Oh C'mon, are these academics insane? Have they talked themselves into a corner that there are absolutely no absolutes? No wrong that can't be rationalized away? The Caananites (and even the Hebrews who had forgotten God) had a 'complex worldview' that required infant sacrifice - with babies being burned in the fire to Molech...
I always thought God put it best when he responded to this abmonination in Jeremiah 32:
34 But they set their abominations in the house, which is called by my name, to defile it.
35 And they built the high places of Baal, which are in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Molech; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin.
Think of it, this abomination never came into the mind of the infinite God who created the Universe and World... What a depraved people we can become if we don't keep our eyes on God (and His Son) - no depth is too low for us (even stumping the Creator).
Yeah, I'm sure we should sympathize with this culture's complex worldview that required human sacrifice...How Judeo-Christian centric of us not to do otherwise...
Let's call a spade a spade -- this Mayan culture forgot God (I presume their ancestors knew Him in their not so distant past), and man's natural depravity led them to vile practices. I concede that other cultures/ethnicities - not rooted in God - had similarly noxious practices; but don't ask me to acknowledge their world-view as being anything more than depraved.