MEXICO CITY, MEXICO — The question of whether the Aztec Mexican and Mayan practices of human sacrifice were as prevalent and terrible as history books claim has long been debated. Or did the Spanish conquerors exaggerate in order to make the Indians appear uncivilized?
Archeologists have recently discovered a growing body of physical evidence that supports the Spanish stories in substance, if not in number.
Archeologists are establishing that pre-Hispanic sacrifices frequently involved children and a wide range of purposely horrific killing methods using high-tech forensic instruments.
Many researchers assumed for decades that Spanish records from the 16th and 17th centuries were skewed to degrade Indian traditions. Others said that sacrifices were mostly limited to captive warriors. Others agreed that the Aztecs were bloodthirsty, but thought the Maya were less so.
"Now we have physical evidence to back up the written and pictorial record," archeologist Leonardo Lopez Lujan stated. "Some 'pro-Indian' currents have consistently rejected this. "The texts must be lying," they argued.
According to David Carrasco, a Harvard Divinity School scholar on Mesoamerican religion, the Spaniards most likely exaggerated the number of casualties to justify their campaign against idolatry.
The nature of the killings, on the other hand, is less in doubt. Multiple forms of horrific human sacrifice are described by Indians in visual documents known as "codices," as well as Spanish reports of the time.
Victims were decapitated or had their hearts cut out, clawed, sliced, stoned, crushed, skinned, buried alive, or thrown from the roofs of temples.
Children were supposed to be common victims, partly because they were thought to be innocent and untainted.
"Many people said we can't trust these codices because the Spaniards were describing all these horrible things," said Carmen Pijoan, a forensic anthropologist who discovered some of the first direct evidence of cannibalism in a pre-Aztec culture more than a decade ago: bones with butcher-like cut marks.
Archeologist Nadia Velez Saldana revealed finding evidence of human sacrifice related with the deity of death during an excavation in an Aztec-era town in Ecatepec, just north of Mexico City, in December.
"Burning or partially burning victims were used in the sacrifice," Velez Saldana explained. "We discovered a burial pit with the skeletal bones of four partially burned children and the remains of four entirely carbonized youngsters."
Although it is unclear if the victims were burned alive or not, there are depictions of persons who appear to be alive being held down while being torched.
Other evidence was discovered to back up claims of sacrifices in the Magliabecchi codex, a visual record painted between 1600 and 1650 that depicts human body parts placed into cooking pots and people sitting around feasting while the god of death watches.
"We've discovered cooking dishes that look exactly like that," archeologist Luis Manuel Gamboa stated. "We also discovered some fragmentary, segmented human bones alongside some full skeletons." It's unclear whether the corpses were cannibalized.
Here Is A T-Shirt Inspired By Aztec Descendant
Aztec Savage Maya Aztec Customized 3D
Nhận xét
Đăng nhận xét