Rim Shot
Click the Pic J
Posted on 09/02/2006 1:28:10 PM PDT by wagglebee
As they waited to be sacrificed outside a temple, the victims made no attempt to escape their fate: their throats were cut, they were decapitated and their hearts ripped out.
Their hands were not tied and they offered no resistance to the sacrificial knife. A seed containing a potent drug was used to paralyse their bodies, leaving the victims aware of a terrifying ritual that has been revealed for the first time by a dig in the vast pre-Colombian city of Túcume in northern Peru.
Archaeologists working in the ruined city of giant pyramids have discovered one of the largest sites of human sacrifice in South America.
So far, the team has uncovered the remains of 119 men, women and children as young as five who were hacked to death outside a temple.
Archaeologists believe that the sacrifices reached a bloody crescendo in the final days of the city, as its rulers struggled to stave off catastrophe at the hands of the Spanish conquistadors, who arrived in the area in the 1530s. The pyramid city has been abandoned ever since.
"The discovery of these human sacrifices outside the temple is one of the most important in the history of Peruvian archaeology," said Alfredo Narvaez, the chief archaeologist at the site.
Until recently there has been little archaeological evidence of human sacrifice from the ancient Andes. Historians have had to rely on accounts written by Spanish invaders and grisly depictions on pottery and art.
In the mid 1990s the bodies of individual children sacrificed by the Incas high in the Andes were uncovered, as were the bodies of around 110 men of fighting age, probably captured warriors, sacrificed by the Moche civilisation.
But the picture now emerging from Túcume is one of sacrifice as a way of life which could be carried out on young and old, men and women.
The slaughter was uncovered last summer when Bernarda Delgado, from the Museum of Túcume, and anthropologist J Marla Toyne, from the University of Tulane, led excavations in the blistering heat alongside the longest pyramid in the world, Huaca Larga, a colossal structure of mud bricks half a mile long.
Their investigation features in a BBC series, Lost Cities of the Ancients, to be shown next week. They opened up a 33ft area around a temple that was built around 1,000 years ago, when Túcume became an important ritual centre for the Lambeyeque civilisation. They were confronted by 73 shallow burial pits.
"Of the 119 individuals we recovered from this small area 90 per cent of them show cut marks in the neck and throat — suggesting it was almost a systematic execution," said Toyne.
Knife marks show that the human victims had their throats cut, and were decapitated between the second and third neck vertebra. Finally the sacrificial knife was used to saw open their chests to remove the hearts.
Toyne, sponsored by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, found no evidence that the victims had been tied up or that they had fought to avoid this brutal death, and the clean cut marks showed no evidence of individuals moving to avoid the knife.
Narvaez believes the likely explanation is that the victims were drugged before being killed. He found amala seeds at the temple, which contain a chemical that leaves the victim lucid but paralysed and powerless to resist.
The first sacrifices outside the temple were animals — lamas and alpacas. Around 60 have been recovered. Later humans were ritually executed and buried in pits – in marked contrast to other discoveries of sacrifice where bodies were often left in the open for vultures to pick on.
But of the greater significance is the temple where they were sacrificed, which has yielded a treasure trove including hundreds of silver miniatures. "It is the first time in Peruvian archaeology that we have found a temple with this extraordinary context that hasn't been looted," said Narvaez.
The finds give an important new insight into the rituals by which the people of ancient Peru believed they could connect with the vengeful gods who controlled their destinies. Sometimes offering silver or lamas was enough. At others, only a human would suffice.
Narvaez's theory is that the increase in human sacrifice was linked to the greatest upheaval ever to hit South America, the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors. That set off chaos and fear in Túcume, leading to a bloody crescendo as more and more blood was offered to the gods.
The sacrifices failed to stop the Spanish advance. The city of Túcume was burnt by its inhabitants and then abandoned. They never returned.
I honestly believe it was a tribe that would later become the Mexica. Very hard to convince anyone to believe me.
...and for dessert, lady fingers!
[rimshot!]
Hey, quit complainin', it *could* have been a Helen Thomas joke.
Rim Shot
Click the Pic J
Good info at that link!
:') I love that.
I was told by distant relatives of my wife that racism is rampant in Mexico. Indians have been conditioned to not even bother to apply for jobs, as the European Mexicans will not hire them.
A;; hail the Spanish Conquistadores and their helpmates, the Roman Catholic Church!
You forgot to point out that all cultures are relatively equal. Some of these people are so judgemental, it could tear your heart out.
"I'm sure the Aztecs had them beat."
Yes they certainly did. I read the Bernal Diaz book over 40 years ago when I was studying in Mexico City. Also read Cortez's 5 letters to King Carlos of Spain, the same summer, both in Spanish. The number of captive warriors sacrificed was horrendous. In the recent past an Aztec prime minister had persuaded the emperor to make "flowery wars" a matter of state policy to raid and capture neighboring peoples. He said something like "let the Tlaxcalens be our tortillas." The sacrificed were cut up an distributed to the populace which had very little high quality protein in their diet. Many tens of thousands of people were killed and eaten.
Regarding the sacrifice of children to the rain god, Tlaloc, this is true. Aztecs may have picked it up from the Mayans. A child with a double whorl in the hair at the top of the head was considered the best as the double whorl was like the swirl of clouds. Aztec citizens were expected to willing give up their family members who were chosen for sacrificial honors.
An interesting novel that deals with the immediate post conquest period is "Heart of Jade" by Salvador Madariaga.
Now that we have established that Aztecs and Incas were not adverse to religious slaughter, let us look at the Spanish and other Europeans. Anyone who thinks so highly of the Spanish should read up on the history of the Inquisition, the expulsion of the Jews and the Moors, and the treatment of Conversos. Count Dracula was also called Vlad the Impaler, because he discouraged the advance of the Ottoman Empire into Europe by impaling something like 9,000 muslim invaders after a victory. Check out the killing rates on civilians of the Hundred Years War, and the Thirty Years War; these were Catholic/Protestant conflicts. Killings for religion in England by "Bloody" Mary, and to a lesser extent, Queen Elizabeth, are nothing to make us proud.
In a final note, Cortez made excellent use of the angry Tlaxcalans and other Aztec victim people to defeat the Aztecs. I think the Tlaxcalans provided something like 100,000 to 200,000 warriors to the fight.
I just tried to post this an all it did was jump. Will try again, sorry if I double post.
Check out my comment #71, and pardon my misspelling of Tlaxcalans. I also meant to post to Miss Marple and wagglebee when I posted that but couldn't remember how to spell the names.
A probably significan factor in the French Revolution was the major eruption in Iceland of the Laki Fissure in 1783, it caused serious climatic disturbance in all of Europe, and our very own Ambassador Benjamin Franklin attributed this strange weather to an eruption in Iceland.
This weather caused serious crop failures and famine for several years. It may have contributed to Ergot fungus as well.
gringos?
Your racism is showing.
If I had to choose a culture to be on my southern border, I prefer one of Roman Catholicism (albeit slightly modified in some areas) versus one whose religion requires human, particularly child, sacrifice.
I suppose that's fairly parochial and Euro-centric of me, but there you have it.
I think I'll bid for the knife sharpening concession. [I wish to do my part - lol]
The oppression of the technologically and politically primitive by the technologically and politically powerful (the oppression of the weak by the strong) --- seizure of land and wealth, massacre of the resisters, enslavement of the survivors--- is just about a constant in human history. You'll find it in the history of just about every race, tribe, culture and nation.
The really different thing about the Spanish conquest of the New World was the extent to which there was internal dissent and internal struggle amongst the Spanish, in favor of the rights of the indigenous people and against their enslavement.
It's 6,000 miles from Mesoamerica to Spain --- very difficult miles in the 16th century --- and effective communication, let alone government, from Madrid to Mexico City was very limited and at time spractically impossible. Nevertheless, Queen Isabella and subsequent monarchs tried to curb or limit the enslavement of the indigenous people of the New World.
Theologians at Spanish Universities reasoned that the people of the New World had souls; were created, like all men, in the image and likeness of God; and possessed natural rights, inluding the right to personal liberty. Forceful men like Bartolome de las Casas and Turibius of Mongrovejo spent their lifetimes attempting to protect Indians from the depredations of the Spanish conquistradores: the voice of Spanish Catholic conscience was a constant,and I mean constant challenge and irritant to those in power.
The principles worked out by people like Francisco Vitoria, to try to define just and peaceful relations between Spain and the civilizations she encountered, form the foundation for modern thinking on human rights and international law.
That's what's different about Christian civilization. Not the absence of sin, but the persistent presence of a new level of critical reflection, internal self-criticism and conscience.
Many people think that ergotism was a big factor in the Salem witch hunt.
I'm going to buy a tour bus and do guided tours of Fort Marcy Park.
*curtsy*
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