Posted on 01/23/2008 11:00:57 AM PST by SunkenCiv
The victims of human sacrifice by Mexico's ancient Mayans, who threw children into water-filled caverns, were likely boys and young men not virgin girls as previously believed, archeologists said on Tuesday... Maya priests in the city of Chichen Itza in the Yucatan peninsula sacrificed children to petition the gods for rain and fertile fields by throwing them into sacred sinkhole caves, known as "cenotes." The caves served as a source of water for the Mayans and were also thought to be an entrance to the underworld. Archeologist Guillermo de Anda from the University of Yucatan pieced together the bones of 127 bodies discovered at the bottom of one of Chichen Itza's sacred caves and found over 80 percent were likely boys between the ages of 3 and 11. The other 20 percent were mostly adult men said de Anda, who scuba dives to uncover Mayan jewels and bones. He said children were often thrown alive to their watery graves to please the Mayan rain god Chaac. Some of the children were ritually skinned or dismembered before being offered to the gods, he said... Archeologists previously believed young female virgins were sacrificed because the remains, which span from around 850 AD until the Spanish colonization, were often found adorned with jade jewelry.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
The tour guides in Costa Maya say the Spanish Priests singlehandedly destroyed the Maya culture. Everywhere. Also that stories of human sacrifice and cannabalism were all fabrications. Guess they’ll have to revise that.
“How is it possible to worship such a god?”
They make you an offering; you can’t refuse.
[sorry].....;]
In fact, over in Venezuela they're trying to invent a brand new type ~ Coca-mocha we might call it. That's where your Presidente issues crazy orders, steals people's stuff, and chews coca leaf all the time.
Blaming the Spanish, in general, for the deeds of the Conquistidores is not only wrong, it's an insult to the Conquistidores. They did their own stuff and with little guidance from Madrid.
I think any of them would be willing to own up to his own deeds.
“That’s where your Presidente issues crazy orders, steals people’s stuff, and chews coca leaf all the time.”
Clinton?
The Mayans the Spanish met were but a shadow of their ancesters and their civilization.
I think he cut out the “middle man” part ~ the leaf, and went straight for the powder.
The Mayan civilization crashed, burned and depopulated long before the Conquistidores showed up.
A persistent Bermuda High off the coast served to stop rainfall in the Yucatan for a couple of hundred years.
Guess that "ritual mutilation" didn't do much good then.
I can think of lotsa better things to do with my genitals; all including my wife ;-)
The rituals failed. Their civilization failed. In the end they owe their biological survival and any memory of their former glory to the arrival of the Spanish.
Partially true. The Spanish priests burned all of the Mayan books--thousands of them--only three survived. But no credible scholar disputes the blood sacrifice stuff. There are too many images of it painted on the walls to deny. Only the details can be quibbled about.
*rimshot*.....;]
:’)
“Do you have an “approved” bibliography to suggest?”
Oh, tee hee hee, let’s use the word “approved” in quotation marks, as a clever way to call dsc a liar.
“I suppose the inquisitors used diplomacy and reasoned with their captors?”
I’m still grateful to the Blood Trail thread for tipping me off about Hep C and probably saving my life, but supposing that the inquisitors used diplomacy and reasoned with their prisoners is a hell of a lot closer to the truth than what you actually suppose.
The both of you can start with a simple Google search on “The Black Legend.” Then, you can read the pertinent sections of “Iberia” by Michener.
Then, you might look here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1829676/posts
“PBS will not air a movie that its officials say paints Muslims in a bad light, ‘Islam vs. Islamists,’ but it has no qualms about showing a flick that Catholics have every right to question. This film is advertised on PBS’s website with an eerie black background depicting all the ‘T’s’ as crosses. All that is missing is Dracula’s voiceover. ‘For over half a millennium a system of mass terror reigned,’ it says, and ‘Thousands were subject to secret courts, torture and punishment.’ This is plainly dishonest.
“As British historian Henry Kamen has shown in his magisterial work, The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision, almost all the conventional wisdom about the Inquisition is wrong. By comparison with secular courts at the time, the Inquisition’s methods were more humane, e.g., defendants could be represented by an attorney. Edward Peters, another student of the period, says, ‘Modern historiography has completely blown the old Inquisition propaganda out of the water. No one seriously contends that hundreds of thousands or millions were killed, or that the Protestant countries were any more humane than Spain was.’ Indeed, scholars today refer to the old school mythology as ‘the Black Legend,’ a tale of lies spun by Elizabethan England. No wonder that in 1994, BBC/A&E aired ‘The Myth of the Spanish Inquisition.’
“Here’s what we know. Of the approximately 125,000 cases tried by the Spanish Inquisition, 1 percent resulted in the death penalty. Of the so-called witch hunts, where women were burned at the stake, secular courts executed 50,000 (not all of whom were women); less than 100 were killed by the Inquisition. Solzhenitsyn once compared the killings that took place in the Soviet Union in 1937 and 1938 to the killings that took place during the Spanish Inquisition and found that 20,000 were killed per month in the U.S.S.R. and 10 were killed per month during the Inquisition. But don’t look for such comparisons on PBS. To do so might get in the way of the truth.”
That should get you started.
Better than having your heart torn our, being skinned and/or roasted alive.
Besides, you could always convert without the “encouragement,” whereas the wonderful pre-Columbian civilizations were happy to sacrifice you no matter what your beliefs.
Killing off the Aztec, Inca and Maya “civilizations” was a GOOD thing...
That is a very perceptive comment. The Spanish Conquistadors had just completed the 750+ year long Reconquista in which the Iberian peninsula was retaken by various Christian kingdoms from the Muslims. The prevailing belief at the time was that the one thing that differentiated human beings from animals was the existence of a soul. The thing that justified the armed struggle against Muslims and pagans was that they had forfeited their souls rendering them not human and beyond salvation and protection by God.
Further, the practices they discovered in the New World were so extreme, even in comparison to Muslims, lead to the conclusion that the practitioners were so far beyond non-human as to be Satanic.
re: sacrificing boys instead of virgins
Older alpha males of most animal families do something similar to keep down their competition. No fools they.
RE: “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to force you into transvestism, then skin or dismember you, then drown you.”
But all sacrificial lambs in every culture are sold the sizzle, not the frying pan. I imagine the follow-up to be something like:
“Then you’ll go to Chac heaven and live forever with 72 virgins we’ve either missed or elected not to deflower.”
Lamb: “Praise Chac from whom all blessings flow”
:’)
“Further, the practices they discovered in the New World were so extreme, even in comparison to Muslims, lead to the conclusion that the practitioners were so far beyond non-human as to be Satanic.”
Do you have a source for that?
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