Who Did the Aztecs Sacrifice?

[Judi Lynn]

Who Did the Aztecs Sacrifice?

Monday, January 25, 2016


Mexico City Aztec Sacrifice
(INAH)

MEXICO CITY, MEXICO—Scholars have long assumed that the people the Aztecs sacrificed at the Great Temple of Tenochtitlán were prisoners of war who were killed soon after being captured. But EFE reports that a new strontium isotope analysis of remains belonging to several sacrificed individuals who lived between 1469 and 1521 is challenging that view. The study, led by National Institute of Anthropology and History archaeologist Allan Barrera, shows that some of the victims were foreigners who lived in the Valley of Mexico among the Aztecs for at least six years. It's possible the remains belong not to captured warriors, but prisoners of high rank who served the Aztec elite for some time before eventually being sacrificed. To read more about Aztec archaeology, go to “Under Mexico City.”

http://www.archaeology.org/news/4096-160125-aztecs-tenochtitlan-human-sacrifices

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Here's the linked article, very interesting:

Under Mexico City

Beneath the capital's busy streets, archaeologists are discovering the buried world of the Aztecs

By ROGER ATWOOD
Monday, June 09, 2014

http://www.archaeology.org/issues/138-1407/features/2173-mexico-city-aztec-buried-world

[L. Coyote]

1. "Scholars" ? "assumed"

The Cannibalism Paradigm: Assessing Contact Period Ethnohistorical Discourse.

In my experience it is commonplace in academic discourse, in educational media, and in popular media to assert that human sacrifice and cannibalism were practiced on a large scale in prehispanic America. At the same time, I have not been able to find a satisfactory eyewitness report of either activity in the numerous ethnohistorical writings from the Contact era. I employ the term "cannibalism paradigm" to describe this gap between the admissible evidence and the hearsay that informs modern beliefs about practices of consuming human flesh.

Paradigms are the biases, preconceptions and assumptions, both conscious and unconscious, that inform thought and views of reality. Kuhn (1996) described the paradigm concept and ..............

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[Judi Lynn]

2. What is actually "known" is still very little, isn't it?

It has always seemed "experts" always have let their imaginations run riot, hasn't it?

Could be guilty consciences brought it all on, inspired their fanciful accounts to exonerate themselves after they tortured, mutilated, maimed, enslaved and destroyed so many of the original inhabitants. The winners always rewrite history, as we know.

[L. Coyote]

3. What is actually known is immense, but not one case of human sacrifice has ever been documented.

For example, the first battle fought between Spain and the Maya people is recorded very clearly by one of the people there:

Regarding the first battle fought under Cortes in the New World, against the people of Tabasco, Diaz writes:

"... we doctored the horses by searing their wounds with the fat from the body of a dead Indian which we cut up to get out the fat, and we went to look at the dead lying on the plain and there were more than eight hundred of them, the greater number killed by thrusts, the others by cannon, muskets and crossbows, and many were stretched on the ground half dead…. The battle lasted over an hour ... we buried the two soldiers that had been killed ... we seared the wounds of the others and of the horses with the fat of the Indian, and after posting sentinels and guards, we had supper and rested."

"... These were the first vassals to render submission to His Majesty in New Spain."

Just like with religion. All the Natives had religion according to the Spanish, false gods and devil worshiping. But, there isn't a single Native American religion today, not even one church, no remnants anywhere, not even in the unconquered regions. So, where is that truth?

If you don't even know science exists, how do you know to call it science?