrounding the ‘Caribs’ of Caribbean, and their supposed cannibalistic tendencies. Upon further research, it’s rather easy to discover that they weren’t blood thirsty eaters of human flesh, but rather only did such a thing on ceremonial occasions (usually they ate human flesh after slaughtering an enemy during war, and they did so to ‘ingest’ that enemies’ strength). It’s not the incessant eating of human flesh that so many have convinced themselves it was. I remember reading that Carib/Kalinago everyday diets consisted of fruits, vegetables, and human flesh- which is so intensely false. The average person would’ve never engaged in such behavior. I assume the situation with Aztec human sacrifice is similar: ‘human sacrifice’ occurred, but perhaps not quite to the scale portrayed in media. Though, once again, I may be wrong. Another detail to mention is that Europeans often contorted their writings about Native Americans and Africans to justify their violence against such groups. I find it hard deciphering what portions of explorers’ relations, travel logs, and journals to believe, as the honesty of such accounts often lies solely on the author’s motives for writing it, and their intended audience. All interesting things to consider. Thanks for this thought-provoking article.

Since this article was written in 2009 (?), a great deal of incontrovertible *archeological* evidence has been unearthed proving the Aztecs sacrificed humans by the thousands to their gods. Furthermore, the victims were not enemies. Many many were their own people! For proof, simply search for the Science article entitled “Feeding the gods: Hundreds of skulls reveal massive scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital. Archaeologists uncover the remains of a giant rack of skulls beneath downtown Mexico City”.
This was written in 2015 about research done from 2011-2014. I’m very disappointed this supposed educational website has not kept up with the scholarly evidence.

This article is total nonsense. It is trying to be politically correct by attempting to minimize the brutality of the Mesoamerican cultures. Thousands were sacrificed and their skulls displayed on racks in the main center of their cities. I would recommend you read: Human Sacrifice among the Mesoamericans. This article is an insult to the intelligence of your readership.

Call a spade a spade, in as much as the Aztecs and other Mesoamerican states and societies of contemporary or even earlier to much more ancient provenance were highly sophisticated in terms of their organization of personnel, keeping of records, arts, and architecture, what they did was HUMAN SACRIFICING, and the Aztecs are known more than any other state in human history to have done so on a scale that is unmatched by any other. If people are ritually slaughtered in the declared name of appeasing and paying tribute to gods and to ancestral or other spirits, then it is human sacrificing.
If one seeks to make the argument that the Aztecs were no more violent or cruel than other civilizations in history, that’s altogether a different thing.
There is much to be admired about Aztecs and Mesoamerican culture. It is extremely fascinating. But human sacrificing and ritual cannibalism isn’t one of them. It still boggles my mind how they could be so sophisticated and actually have such practices sanctioned by the state.

While there was no term meaning human sacrifice it was called nextlahualli, or debt payment. Who was it a debt payment to? The gods. So the linguistic structure actually supports the claim that sacrifices took place and were of social and religious importance. Animal sacrifice, offerings and auto-sacrifice were also a part of this, and the tools used are part of the historical record. That warfare also took place for reasons of power and tribute goes without saying.
Sacrifices cannot be seen as a delayed part of war, being killed after the battle when it was no longer necessary. Nor does war answer why certain rites required children to be raised as victims.
It is not necessary to look further than the wider Mesoamerican world to find examples of civilisations that killed repeatedly to please the gods (the criteria “massive scale” and “only to” seem added to make these examples easier to dismiss). The question ought to be why such methods and world view took such root in Mesoamerica.
Sacrifice was common in early Europe even if human sacrifice was relatively rare. If we look at the Minoans, human sacrifice is largely confined to the period following the eruption of Thera. Why? We can hypothesise that they regarded their existing sacrifices as insufficient and turned to offering their gods something more valuable. Lives in exchange for life. In other words, human sacrifice is seen as a worthwhile bargain in difficult times. Where survival is easy fertility gods arise and people give thanks for the providence of nature. Where life is difficult gods become darker.
An examination of conditions in Mesoamerica would lead to the conclusion that life was unstable. There were volcanoes, earthquakes, changing climate conditions, and geography meant that many cities or civilisations were cut off. Europe and Asia had flat lands from the steppes to the sea, encouraging the flow of goods, and indeed barbarian hordes. In Mesoamerica when there was a shortage in one area, a famine or a drought, it was not easy to compensate by taking resources from elsewhere. The Mayan cities died out individually rather than en masse. Civilisations rose and fell, and often within a relatively short time span. It is not hard to see how a worldview requiring appeasement of the gods might arise, how the concept might become embedded in their societies and human sacrifices might become endemic across the surrounding cultures. In this, we would not be saying that Mesoamericans were substantially different to societies elsewhere, but that the conditions were more extreme and drove them further than others had need to go. That is why the scale differs, why the perceived necessity was embedded into their way of thinking. Though I would agree more research needs to be done.

This article is presented as the work of a Senior Lecturer at a university. However, analyzing this article’s scientific quality reveals a myriad of problems:-
To start, it’s clearly lacking the objectivity that one would reasonably expect from an academic scholar. For example, the author is twisting the facts in function of the point she is trying to make. This becomes painfully clear by the two following conflicting statements:
1) In section 2, (titled War) she tries to minimize the number of killings by stating: ‘Some, and only some, of these men captured in battle were later killed in the setting of a temple.’
2) In section 4 (titled The bloodthirsty Aztecs) when she tries to deny these killings are related to religion she states: ‘In real life, no civilization has ever endorsed killing on such a massive scale, and repeatedly, only to please gods!’
The killings are either ‘only-some’ or ‘massive-scale’ they cannot be both; having to switch from the one to the other halfway your text to be able to make your point reveals a fundamental issue with objectivity.

The article also does not provide any meaningful evidence for its main hypothesis: a) the killings are not religiously motivated human sacrifices but delayed war related killings, which b) make the Aztec less bloodthirsty as they are commonly perceived. The first and second part of this hypothesis are conflicting. On the battlefield killing is (in most cases) self preservation: kill or be killed. However, that argument disappears once the opponent is captured. There is a universal moral agreement on that: based on current international law killing prisoners-of-war is a war crime. So, the institutionalized killing of captured opponents makes a society more bloodthirsty, not less.
It also doesn’t make any sense to justify these killings based on economic reasons: resources, money, power as the author puts it. Once you have captured your opponent, you can take all that, you don’t need to kill your opponent to do so. Furthermore, exploiting captured opponents as slaves provides additional economic gain; killing them does not. (Just to be clear, this is not a defense of the despicable practice of slavery, I’m just pointing out, unlike what the author suggest, that from an economic point of view killing them does not make sense). So there is no economic foundation for these killings. The only meaningful reason to kill a captured opponent in a temple setting would, in fact, be to please some kind of deity...
I agree with the site editor that the language in comment 38 by Pol is not very refined, but he does however make a solid point: the sacrifice of women and children undermines the, already poorly supported, main hypothesis of the article. The only two proper ways to invalidate his point are to either: a) provide evidence that no women or children were sacrificed, or b) provide evidence that the sacrificed women or children were warriors as well. The credentials of the author of the challenged hypothesis (article) are, scientifically spoken, irrelevant in this. The lack of evidence to invalidate Pol’s statement reveals another fatal flaw in the hypotheses the author is trying to defend.
I agree with the comment of Micheal E. Smith below that this article appears to aim at pushing a revisionist view on history and religion. This article is a subjective opinion that is being presented as science solely based on the academic credentials of the authors. As shown above, the author is making conflicting statements, using non-nonsensical reasoning and not providing any references for any of the statements she makes. Scientific relevance is generated by data, facts, evidence, logic, etc. not by the credentials. As such this article has no meaningful scientific value. Scientia Patria Nostra.

There is NOT much evidence left behind of the Native American civilizations thanks to the colonizers/Europeans. Time and time again all the Native American history being currently told is only a so called educated guess. Nothing is concrete or proven accurately because almost EVERYTHING and EVERYONE were destroyed or killed. There should be an especially high margin of doubt of the word of greedy, evil men as an accurate description of what really happened. We are told to believe stories from the perspective of the very same people who killed, raped and pillaged the Natives. How is it not plausible to theorize that it was the Europeans whom did the actual sacrifices & made it look like the Natives did it since they were after their resources and riches. The most convenient excuse for their barbaric behavior was to say they’re savages, like we’ve never heard that one before, in order to enslave a people. History LONG AGO has proven that Europeans loved to torture the people held in their captivity. I find it hard to believe that only few human remains & some depictions are the only pieces of evidence left after stealing all of the riches from Natives to ultimately end up in European hands even NOW modern day. Don’t believe me, look at the countless Native American sites ALL OVER the U.S that are left, there are only ruins of what once was. These mounds/pyramids were NOT made by the Europeans.The US government even refuses to acknowledge some sites making them restricted preventing anyone entering even scientists so they don’t have to admit the genocide they committed. A huge percentage of gold and silver (to name a few) came from the Northern hemisphere where the Natives lived and are now being held in massive vaults in Europe and US government possession, yet they never have admitted where the precious minerals or stones came from.

Finally, someone with a brain!!

This article is horsedung. It wasn’t just and only an extension of war. The Mexicas sacrificed children to their rain God. They also sacrificed women. The author is an apologist, not even a particularly good one

What a great article, that puts into perspective the deaths of soldiers at the hands of the Aztecs. Let’s remember also that the reason the Spanish were able to conquer the mighty Mexica (Aztecs) was because the Spanish were so much more barbaric in warfare. The Mexica had various opportunities to kill Cortes in battle, but to kill opponents was not their custom. Cortes repaid this by slaughtering the Mexica and their allies on a huge scale, including women and children.
It is hard to image how shocking the barbarism of the Europeans must have seemed to the indigenous Mexicans.
It is well established that white cultures have demonstrated a fairly unique level unique level of violence throughout centuries of colonialism - always more violent than the populations they subjugated. Just read accounts of white plantation owners and overseers for almost endless examples of shocking violence. And let’s remember that this violence extended far into the 20th Century in the US through lynchings of Black men.

Pure piffle. The sacrificed humans were not merely captured warriors. There is more here that is akin to Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery than the brutality of war. And for those shouting that the “liberals” are always downplaying violence in other civilizations while shaming white cultures, well double piffle on you. You owe your very way of living to the great enlightened liberal philosophers so shut it. It isn’t a question of liberals vs conservatives

Why are you liberals always trying to downplay other civilizations violence but you have no problem shaming white cultures. Eat your heart out.

‘human sacrifice’ was all made up to ‘justify’ the genocide, land theft, terrorism & slavery of the americas ...read ‘dum diversas’ 1452 et al ...peace

*disclaimer that when I say justice, I dont mean true justice. I use it as an explanation for the intentions of the acts mentioned*
The difference between killing in war and human sacrifice is that one is done to take or defend something out of justice while the other is done as an act of religion/justice towards a “god”.
We can compare this between the killing done by the Nazis in war vs in genocide. This is why the killing of the jews and other target groups was called the holocaust (a Jewish sacrificial offering that is burned completely on an altar). The Nazi’s god was Hitler and Fatherland (as one of the other commentors have mentioned).
Now, the Nazis would be doing human sacrifice. They were killing people as an act of justice toward the Fatherland and Hitler. The same would apply to the Aztecs (the mayans too), even if you put it in the context of war.
We must also recognize that the intention is important for these distinctions. For example, the death penalty would not be a human sacrifice. The reason for that is that it would simply be an act to reach justice. These are done out of a desire all humans have for justice, however human sacrifice would be to kill as a means to give. Imprisonment would not be sacrificing that person’s time as a gift, its purpose is justice.The state realizes that the person does not deserve to live any longer due to their crimes and may even harm others. Although some may disagree on whether the death penalty is ethical, I am creating distinctions.
All these kinds of killing would be considered “just” by those doing those acts. The distinction between human sacrifice and other kinds of killing can be seen in intention. One is an act of religion toward a deity (supernatural or not) while the other one is an act of justice in the broader sense of the word.

https://www.libraryofsocialscience.com/ideologies/resources/koenigsberg-aztec-warriors/

Please click the link to read my online publication, AZTEC WARRIORS/WESTERN SOLDIERS.

Here are a few passages to whet your appetite:

”According to historian Alfredo Lopez Austin (1988), as long as men could offer the blood and hearts of captives taken in combat, the “power of the sun god would not decline”—the sun would “continue on his course above the earth.” To keep the sun moving in its course so that “darkness should not overwhelm the world forever,”
”Anthropologist Jacques Soustelle explains (2002), it was necessary to “feed it every day with its food”—the “precious water,” that is, with human blood.”
”Unlike the Aztecs, we in the West imagine that wars are fought for “real” reasons or purposes.”
”We understand the death or maiming of soldiers in battle as the by-product— occurring as societies seek to attain practical or political objectives. We do not believe that warfare’s purpose is to produce sacrificial victims, although the result of every war is a multitude of dead soldiers.”

The most significant misunderstanding in this article is revealed in the following statement: “Scholars say that Aztec warriors fought specifically to capture other warriors to offer them to the gods... In real life, no civilization has ever endorsed killing on such a massive scale, and repeatedly, only to please gods!”
In reality, nearly EVERY WAR revolves around PLEASING SOME GOD. Of course, this doesn’t necessarily “make sense.”
Nearly all Ancient wars occurred in the name of pleasing a god. One might also think of the Crusades.

I write about the FIRST WORLD WAR. This war achieved NOTHING PRACTICAL. The mass slaughter occurred in the name of pleasing gods giving names like Great Britain, France, Germany, etc.
The First World War achieved no practical gain. Nor did the Nazi war against the Jews. WARS ARE A MASSIVE DRAIN ON A SOCIETY’S RESOURCES.
The notion that wars are fought for practicial, empirical reasons has no foundation in empirical reality. It’s a cliche.
Most historians would agree with my assessment. Slaughter is undertaken for deeply psychological and cultural reasons, usually detrimental to economic gain.
No one would say that the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust was undertaken for economic reasons. This was a MASSIVE DRAIN OF RESOURCES.The war against the Jews (and the Second World War) were undertaken in the name of Germany’s god, HITLER.

Rome’s post of October 2017 is on target: “The Mexica culture was based on shedding blood in order to fuel the movement of the sun. You say that the killings were a side effect of war; rather, the wars were elaborately staged and ritualized in order to facilitate the killings.”

Yes, the purpose of warfare and killing, fundamentally, was to OBTAIN THE HEARTS OF VICTIMS in order to keep the sun moving in its course.
An entirely bizarre idea: that the sun needed the hearts and b blood of victims to continue to move on its course.
They could have done an experiment: stop their practice of heart extraction for a few weeks, and see if the sun kept revolving.
But there must have been very powerful psychological forces to sustain such a ritual.

Well, you don’t have to call it “sacrifice.” But pulling the heart out of a victim and holding it up--to feed the sun god--is not a rational act, nor is it an act of “war.”
This was a very grotesque FANTASY: that he sun would keep revolving around the earth only if fed with the heart and blood of captured victims.

Mexicolore,
Just a follow-up. The stereo-type of “Indians” in the USA is that they were uncivilized savages. A few pockets of them showed signs of advancement and employed farming, but the majority were hunters and gatherers. To put into perspective, the “Indians” were in the stage of development reminiscent of cavemen when Europeans encountered them. So when it is argued that the “Indians” did nothing with the land, it is promoting the idea that the “Indians” did not develop cities or sophisticated civilizations like Europeans did. This belief is partly negative propaganda and partly ignorance. Ignorance because most are not interested enough to learn the truth. So they just repeat the negative propaganda. And it is negative propaganda because it is used to portray the “Indians” as worthless uncivilized savages.

The truth is that there were advanced civilizations in what is now the USA before Europeans arrived. I have read articles that propose that these civilizations in the North had contact with those in Mexico. And I recall reading that a civilization in the Mississippi valley collapsed shortly before Europeans reached that area. A pyramid mound still exists in the State of Illinois. I believe that there is more evidence of this civilization further along the Mississippi River in the Southern States. But relatively very few people have knowledge of these sites.

Unfortunately, it is estimated that something like 90%-95% of the archeological sites were destroyed by the Europeans. As a result, knowledge of the existence of these civilizations was lost and/or hidden. There must have been many motives to destroy the sites. Maybe in some cases it was to hide the fact that the “Indians” developed advanced and sophisticated societies. And maybe in some cases it was due to less benign motives such as making room for farmland. But what ever the case, these archeological sites were deemed unimportant and not worth preserving. And yet, the descendants of those that destroyed the sites now use the absence of these sites to sting the “Indians” with claims that they accomplished nothing.

But wait, there is a problem. Evidence still exists in Mexico that the “Indians” did develop advanced and sophisticated cities and civilizations. This doesn’t fit the American narrative that the “Indians” accomplished nothing. So the portrayal of the Aztecs and Maya as blood-thirty savages that committed human sacrifice helps the Americans diminish the accomplishments of these civilizations.

Maybe things have changed since I was in school. But No history of the native peoples was taught in school from grades 1-12 (grammar and high school) outside of their encounters with Europeans. And of course, their portrayals were negative. For instance, the only time we were taught about the Aztecs was in grade 9 (1st year of high school). And they were covered in just about three sentences. I’m paraphrasing the lesson in how it was internalized by myself and others that received this lesson (such as classmates and relatives when they reached grade 9). The lesson was that the Aztecs had a large empire and built large cities with pyramids but did not have a written language and were blood-thirsty monsters that committed large scale human sacrifices including children. But they were so pathetic, it only took 500 Spanish to defeat them very quickly. And the Aztecs were the “best” the “Indians” had to offer. Meaning, the Aztecs were the pinnacle of achievements by “Indian” peoples, and they were nothing to brag about. The strategy of almost totally excluding the “Indians” from history lessons further helps cement the perception that they did not accomplish anything.

Mexicolore, one reason this article brings out extreme arguments is because it indirectly dispels the myth that Europeans are inherently superior to other peoples. And some people cannot accept that world view. Especially in the USA and other parts of the Americas where negative portrayals of the “Indians” are used to justify their conquest and genocide. Ever hear Americans justify their conquest and genocide of the “Indians” by saying that the “Indians” did nothing with the land while they, the Europeans, turned it into the most powerful nation in history? Portraying as them as savages committing human sacrifice gives European Americans an air of superiority and justification for what they did. Meanwhile, when the Spanish were perpetrating the human sacrifice myth, they themselves were sacrificing Jews and Heretics to Jesus by burning them at the stake. By describing the Spanish killing of Jews in this, am I doing the same thing that the Spanish and later historians have done regarding the Aztecs’ said treatment of their war prisoners?

I agree! There is no such thing as human sacrifice. The Aztecs surely didnt see it this way. To them, killing captured enemies was a way to ensure the sun kept turning in the sky, to ensure that the humans would be blessed by the fruits of the earth, that the cycle of life and agriculture would keep on. Yes, the Aztecs were warriors, but they were also farmers, and like any farmers they acknowledged the extreme interdependence on the goodwill of the Forces of Nature. That concept is very real, not bloodthirsty or barbaric. The Aztecs simply wanted the world to keep turning. Farming was their main concern.

I usually like the content here but this post should be removed as every facet is wrong. Archaeological finds show evidence of extensive self-mutilation, human sacrifice and cannibalism done for religious purposes.

Oh I just read the claim that Europeans did not kill that many people in their wars. The concept of Total War was invented by Europeans. And there is no more brutal war as when two European countries war against each other.
We admire the Romans and base much of our civilization on theirs. But the Romans were brutal and mass murderers when they went to war. They committed genocide of Carthage and others. Julius Ceasar was a mass murderer in Northern Europe. One example is that he committed genocide of 150k-200k Germanic people in what is now the Netherlands. This included civilians. And the ones that weren’t killed were enslaved. But that is glossed over and he is worshipped to this day.
More recently, Americans committed Genocide against the Native Americans.
I could unfairly state that at least the Aztecs were not as Savage as these Europeans that wiped out entire populations and peoples. But suggestion is that you have a balanced view and recognize that the Aztecs are no better and no worse than any other peoples or civilizations. Even our Western Civilization.

Mexicolore, I’m curious about the Tlaxcala. I’ve never seen anything written about their specific human sacrifice practices and how they and the Spanish dealt with it when they joined forces. I find it curious that the main allies of the Spanish have not been tarnished with human sacrifice. Is this evidence that the Spanish accounts
were exaggerated propaganda for them to justify their actions?Supposedly the war of the Roses was for both sides to capture sacrifices. If there is any information regarding Tlaxcala and human sacrifice that you can point me to?

Unfortunately, relativistic pabulum. Archaeological evidence increasingly indicates the Aztec killed large numbers of people (~20k a year according to some estimates). The author is surely an expert on the Aztecs, but appears to know very little about contemporary European conflicts. (In today’s academy inventing facts about European history to show it was particularly awful in comparison to the “good” cultures of the New World is common.) Medieval warfare generally had low body counts by modern standards with a few unusual exceptions. And capturing high-status enemies was a common feature of European warfare, though they did not have their beating hearts ripped out afterwards nor were they flayed alive and their skins worn by Xipe impersonators.

Interesting thought, but inaccurate. The Mexica culture was based on shedding blood in order to fuel the movement of the sun. You say that the killings were a side effect of war; rather, the wars were elaborately staged and ritualized in order to facilitate the killings. I’m not saying that the Aztecs were monsters; rather, it was a brilliantly calculated strategy on the part of the Mexica tribe to showcase their power and military ability. By repeatedly defeating other tribes in battle, and killing their warriors in a richly cultural display, they maintained their hegemonic empire. But the Mexica religion says that Huitzilopochtli can only move through the sky with the power of shed blood.

I thought that this was an interesting article as it highlights the conceptual justification for killing we still practice today. To me there is no difference between chopping the head off of innocents than blowing them to pieces with bombs dropped from drones, both crimes against humanity.

Cf. P. Hassler, “The Lies of the Conquistadores: Cutting Through the Myth of Human Sacrifice.” World Press Review *December 1992) 28-29

JC: great! Around 1995-1998 I had, in paper, an excerpt, if memory serves, from a thesis in anthropology from the University of Bern, putting forward some of the same arguments as you do. Unfortunately, I lost it when my car got stolen a couple years later, and in all that time I just can’t seem to be able to find the source again. Would anyone have any knowledge about it?

It’s not the first [time] history has been changed to the benefit to aquire money and power.

I appreciate your article but feel that the whole matter of human sacrifice by the Mexica as is common knowledge today is a myth.
1. There are no credible documents confirming that the Mexica performed human sacrifice.
a. The sources and basis for the human sacrifice myth are documents prepared by the Spanish (Cortez, Diaz, etc.) or chronicled by Spanish priests. These sources are not reliable because the documents were prepared to suit the writer’s own agenda.
i. The grand Spanish agenda in creating and propagating the human sacrifice myth was to justify the war against the Mexica to the Spanish Crown and the Pope. Remember, the conquistadors were not sent to conquer the Mexica by the Spanish Crown. Cortez’s company took that action upon themselves and later needed to justify their actions to their superiors.
ii. The Spanish were not beyond lying when chronicling their actions or justifying them. Another myth, that the Mexica believed that Cortez was a returning god was invented by the Spanish priests. The Spanish priests initially claimed that the Mexica believed that Cortez was their god of War in person but another Spaniard spoke up that this was not true. The priests kept pushing and eventually their lie that the Mexica believed that Cortez was Quetzalcoatl stuck. Quetzalcoatl is not the god of War that they initially claimed but a different God.
iii. Diaz, wrote that he witnessed the sacrifice of other Spaniards in Tenochtitlan from the bank of the lake. Many people have actually sourced him in the comments of this article. But careful study has proven that Diaz could not have seen anything from the bank of the river since that would have meant that he was some three to four miles away from the Mexica temple. There is no way he would be able to see that far and much less be able to see a heart still pumping in the Mexica priest’s hand from that distance.
iv. While the Spanish priests used Mexica to develop their chonicles in which they helped cement the human sacrifice myth, the Spanish were the final editors of this work which brings the completed works into question.
b. All pre-contact histories and records developed and maintained by the Mexica were destroyed by the Spanish priests. Then the Spanish priests went about recreating the Mexica histories and chronicling their culture. This is very suspicious. Why not keep the original materials as reference but instead try to recreate them from the native’s memory? This reeks of the Spanish rewriting or at least editing the Mexica’s history to meet the Spanish agenda. Many scholars have even pointed out that the Mexica interviewed by the Spanish priests were not reliable (i.e. either too young to be witnesses to the events described [such as human sacrifice], or were zealous followers of the Spanish priests. At any rate, the Spanish priests were the final editors of the interviews. There are no documentational proof from prior to the Spanish contact supporting the human sacrifice myth. All the sources are post-conquest and they are all influenced by the Spanish in one way or another.
2. Interpretations of archaeological finds are also suspect.
a. There is a circular argument occurring in interpreting archaeological finds. Archaeologists based their assumptions on historians who based their assumptions on the Spanish and post-conquest sources. As such, these archaeologists interpret anything they find as human sacrifice without doing further analysis. These archaeologists then publish their work, which in turn further cements our common knowledge that the Mexica practiced human sacrifice.
i. Example one, if they find pre-contact artwork depicting human sacrifice, they immediately claim that it is a representation of human sacrifice. No thought is given to whether or not the image is symbolic in some manner. Could the images be a representation of some self-sacrificing action that their diety undertook? Could the religious ceremony then invoke this sacrifice by the diety? This isn’t farfetched. Our Catholic churches contain statues or paintings of a crucified man, a symbol for the self-sacrificing action taken by the diety. These images do not confirm that Christians crucify people. No one is crucified at every mass at the sacrifice of the mass and their their flesh is not eaten and their blood is not drunk correct? The one-time sacrifice of Jesus is made present during the ceremony. Similar parallels could have occurred in Mexica worship.
ii. Example two. Bodies buried in the temple are immediately shown as support for human sacrifice. Nine to ten children were found buried in either Templo Mayor or in the neighboring Tlatelolco site. Archaeologists provide no proof that the children were sacrificed. But they assume this relying on the baggage of their education. In the articles that I read, these archeologists only provide as proof of human sacrifice that the bodies were buried in the temple mounds and that they bodies were carefully positioned at the time of burial. These archaeologists did not explore other options, such as maybe the children were buried there for other reasons other than because they were sacrificed. As the records that may have shed light on these burials were destroyed by the Spanish, we cannot reference them. But what if the children died of natural causes and were buried there after the temple was built? Were they the children of nobles that died naturally and were buried there? Were the children holy persons and were buried in the Temple after it was built? The altar in every Catholic church contains a relic, a bone or body part of a saint (holy person). These relics can be a small finger, tooth, a knee, a shin, anything that came from the saint. The saint was not killed to have their body parts placed under alters. Why should we then assume that these children were killed to be buried under the pyramid?
iii. The above applies to any body found buried in the temple.

I think Mexicolore does a great job of creating interest in Aztec culture BUT the article on human sacrifice is simplistic. A great deal of esoteric thought and social expectation was involved, not just military considerations. See my Masters thesis on this (published online “Explaining Aztec Human Sacrifice”)

What I find disturbing is that a senior lecturer in University Colllege London should put forward such a peurile argument. What’s her agenda in trivialising and casting a nice gloss on the horrific deaths of thousands of men, women, and children? Perhaps we should work on justifying other atrocities too - there are plenty sociological and psychological reasons we could put forward for genocide for example.
And finally, they were humans and they were sacrificed - therefore it is precisely accurate to call it ‘human sacrifice’ - what else?

I like seeing a different perspective on the role of human sacrifice. However, the descriptions of the various Aztec rituals show a prescription that a certain number of persons be killed, or that women or others be used for ritual sacrifice. They may well have frequently been ‘captives’, however, their deaths were nevertheless not due to the activity of war but due to the demands of religious ritual. It’s not mere “delay” in killing, it is killing for a purpose other than winning the war.

Interesting to see a different perspective. Definitely caught my attention and i see why it shouldnt be called “Human Sacrifice” and this was simply one of the Aztecs cultural practices and not a killing crisis that was to be found entertaining or amusing.

Interesting how, during WWII, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, as well as countless humans were killed for the right of power. Nagasaki’s 50 thousand or more souls lost killed without a blessing. What would the rest of the world felt like if, one by one, children and adults were burned in front of them--modern “sacrifice” is so much more pleasant.

One thing lightly touched here is the Spanish chronologists’ bias. Making the Mexica (Aztecs) into terrible people justified killing so many. Estimates of over 70% Mexica dying from diseases or violence may be low.
To justify conquest, the Spanish (and others) have always painted pictures of brutish people with horrid religious practices who needed the guidance of priests--Catholic or otherwise. If you study the culture, you see that Mexica captives were often given to families, where they were educated and given rights of citizenship. This was a masterful way of “conquering” people.
When you apply the knowledge that the Mexica traders and businessmen were given the status of ambassadors with the ability to set treaties, you see another agenda, where multilingual people with diver cultural competency were much needed to further the Mexica’s biggest asset--trade.
Even these days Pan De Muerto, or breads shaped into either skulls or whole human bodies, is made. These are baked for Los Dias de Los Muertos—Days of the Dead. The bread, made in Pre-conquest times of amaranth flour, was one way the harvest surplus was distributed throughout Tenochtitlan.

This conveniently overlooks the textual and archaeological evidence for child sacrifice - such as the sacrifice of 48 children placed in a box in the Templo Mayor!

i am researching for a paper, and know that the first one to interpret the symbols were Christianized folks that were decedents of the conquistadors or the converted mexica Indians. blood thirsty i don’t know but what i wonder is why is many god and goddess represent the same ones in Tibet and India, but they did not interpret that culture wrong, so why are they getting it wrong? the god of war, hustilapostle (excuse the spelling) is actually a name for a time of the sun, which there are i believe four stations of the sun in aztec culture, he is the morning sun represented by the humming bird, why are hummingbirds represented by war here? because the ones interpreting them were under the higher influence of whomever was paying them, any other reasons? id like more information on.

great article and does not go far enough. As i’ve said in another comment, there is no clear evidence that there were human sacrifices happening. The explanation from the people who still carry on the tradition is that these glyphs are of surgery. Just because one western scholar has quoted a spanish account of sacrifice and it’s made it into history books does not make it fact. Just because we misinterpret glyphs does not mean they show bloodshed. So much of mexhika culture has been misinterpreted.. Anyone who studies archaeology will know it’s about who shouts their theory the loudest who gets heard..
i would challenge the authors of this site to print an article from a mexhika scholar such as arturo mesa to show another side to this story...

Refreshing thinking, a total paradigm shift to encourage us to really understand what is behind associations such as Aztec culture = human sacrifice. Bravo!

I ‘m having trouble grasping the point of this post. The title seems misleading, because the Aztecs clearly practiced some kind of ritualized killing, as we know from archaeological remains (not to mention codices and the chroniclers, whose bias must be taken into account). If this wasn’t “human sacrifice,” then what was it? The final paragraph suggests that the captors obtained some kind of economic resources from their captives. I am aware of no documentary support for such a notion. If this really happened, we would expect at least some hints of this practice in the sources, if not outright descriptions of it. There are a number of reasons why this scenario is unlikely (e.g., resources were locally based, and a captive in Tenochtitlan could not transfer his wealth from back in the provinces to a Mexica captor. Similarly tribute rights were locally based and not transferable.) But most of all, I dislike the title of this post, since it plays into the “new age” revisionist view that the Aztecs were peaceful crystal-gazers, not warriors who practiced bloody rituals of sacrifice.

It’s silly to say the Aztec did not engage in human sacrifice. Of course they did, as Aztec art and archaeology shows, not just biased Spanish testimony. See Pic 6 in my Atlatl article. Although war was part of the context, children were often sacrificed as well as men captured in war. As for the motivation of warriors, all too many people fight for “God and Country” today; religious belief worked then too. True, warriors also had “practical” motives then and now - success in war meant prestige, tribute, or today medals, officer status, career in politics - how to rise in power and position whether you are an Aztec or a modern American.
Instead of whitewashing the Aztecs, perhaps Graham would do better to turn the issue around. The European cultures of the time also engaged in human sacrifice, although they would have hotly denied it. The Inquisition and similar organizations, and crusades against non-Christians and Christian heretics can be seen as war and politics, but they were also seen as pleasing to God and necessary for religious reasons. Burning a heretic in front of the church was human sacrifice just as cutting out a captive’s heart at the Sun Temple.

absolutely fabulous article...changed my whole perspective on mexican history...and as a practitioner of history, i must heartily congratulate the author for her analytical skills:)

Rubbish. Ignores Diaz and the testimony of the Aztrecs themselves, the Tlaxcalans and the other members of the triple alliance. Ignores the skull racks and the sensations of the conquistadores when they entered the temple precinct of Tenochtitlan. It ignores the cynical and effectively fake war of the flowers that was designed solely to enable the capture of warriors for sacrifice and prevented Tlaxcala from developing into it’s own state. The Aztecs displayed skulls in their temples, worshipped as two of their principle gods the gods of war and death, and their own historical fables centre around how tough they were and that they succeeded because they were more cruel than all the cruel tribes which surrounded them - a fact that the Aztecs themselves were intensely proud of. It is only modern day Euro-centric historical revisionism that has started to paint the Aztecs as some sort of hippie commune that only went to war when all else failed. They were a warrior race in a stone age culture surrounded by tribes that wanted to kill them - if they had truly been a ‘Switzerland of the Americas’ as this article suggests and only went to war and made sacrifices after much tear-jerking and soul-searching there would be no Aztec culture...and no Mexico...

Great article.