How is watching the movie any different?
"where throngs cheer wildly as power-mad priests engage in ritual human sacrifice, pulling still-beating hearts from chest cavities"
The bodies were taken down to the back of the temple where they were butchered and used for meat. The sharp stone spikes still found on some sites were not to keep people frommsitting there, nor were they a security feature.
Chunks of sacrificed captive meat were hung on those sharp stones. Thing Stone Age meat hook.