Posted on 10/14/2019 4:29:02 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
In modern minds, the term “human sacrifice” conjures up macabre satanic rituals performed by bloodthirsty barbarians.
In the ancient Americas, however, cultures now considered to be highly influential and civilized saw human sacrifice as a necessary part of everyday life. Whether it was to appease the gods or ensure success in battle and agriculture, for the following peoples, the lines between sacrifice and simple survival were often blurred.
The Mayans are mostly known for their contributions to astronomy, calendar-making, and mathematics, or for the impressive amount of architecture and artwork that they left behind. They are also believed to be the first American culture to incorporate human sacrifice into daily life.
Blood was viewed as an incomparable source of nourishment for Mayan deities. In a time before scientific understanding, human blood became the ultimate offering and was kept flowing to protect their daily way of life.
The most common methods were decapitation and heart removal, neither of which would occur until the victim had been thoroughly tortured.
Heart-removal ceremonies took place in the courtyard of temples or at the summit of one and were considered the highest honor.
The Incas resorted to the practice of human sacrifice as a way to prevent, recover and cope with these regularly occurring upheavals. The Incas are most known for their sacrifice of children.
Many sacrifices were prisoners but archaeological records have proven that some children were actually raised specifically for these ritual killings.
For the Aztecs, even the sun god required a constant flow of human blood in order to exist.
During the reign of their empire, it’s estimated that an average of 200,000 people were sacrificed a year.
(Excerpt) Read more at allthatsinteresting.com ...
This week in the grocery store, saw Budweiser's sales promotion for Day of The Dead beer sales.
The conquistadors were catholic. They were utterly horrified by what they discovered. Those men were Heroes. Cortez, the Journey of Cabeza de Vaca, Coronado, and I forget his name but the Catholic priest who established the missions in California. Those men were so far from home in terms of time and distance, they may as well have been on Mars. The Bravery they showed leaves me shaking my head
That makes sense.
A more brutal version of many of our govt departments :)
I’m not even sure why/when some of them were created
They thought the Aztec's gods were demons--- because they actually were.
All their neighboring tribes--- whom the Aztecs regularly harvested for captives in the "Flower Wars" --- saw it as a horror as well, even if they participated (were forced to, on the Aztecs' terms.) The Tlaxcala, (and to an extent, the Cholula and Huejotzingo) finally had their revenge by allying with the Spanish against Montezuma.
If the Spanish hadn't stopped Montezuma, he would have depopulated the Valley of Mexico.
There would be no USA or most of the Western Hemisphere as we know it it these liberal haters of European culture had their way.
I’m sure shitholes like China, Africa or as the liberals dream, the Islamic world, could have done a better job with this hemisphere.
The Mayans version of Planned Homicide... Human Sacrifices... 200,000 a day?
As elucidated later in this thread— the human sacrifice— for pagan gods, the sun- whatever, was a terror threat from the ruling elite. It was visited upon isolated and nomadic small tribes who were hunted and brought to the citadels for sacrifice.
As a way of tribal and god/leader demonstration of power and supremacy and the “appreciation” of the pagan gods by their interpreted (by the killer priests of course) favor on the land.
Looking through this thread, am reminded of “Apocalypto” film by Mel Gibson, with Yucatec Maya language spoken and subtitles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypto). The plot occurs in the declining time of Mayans. The palpable fear of the small tribal people, and the people taken for sacrifice. The escape of the main character and survival of his family who go to the coast, and see the arrival of Columbus and the Conquistadores. The same Conquistadores who were horrified at these pagans, and wiped them out in conflict of the two cultures.
And, nowadays the neo-pagan anti-Christians (anti-Catholics, and anti especially Western, European Civilization) want to elevate the REGRESSION to paganistic rituals all in the name of their “anointed”, “ancient”, “knowledge”, that is pure crap. Their clarion call- by their supporters, to remember the saintly “indigenous” peoples. What lunacy.
These “peaceful” Rousseau/marvelled “innocents” who are said to have known no violence before the arrival of the Civilized World— all of which propaganda is completely false. Yet this is what is informing these Aztlan neo socialist/marxists— who actually worship themselves and their power through Statism, and violent force. “Progressives” who are in truth, regressive nihilists.
And still they persist, to the point of destroying Christianity in all its denominations— to push the ascent of the all powerful State. With a gooooooogle of internet Stasi surveillance to enforce it down to each individual— and ruled by fear. It is to be countered with every strength we as a Nation have- to uphold Freedom against these false “resister” of Civilization.
Yes, the Conquistadores encountered horrific primitive pagan slaughter that came from a time before Christ’s birth, not with any Classicist mythology known to the European world, but from a much darker place far removed in time from the developed world of their time.
The encounter of this Christian civilization, with colonial and monarchical structure supporting it, with the primitive fear based paganistic monstrous hierarchic tribal prehistoric had to have been beyond either’s comprehension. And Christianity (nevermind what the regressives push) was clearly superior.
Your analogy of Allies rolling into Nazi death camps is a good one. For at it’s deepest psychoses— the Teutonic Pagan Runic Cult of Aryan superiority which was contrived and “researched” and “confirmed” by Himmler- was the “State as Religion” guide that blessed the horrific mass murdering of all who opposed the Pagans. C.S. Lewis and JRR Tolkein both addressed this as pure evil when the pagan god Satan ruled mortal man for a time- and no greater proof of the presence of evil and that good can and should triumph.
“With a hat tip to smallpox and measles.”
Absolutely true.
The Aztec civilization was a twisted fever dream that needed to end.
L8r
Don’t forget that these sacrifices were also eaten, at least by the Aztecs. Can’t let that protein go to waste.
The warrior that provided the sacrifice got a joint (arm or leg). The remaining joints went to the knightly orders (Eagles, Jaguars, etc.). The priests got the head and the torso went to feed the Emperor’s menagerie.
Yes, the Pope, and the oh so ignorant woman and the fawning eco worshipers do not recognize the fact that it took European, Christian invaders to replace human. Sacrifice with Pro-lifers marching in the paved streets.
Whatever you did, remember to have not lost an Incan basketball game.
There’s plenty of that old time Aztec religion lurking in Central American/Mexico culture. There’s a fascination with death and a cruel streak that’s still present. MS-13 and cartel savagery is just the latest incarnation. And becoming more common in America as we import more of it.
You needed a few good tzompantli, 'Skull Racks', for those really big celebration days.
What was the point of the skull rack?
"Skull rack or tzompantli in Nahuatl - the language spoken by the Aztecs. The purpose of this structure was to display the heads of sacrificed human victims. Sometimes this structure was made of stone with carved human skulls. Skull racks were usually placed near temples or ball-courts. Those displaying real skulls comprised a wooden framework supporting skulls skewered on horizontal poles run through holes drilled through the temples. Tzompantlis were described by Spanish conquistadors and missionary friars in the Sixteenth Century."
"Skull racks took a variety of forms and seem to have served several functions: altars and venues for ritual; the heads of sacrificial victims were displayed to commemorate sacrifices in honour of a god. The Aztecs used skull racks to display prowess in war; in obtaining captives to be offered up to their gods. They also used them to terrorize subjugated populations. Likewise, they were used as symbols of defeat, capture and humiliation. When the Spaniards arrived in Mexico, the ancient Mexicans had never seen horses, so they placed horse heads on skull racks as offerings to their gods."
"The earliest known skull was excavated in Oaxaca, dating from approximately AD 600-900. Several other cultures in Mesoamerica produced skull racks: the Toltecs, Maya and the Aztecs as well as one example from West Mexico from approx. AD 900-1519. Several skull racks are known in Aztec sites, including real and sculpted skull racks. At the Great Temple of the Aztecs (their most important temple) archaeologists found a skull rack with at least 240 carved skulls. They had a layer of stucco and were originally painted in red."
Feeding the gods: Hundreds of skulls reveal massive scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital
"The priest quickly sliced into the captive's torso and removed his still-beating heart. That sacrifice, one among thousands performed in the sacred city of Tenochtitlan, would feed the gods and ensure the continued existence of the world.
Death, however, was just the start of the victim's role in the sacrificial ritual, key to the spiritual world of the Mexica people in the 14th to the 16th centuries.
Priests carried the body to another ritual space, where they laid it face-up. Armed with years of practice, detailed anatomical knowledge, and obsidian blades sharper than today's surgical steel, they made an incision in the thin space between two vertebrae in the neck, expertly decapitating the body. Using their sharp blades, the priests deftly cut away the skin and muscles of the face, reducing it to a skull. Then, they carved large holes in both sides of the skull and slipped it onto a thick wooden post that held other skulls prepared in precisely the same way. The skulls were bound for Tenochtitlan's tzompantli, an enormous rack of skulls built in front of the Templo Mayor—a pyramid with two temples on top. One was dedicated to the war god, Huitzilopochtli, and the other to the rain god, Tlaloc.
"...Some conquistadors wrote about the tzompantli and its towers, estimating that the rack alone contained 130,000 skulls. But historians and archaeologists knew the conquistadors were prone to exaggerating the horrors of human sacrifice to demonize the Mexica culture. As the centuries passed, scholars began to wonder whether the tzompantli had ever existed.
"Archaeologists at the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) here can now say with certainty that it did. Beginning in 2015, they discovered and excavated the remains of the skull rack and one of the towers underneath a colonial period house on the street that runs behind Mexico City's cathedral. (The other tower, they suspect, lies under the cathedral's back courtyard.) The scale of the rack and tower suggests they held thousands of skulls, testimony to an industry of human sacrifice unlike any other in the world. Now, archaeologists are beginning to study the skulls in detail, hoping to learn more about Mexica rituals and the postmortem treatment of the bodies of the sacrificed. The researchers also wonder who the victims were, where they lived, and what their lives were like before they ended up marked for a brutal death at the Templo Mayor...."
:-))
One of the things I always found interesting about Cortez’z conquest of Mexico was how the Spanish quickly converted some of the Indian nobles into the Spanish nobility.
For example (I find this to be amazing!) there is a direct descendant of Montezuma living in Spain as a Spanish nobleman.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_of_Moctezuma_de_Tultengo
Current tile holder: Juan José Marcilla de Teruel-Moctezuma y Valcárcel 2014– present
Mel Gibson’s movie Apocalyto does a good job of highlighting their bestial savagery.
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