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.
These Peruvian indigenous peoples were serious pagans propitiating their idols with human victims. Though I'm sure the Aztecs had them beat
Judaism got it's start as a rebellion against pagan human sacrifice
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About 20 years ago now a source book for much Cortez's story was translated into English for the first time and published. The books name is the Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Diaz. He was one of Cortez lieutenants.
He says something that doesn't make it into the history books in school. The Aztecs priests would "act up" right in front of Cortez.
Apparently human sacrifice and homosexuality in the priesthood went hand in hand with Aztecs as it did with the Caananites. And too, Cortez's reaction was just the same as Moses.
For years and years, the media and media driven scholars have advanced the notion that primitive societies were somehow better than our own, more friendly, more tolerant, more charitable, more in tune with Nature's harmony. Of course, it was all BS. With very few exceptions, the farther back one goes in evolutionary history, the more savage and cruel societies were. Those alleged societies of South and Central America were not only savage and cruel, but, very likely, insane, as well. One doesn't need a degree in psychology or psychiatry to read the mindset behind the stone carvings they have left us. Uncovering their blood-thirsty sacrifices only adds to the case against their sanity. Add to that a diet of high carbohydrates for generation after generation, and one is safe in concluding that both their beliefs and their behaviors were symptoms of a terminal disease.
Did that meeting actually happen, or was this something Michael Wood was guessing about?
You bringing up the high carb diet got me thinking, I wonder if it's possible that ergotism was a factor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergotism
That happens [symbolically] in politics all of the time. ;-)
What an arrogant statement by westerners to assume that their ancestors' arrival was the greatest upheaval to ever hit the indiginous peoples of south america. There are natural disasters like volcanoes, earthquakes, landslides, meteor strikes, changes in the ocean currents and climates leading to floods, droughts, and wildfires; and the actions of local inhabitants, like attacks by other tribes and the practices of their own evil leaders and witch doctors who enslaved and butchered the people to factor into their history, but only the arrival of a handful of gringos into their densely populated cities could possibly trigger the frenzied bloodshed of innocents.
I don't buy it.
Their own superstitions and demons condemned them.
Oooooooo...good one.
Here's a link...the first paragraph just mentions that the Spaniards were
horrified at the Aztec's human sacrifices.
http://www.pbs.org/conquistadors/cortes/cortes_f00.html
In the video, Wood expands on that by recounting the "moment of truth"
when the Spaniards' revulsion was really solidified.
Wait until the 2008 'Rat primary season rolls around, it may happen more literally than you think.
The Mesoamericans certainly had a natural right to repel such cruel, dishonorable and greedy aggressors as Pizzarro. The situation was not uniform, however, throughout the entire Spanish conquest. Conside Mexico: as Cortes passed through mountain towns and villages, many Indians told of cruel treatment by the Aztecs. These Indians were very willing to help the Spanish conquer Montezuma. Tlaxcalan allies, in fact, were the key to Cortes' victory. With all his faults, he was much more the "liberator" than was Pizzarro.
The big book I read said the priests had long hair matted with blood. Their hair was rarely washed. That they were gay. These were the priests in charge of human sacrifice
The nice thing about preliterate societies was their ability to separate folk memory three ways.
Long-term memory.
Short-term memory.
Convenient memory.
:')
Alright...
It seems to work out better for a civilization if they believe in the Loving God scenario instead of the Angry God scenario.
I've often wondered why Strunk wrote:
"Omit needless words! Omit needless words! Omit needless words!"
when it should have been:
"Omit needless words!"
Must be Strunk had a sense of humor.
Europe had a long tradition of exploitation of the underclass by the nobility. The conquest of America extended the tradition of becoming landed gentry through conquest. The treatment of the Native Americans was not out of character.
(Most bread was rye, "Let them eat cake", which was made with wheat flour, was not so callous as often presented).
Yeah, like in the Aztec Empire.
This is what the supporters of AZTLAN want to do - tear out the hearts of cultural Anglo America from docile victims.
So far they are succeeding.
I guess I just had to spell it out, for I was under a spell of sorts, one of contemplation, due much to dennisw's #40, then your #53, but both of these in relation to scripture, which itself needs be devoured in entirety, much as the first passover lamb (or good goat, if one hadn't a perfect enough lamb).
We (so many of us) still don't get it. ah, well, as long as we're walking away from egypt, some of us may yet make it to the Promised land.
There's more to this contemplation, about what sacrifice was eventually substituted, or should I say employed, as it was even in so many ways foretold, but that's enough, for now.
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