Uh, hate to break this for you, but If you read the ORIGINAL report of Cortez, there was not only ritualized, but casual and societal cannibalism.
We spend the years 1900-2000 ignoring and covering it up in the attempt to relativize civilizations and demonize Christianity.
But the facts are that it was a common practice, from the southwest, to the gulf coast, and all though central america.
After the Aztecs ritually sacrificed victims at the top of the pyramid, their bodies were rolled down the steps, where they were dismembered. Their legs and arms went into a stew that fed the people (socialism’s early form of soylent green). The torso and head were fed to the pigs. Upon approaching Tenoochtitlan, Cortez reports seeing the large red pyramids in the distance. Upon being in the city, he realizes the red is from the blood of victims. It was at this point, Cortez says in his diaries that something had to be done. No longer was he there for fame and fortune - he had a goal - to stop the killing.
Of course in the last 100 years, people have spent of lot of time trying to re-write history. Facts are, the whole of central america, the gulf coast and parts of the southwest were ruled by folks who practiced cannibalism.
I made my girlfriend mad by speculating out loud about the possibility of this kind of thing among the pre-Mississipian natives in middle and west Tennessee.
We were spending all day at a place outside of Jackson Tennessee with a lot of earthen pyramid looking things where they admitted that they were used for rituals and sometime even animal sacrifice.
It was a natural leap for me to cite the ongoing controversies in academe about the subject. It got me in trouble. I didn’t really care.
The cultural footprint in South central U.S. looks similar to the ones in Meso-America.
Should we really be surprised if it did happen.
I wonder if these were the same people whom I have seen referred to as Chichimec. As I recall, it was a Chichimec group that moved south to central Mexico and became the Aztec civilization. A chief advisor to the Emperor some decades earlier had promoted the “flowery wars” to harvest enemy warriors to use as their bread. This is why Cortez had no difficulty recruiting at least 100,000 Tlaxcalan allies and others tired of being “bread” to fight the Aztecs. The Aztec diet was rather poor in protein as they had no large herd animals as people did in Europe. They had turkeys, fish, ducks and a few other small sources.
The head went to the priests. The torso went to feed beasts in the emperor’s menagerie. The captor got a joint, and the remaining joints went to feed various knightly orders.
There were no pigs at the time. Pigs came over with the Spanish.