Headless Bodies Found at Mysterious Mexico Pyramid

[Tab]

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The discovery of a tomb filled with decapitated bodies suggests Mexico's 2,000 year-old "Pyramid of the Moon" may have been the site of horrifically gory sacrifices, archeologists said on Thursday.

The tomb at Teotihuacan, the first major city built in the Americas, whose origins are one of history's great mysteries, also held the bound carcasses of eagles, dogs and other animals.

"It is hard to believe that the ritual consisted of clean, symbolic performances -- it is most likely that the ceremony created a horrible scene of bloodshed with sacrificed people and animals," said Saburo Sugiyama, one of the scientists leading the ongoing dig.

"Whether the victims and animals were killed at the site or a nearby place, this foundation ritual must have been one of the most terrifying acts recorded archeologically in Mesoamerica."

Of the 12 human bodies found, 10 were decapitated and then tossed, rather than arranged, on one side of the burial site. The two other bodies were richly ornamented with beads and a necklace made of imitation human jaws.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=574&ncid=574&e=6&u=/nm/20041202/wl_nm/mexico_pyramids_dc

[Media_Lies_Daily]

1. Why would this be a surprise? Archaeologists have know this for...

...decades, and the knowledge has been part of the public sector for quite some time.

[Piperay]

32. Yeah, I thought most everyone knew that

I took Mexican History in college (back in the 70's) and it was discussed then. :shrug:

[Puglover]

39. Absolutely....

I remember reading about the "Xipe Totec" ritual...:scared:
Google it.....

[knowbody0]

2. sounds like wal mart wants another one

[Califooyah Operative]

18. yuuuuuuup. nt

[AngryWhiteLiberal]

3. Antiquarian religious fundamentalists...not much has changed, I see.

The foundation ritual of the Southern Baptist Convention has similar procedures, or so I've heard... ;)

JB

[daleo]

4. Another propaganda angle I can see

The fact that pre-Columbian inhabitants of Mexico were sometimes known to practice human sacrifice is hardly news, so what is the point of the story (especially the graphic blood and gore descriptions). Maybe this:

There were beheadings in ancient Mexico.
Ancient Mexicans were pagans.
There have been beheadings in modern Iraq.
Therefore modern Iraqis are pagan.

So, the U.S. is doing God's work in Iraq, like Cortez did in Mexico.

[VegasWolf]

12. LOL, or ...

Ancient Mexico had valuable assets AND
Ancient Mexicans were pagans =
No more Ancient Mexico.

[Octafish]

43. Cortez wanted Gold.

Iraq has gold.
Black gold.
Oil is black gold.
Bush wants oil.
Bush kills like Cortez.

Yes. DU understands.

[idealista]

5. early fascists?

Anyone ever speculated on who all these sacrificed people were? Not just these 12 but in general - human sacrifice was common there, wasn't it? Seems likely that society used this as a way to keep its members in line. I mean, they probably didn't just go, "einie meeny-miney-moe" and take the 10th person, they probably selected the most helpless, poorest, those the priest had reason to dislike?

[aquart]

8. Ten sacrifices, two high-ranking burials.

Two of the bodies were laid out and ornamented.

[AlienGirl]

9. My understanding

is that the sacrificed were often volunteers who were guaranteed a good afterlife and honor from the people, and who were heavily drugged during the sacrifice.

Ancient Fundies...

Tucker

[Swamp Rat]

25. If you prefer well-researched, scientific analyses about Aztecs

and cannibalism, may I suggest the seminal works by two world renown anthropologists:

"The Ecological Basis of Aztec Cannibalism" - Michael Harner,
"Cannibals and Kings: The Origins of Cultures" - Marvin Harris

Check out the Harris website:
http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/~felwell/Theorists/Harris/Index.htm

[al bupp]

16. Read "Aztec" by Gary Jennings

If you want to get an excruciatingly detailed sense of what Aztec society was all about there's nothing better than the writings of Gary Jennings. He was the master of the impeccably researched historical novel.

In short, yes they often used prisoners of war in sacrifice, but also young virgins probably not usually too willing but for whom it was considered (by others, no doubt) a great honor. The victims were probably often heavily drugged.

[blackspade]

21. the Aztecs are

from a much later period than the city of Teotihuacan.
Ritual human sacrifice was a common practice in the Americas and actually worldwide.
This is nothing new.

[NuttyFluffers]

28. ding! we have a winner!

and it's nothing like the orgies of gore, with whole mountains of 100s of 1000s of bodies, that was sold to many people in western civilization.

it's these myths of scale and myths of moral superiority which still persist and annoy me.

[TahitiNut]

26. Sacrificing young virgins wouldn't seem to motivate teenage abstinence.

I wonder how proficient those priests were in detecting an intact hymen. I'd be willing to bet on what their "technique" was - and how a nooner with a priest was technically not a loss of virginity. :eyes:

[DS1]

37. You are the funnay!

:eyes:

Facists are the new boogeymen, apparently.

In fact, the Great Pyramids were built just so the Pharohs could climb on top and yell Seig Heil and more people would be able to see him.

[Swamp Rat]

6. Skulls make great beer mugs.

:D

OK, here we go with the anti-Aztec sentiment, using ritual cannibalism as a means to de-humanize a highly civilized culture. :eyes:

"... this foundation ritual must have been one of the most terrifying acts recorded archeologically in Mesoamerica." - They've already started with the imperialist rhetoric, yet they can't even spell "archaeologically". I'll bet the ritual was an awesome, kick-ass fiesta! I wish I was there to help with the de-fleshing, especially if they were Castellano thugs! :D

[prodigal_green]

13. As I recall

There were human sacrifices in the bible too.

[Swamp Rat]

14. Oh yeah, and the Europeans ate people all the time, drank fresh blood

from the gallows (redheads were considered best), and doctors sold scraps of human flesh for a large variety of ailments, etc. I think there was a large orgy of cannibalism, en masse, in 16th Century France, in Lyon, but I can't remember the details.

[prodigal_green]

44. well, the central premise of the Christian faith is based on

human sacrifice--Jesus died for our sins. He was sacrificed on the cross.

[depakid]

55. Odd how that fact escapes so many people

One of those things I bring up to my Southern conservative family members on occasion when certain issues come up.

Not that it registers.

[Cronus Protagonist]

17. A little later....

[Swamp Rat]

19. HAHAHA!

Btw, I received the "Waking Born" CD - Excellent! I'm listening to "Terminal Revolution" right now. :) Thanks a lot... I'll reciprocate in the future, if I EVER finish any one of my various projects. ;)

[Cronus Protagonist]

24. Hahaha That one looks like it was dessert

The earlier one, being browner, was clearly the "meat". I'm glad the Cd finally made it to you. I sent it long enough ago for it to reach China!

:)





http://brainbuttons.com/home.asp?stashid=13
Buttons for brainy people - educate your local freepers today!

[JNelson6563]

47. Off topic but

Love the buttons in your tag-line. I just went and ordered some.

:toast:

Julie

[Cronus Protagonist]

51. I hope you like them

- most people do :)

[NuttyFluffers]

7. oh good, so it's kinder than been propagandized.

ritual sacrifice was well known of here, but the spanish said the mounds of bodies were enormous, 100s, 1000s even. but most archeologists said the record never corroborated those overblown stories.

now that they've found some sights for the teotihuacan people and the number of people is @10-12, this is not so bad. hell, more people die in european full scale, no quarter war -- something the pre-colombians didn't truly have until their arrival. i recommend studying about the nahuatl concept of 'war of flowers,' where only the nobles fight and the rest of the populace were immune. though there is the mayan example pointing to full scale war which most likely led to the collapse of the civilization -- the people just got fed up and stopped participating in complex civilization and the whole thing fell apart, not to be resurrected. but they were a little ahead of the curve weren't they?

[aquart]

10. What a collection of erroneous claptrap.

And that sanitized "war of flowers" is simply mind boggling.

[NuttyFluffers]

27. compared to the spanish conquistador claptrap?

please, feel free to criticize my professors and the Native America and archaeological journals i was forced to read. i'm sure your wisdom supercedes all the experts and the ethnological, historical, and archaeological record they were mentioning. please, expound, oh wise one? a degree in pre-Colombian humanities is it?

[Bridget Burke]

46. Teotihuacan was abandoned before the Aztecs arrived...

In the valley of Mexico. Two different civilizations.

Human sacrifice was practived throughout the New World--just like the Old. My own ancestors usually cut the victims' throats & threw them into a bog.

[DemoTex]

11. From the pre-Bu$hian head-lopping period.

Not to be confused with the Bu$hian head-lopping period in Iraq-nam.

[MileHiStealth]

15. Correct term is "noggin-choppin' "

[blackspade]

22. nice one!

;)

[buddysmellgood]

20. Oh...Those are mine! I knew I left them down south.

[skooooo]

41. lol..

...we have the same sense of humor

[jobycom]

23. These scientists should work for Bush. I love the quote

"It is hard to believe that the ritual consisted of clean, symbolic performances-- it is most likely that the ceremony created a horrible scene of bloodshed with sacrificed people and animals."

Faith-based science? It is hard to believe x, so y is more likely? Wonderful. Sounds like the intelligence agencies telling Bush Iraq had WMDs. Either that, or just promo work: "We ain't got a clue what it means, but blood sure gets people's attention."

If ten decapitated bodies and two fancy corpses HAS TO BE a human sacrifice, what does 100,000 dead people in Iraq have to be? Is that a religious sacrifice? How about the hundreds executed in Texas? How about slavery and Native American genocide? Our nation's history is more bloody than that on any given day during times of peace.

No idea what my point is, except that bad history is bad history, I guess.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

29. Lovely rant!...

I agree. :thumbsup:

[Astrochimp]

50. almost made my point but.....

I would not have tied Iraq (now) into it.


"Big story science" is my term for this crap. We only have some facts of what happened so lets make up a "big story" to get press.

IMHO way too much of the science news is just story. Sure an educated guess is needed for some things, but this and many (most?) others are FAR from educated guesses. I have heard such far flung explanations for things while the reason could have been simple. But that does not make news.

When I read crap like this it makes me wish I would have became an Archaeologist like I planned, because you would see me yelling BS!!!!

David

[Ima]

30. info

The Pyramid of the Sun is at the center of a vast complex of ruins, including the Moon Pyramid, temples, some 2,000 apartments and a canal. The entire area is riddled with tunnels, and it is believed that is where the 1,000,000 cubic feet of red volcanic rock used to build the pyramid came from. It is also believed that the pyramid's location was considered sacred, as it was built on top of a cave where some scholars think religious ceremonies were held. More religious rituals took place at the top of the pyramid where a temple once stood. The area was devastated about 750 by fire, and the city that once supported between 150,000 and 200,000 people never recovered.

http://www.glasssteelandstone.com/MX/TheotihuacanPyramidSun.html

[Amigust]

31. Sugiyama gets a little carried away when he says

"this foundation ritual must have been one of the most terrifying acts recorded archeologically in Mesoamerica."

For really terrifying, read in Jennings' book about the dedication of the Aztec Templo Mayor (tens of thousands of sacrifices) in what is now central Mexico City and of the aqueduct (till blood flowed the entire length of the structure).

The Teotihaucanos had disappeared from the scene hundreds of years before the Aztecs ever developed into a culture, and one cannot safely extrapolate to Teotihuacan what the Aztecs did centuries later. They were two different cultures in different times. Information is gradually surfacing what life was like in Teotihuacan, and this is an interesting addition.

[DistressedAmerican]

33. Hey, Don't Pick On The Archaeologists

I asked a friend to post this for me as I can't seem to recover my lost password from the moderators.

While I have derived much comfort from the critique of the elections and the current administration since first seeing this site on the morning of Nov. 3, I have to wade in on this thread.

For a credible source on Aztec sacrifice, see Professor Michael Smith's book "The Aztecs" published by Blackwell. The Jennings novel is entertaining but sensationalist as are the links to other, way outdated studies on this thread (Harner, Harris). The Spaniard chroniclers exaggerated the numbers of Aztec sacrifice as part of their strategy to justify the conquest, and the millions of people slain by "Guns, germs, and steel" as a result of Spain's genocidal conquest (see Jared Diamond's book of the same name for a popular friendly account) trumps even the wildest estimates of Aztec excesses exponentially. However, the Aztecs were not unlike many ruthless empires in their strategies of war and sacrifice of captives taken in war. War has always been the ugliest side
of human nature.

As far as Sugiyama's find, not being "new," actually it is. He is
working on the second largest monumental building at the largest new world empire of its time, Teotihuacan (founded over a millenium earlier than the Aztecs), and these are new investigations. Mesoamerican sacrifice, performed publicly to legitimate hegemonic regimes, no doubt was dramatic and terrifying. Just because other sacrificial burial complexes have been found in the ancient Americas need not undermine Sugiyama's work, which is trying to decode the basis for political power of a primary nonwestern empire. Maybe one day such study of former hegemonic regimes - and their demise (what goes up, does go down) will finally get noticed by the powermongers of today's world and shape policy with a bit more foresight (unlikely, I know).

Don't pick on the archaeologists - while there may be some Republicans among our meager throng of thousands, I've never met one.

M. Masson, archaeology professor, State Univ of New York - Albany

[shrike]

36. Hey there, welcome to DU

Thanks for your interesting post. Hope to see more of them.

[Runcible Spoon]

38. Hey Marilyn!

Nice to see you are weighing in here, there is a lot of disinformation on this thread. Didn't know you posted here! For everyone's info, Dr. Marilyn Masson is a professor in teh Anthropology Department at SUNY Albany. Her focus is Post Classis Mayan archeology, especially in Belize. Dr. Mike Smith specializes in Aztec archeology. Both are considered to be voices of authority on Mesoamerican archeological topics. I am a grad student in the anthro department, but my focus is cultural anthro, so I am not a voice of authority here, but I will say that cultural ecology perspectives such as Harris' are considered outdated and not equipped to deal with the complex cutural, ecological, political, and religious aspects of human sacrifice in the pre-colonial Americas.

[SpiralHawk]

56. Hey, just back from Lubantuum

near Punta Gorda in southern Belize.

Heading back to Copan in Honduras in January.

the Belizeans, and especially the Hondurans, want their statues and other artifacts back....

[Justitia]

42. Thank you and a sidebar....

You alluded to the ups and downs of hegemonic regimes...

When I find myself particularly stressed by current events, I unconsciously go back to studying my hobbies of archeology, cultural anthropology and art history - as a reflex!

I noticed this a lot since Nov. 3rd - it was a real retreat from the current oppressive geopolitical atmosphere. Almost as if my mind was reassuring itself that "this too shall pass". I found myself really delving into the Roman Empires and their destruction by the Goths - ha, ha, ha.

Anyway, I just wanted to make the suggestion to others who like to study these topics as a hobby or pastime - when the current news is sooo overwhelming, check out ancient civilizations - not only is it a fascinating diversion, it puts some kind of order to real time chaos. For TV watchers, just flip to some National Geographic International programs or A & E or Discovery or some such.

Thank God for the archaeologists! They are the chroniclers who assure us that nothing (this bad) lasts forever! :)

Please continue posting here on DU, loads of us curious minds would love to see more from an authoritative source. :hi:

[not fooled]

53. "sacrifice, performed publicly to legitimate hegemonic regimes"

gee,"shock and awe" sure sounds like the modern-day version. Brought to you by the contemporary incarnations of bloodthirsty, psychopathic rulers, i.e. * / dumsfeld

[Skidmore]

34. Insurgents...Al Quaeda collaborators...

[Must_B_Free]

35. Terror = power

true then, true now

[skooooo]

40. it's mine....

sorry

[clover]

45. ALERT: anyone with an interest in/scholar of Cahokian

culture and/or North American moundbuilding tribes, esp. those of you with an esoteric bent, please consider PM-ing me. thank you!

[clover]

48. selfish kick (nt)

[mainer]

49. Better than getting your heart ripped out while you're alive

Seriously, descriptions I've read of Aztec sacrifices described "rivers of blood" and thousands of victims. Only a dozen human bodies found in this one? Small potatoes.

[The Stranger]

52. Amazing, the ignorance surrounding beheadings and the West.

The English beheaded everyone from serfs to kings for centuries. The French constructed a machine -- the Guillotine -- to make the art of beheading a science. The West mastered beheading people literally centuries before it was done by "insurgents" in Iraq.

Where has anyone with any knowledge gone?

[DistressedAmerican]

54. Not The Policy of SUNY ALBANY

Please note the brief political opinion expressed above does not necessarily reflect the views of the State University of New York at Albany. I just don't want any confusion as I was asked to remove the university affiliation information before posting the message and simply forgot. My apologies...
DA