Posted on 01/27/2005 10:37:51 PM PST by quidnunc
New finds from an archaeological site near Mexico City support certain written and pictorial evidence concerning Aztec human sacrifice that historians previously doubted because the accounts seemed too exaggerated to be true.
The discovery adds to the growing collection of evidence supporting human sacrifice and cannibalism among the founders of the Mexican empire. It also suggests that researchers might now be able to verify some 16th century Spanish accounts on the subject.
The Spanish and the Aztecs documented at least four observations of cannibalism in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés (1485-1547), whose men conquered the Aztecs in 1519, wrote in a letter that his soldiers had captured an Aztec man who had roasted a baby at breakfast time.
While it probably would be impossible to validate that specific account, the Aztec site at Ecatepec, north of Mexico City, has just yielded the remains of eight children whom the Aztecs likely sacrificed.
Archaeologist Nadia Velez Saldana discovered the remains. She told the Associated Press, "The sacrifice involved burning or partially burning victims. We found a burial pit with the skeletal remains of four children who were partially burned, and the remains of four other children that were completely carbonized."
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at dsc.discovery.com ...
Tastes like.....?
Who's to say who's right and who's wrong?
Que se yo?
The summer wind
came blowing in
from across the sea...
If all the American Indian tribes came from the same Bering Sea crossers how come the ones in S. America became human sacrificers and the N. American Indians did not? Or am I just assumeing this?
The other white meat.
Hardly news. If you want to read facinating accounts of human sacrifice rituals in the New World and just about everywhere else in the World, read Frazer's "Golden Bough." Quite horrifying things were done on a very regular basis.
I can't understand why anyone would find this surprising, or even scandalous. Primitive peoples have always indulged in cannibalism; ritual and otherwise. Part of it is based on the universal superstition regarding the transferabilty of "spirit" from one entity to another.
I think I read that some Indians in Florida were cannibals, and there is evidence of cannibalism in the ruins of the Anasazi Indians.
However it is thought that the Anasazi society disintigrated because they were infiltrated by Aztecs.
I can't see any functional difference between this and Wahab Islam.
Yo Quero Taco Bell!
A lot of assumptions on your part.
Yet, I would suggest -- if there is any validity to your theory -- the drug use (psychoactive plant use) contributed a lot.
BTTT
I think you're just assuming it. Read James Fraser's "The Golden Bough." He's got quite a few examples of cannibalism among the North American Indians. The one that sticks in my mind concerns a missionary whose skin was slit open and pieces of fat inserted inside the slits, to keep him well-basted during the cooking process. He managed to escape, and lived for a number of days on the pieces of fat.
Well you could say that about many peoples. For instance what made Germans turn into Nazis, while their cousins in the UK did not.
We all have the capability to do horrendous things, it is simply a result of what contrains such behaviour in any given society. No genetic involved, just culture.
all culture is relative....all culture is relative.....all culture is relative....all culture is relative.
NOT!
Oh yech! That's one book I'm never going to read.
Modern "historians" (revisionists) only doubted these stories because to do so would cast a suspicious and evil eye onto the Catholic Church, of which Cortez was a member. The historcial evidence that Cortez and his small band of men witnessed the horrific sacrifice of babies and females is ample; but rejecting this historical evidence has enabled the liberals to attack the Spanish Explorers, (Catholics), by claiming they unfairly conquered and oppressed the native populations.
When one thinks of how little evidence these "historians" need as "proof" to assert that the likes of Columbus and the Spanish explorers were nothing but brutal conquerers and oppressers of innocent natives it becomes neauseatingly clear that they filter everything through an anti Christian mindset.
If what I heard recently is correct, there's a newer theory that humans populated this hemisphere not from north to south, but from south to north.
Archaeologists discover the Aztecs were notoriously bad cooks, their empire having never discovered the meat thermometer.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
