>In his/her capacity as educator, moralist, and role model -- i.e. as "teacher of people's faces" (teixtlamachtiani) -- the sage is akin to an artist who skillfully shapes a formless block of stone into a beautiful statue. The sage shapes a child's "faceless", lump of human flesh into a genuinely human "face and heart". Of the sage the Nahuas said:
The wise man: a light, a torch, a stout torch that does not smoke. A perforated mirror, a mirror pierced on both sides. His are the black and red ink, his are the illuminated manuscripts, he studies the illuminated manuscripts. He himself is writing and wisdom. He is the path, the true way for others. He directs people and things; he is a guide in human affairs. Teacher of truth, he never ceases to admonish. He makes wise the countenances of others; to them he gives a face; he leads them to develop it. He opens their ears; he enlightens them. He puts a mirror before others, he makes them prudent, cautious; he causes a face to appear on them. He attends to things; he regulates their path, he arranges and commands. He applies his light to the world. Thanks to him people humanize their will and receive a strict education.
Landon Green
Human sacrifice was a political propoganda mechanism. If you capture your enemies and kill them as a public event, it not only encourages your own populous, but it demoralizes enemies who almost always sent spies or dignitaries to these mass killings.
It was brilliant actually. And without it, there wouldnt have been an empire. Aztecs ruled hegemonically, meaning that they didnt garrison troops in conquered areas. As such, they relied heavily on an atmosphere of fear throughout the empire to discrourage rebellion.
Turns out a great way to demoralize a potential threat is to capture their people, chop them into pieces, and eat them.
Yeah they had city states, tenochtitlan being the largest with 215,000 people. The language was pictographic, so not exactly literature. The telpochcalli was a public school present throughout the city's districts and the calmecac was sort of like a much better private school for nobles.
They were based as fuck mi amigo. Case in point, they led an army of 400,000 soldiers to conquer the Huaxyacac region.
Liam Allen
>tfw we will never have an aztec socrates
>What is good? CHOPPING YOUR ENEMIES, SEE THEM BURN AND RAPE THIER WOMEN ARGGGGGGG
John Martin
>Human sacrifice Old bad Catholic tradition from middle ages. Seems Aztecs lived in Euro style.
Isaiah Torres
>autistic religious practices They were perfectly aware of what they were doing during sacrifices and what a life means. They didn't just ignore how each of us manages to stay alive everyday. They couldn't try to forget every being fighting for its life perfectly aware of its demise, that an irrational being could appreciate life and fear death like any man, that the screams of this being begging to stay alive will never be heard again, ever. youtube.com/watch?v=VECtHHQjCqg youtube.com/watch?v=HqibnObSAFY youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q
Every being that appreciates life fights everyday to preserve it, but many have had to abandon all of it forever, ripped apart, all the joys, the family, the scents, the mornings, all of it to give us the chance to enjoy it aswell. What was all that worth for? If everyone else has to give their lives so someone else can live, who do we give life to? Sacrifices were their answers to questions that still remain today.
Brody Stewart
If Thucydides wrote a book positing ideas on the same subjects Socrates wrote about it would be something like an Aztec philosophical progenitor
Is that a sustainable model, though, the Incas garrisoned troops in conquered areas and had a very ordered multilevel bureaucracy
Jacob Wilson
Haha no it wasnt even remotely sustainable. It required a steady flow of sacrifices and constant conquest. If they stopped conquering territory, the empire would be percieved as weak and rebellions would break out.
With or without the spanish, the empire would eventually face a spectacularly quick and brutal collapse.
Julian Gomez
And then the slavery . A lot of natives were sacrificed taking silver from the mines for the spaniards, (just to be robbed by english pirates kek). That was worse IMO.
Oliver Baker
They were on the level of development the Old World passed thru in the Bronze Age. Not "primitives" but not "civilized" like the Classical cultures of Greece, Rome, and Persia.
James Hall
They sacrificed countless crying children to their rain god, even intending they cry so that they would see rainfall.
Fuck you
Joseph Ross
You still can, in Mexico there are many still (pic related are zoque girls). In some communities they still sell girls to marry you off at a price in Oaxaca.
Current prices are $1111, some mezcal (alcohol) and a cigar. Others fetch for $2500 approx.
Michael Thompson
Yeah the aztecs were pretty cool until Cortés fucked them up
But in my opinion the mayas were much cooler They had the real written language and not pictograms like the Aztecs Also their mathematics, architecture and astronomy were pretty good for a civiliation using the vigesimal system
Andrew Allen
Brilliance of operation is not the same thing as morality of action. Just ask Genghis.
I don't condone it any more than any mass execution.
Cooper Richardson
tbqh Aztec philosophy is fascinating. Apparently their philosophers debated with Spanish friars.
Adrian Harris
What's wrong with a vigesimal system?
Brody Anderson
They were some pretty scary bastards. Imagine getting your leg cut and maimed by obsidian glass. then carried off captive to be sacrificed.
Cooper Rogers
in my opinion, the destruction of the aztec libraries by the spanish is the most depressing historical event to ever occur.
Evan Ward
not a joke. I talked to this old dude who used to hunt artifacts down in central america, he told me a story about showing up at some small remote town and that they brought out their prettiest girl to try to sell to him.
Adam Brooks
>They had the real written language and not pictograms like the Aztecs the aztec language isn't pictographic, you're just assuming it is by it's appearance, it was logographic/ideographic. even still, a pictographic language isn't "fake", that's a strange thing to imply. if anything, phonetic based languages contain much less inherent information than logographic ones, though whites will never admit this. japanese is probably the best written language on the planet, considering it contains both logographic information as well as phonetic, and it's phonetic information can be pronounced audibly without knowing the word in the first place unlike western languages. there's a reason nip subtitles are up on movies for half the time as english ones, logography is more efficient than phoneticism.
Christopher Cook
Aztecs didn't have true writing. Only Mayans did.
Luis Perry
then according to you, chinese also do not have "true writing", whatever weird head-up-your-ass western definition you might have of that is.
Connor Green
Yep this is a deal braker. I'm glad the Spaniards wiped them from the surface of the Earth. Good riddance.
Camden Murphy
Don't you like cacao drinks and getting loaded on fermented agave sap?
Adrian Butler
You do know pure cacao is better as fuck right?
Anthony Butler
idk, they had some pretty good drinks
Wyatt Gonzalez
Like chicha? that shit is literally chewed corn
Elijah Morris
>not drinking pulque for that protein and sweet gains
Carter Bennett
Did those shields stop anything at all. Look fragile as fuck
Colton Russell
No m8, it's tejate. When I tasted it, I realized that Díaz del Castillo wasn't exaggerating when he said chocolate could give enough energy for a whole day without eating something else.
John Wood
That theobromine.
Carson Kelly
They worked good enough for the weapons their enemies used. It would break with steal though.
Jaxon Green
Chichas delicious, it depends how it's prepared, and which ingredients are used. The quality can vary just like quality of beer or wine varies. Recent evidence shows that mezcal is also of precolumbian origin not colonial like what was once believed.
Austin Brown
I see this same argument with hide shields and wicker shields in other cultures as well, and even unimpeded wooden plank shields. Yes, they are all fairly deformable and weak. However, they are light enough to actually lift with your hand and move around rather than just lugging and holding in front of you. What you have to realize is that most shields aren't for statically blocking a swing with full momentum behind it at 90 degrees. You time it and step into an attack and parry/redirect the force or simply keep the shield out to close off certain lines of attack and let you make your own move.
Daniel Fisher
Except Chinese have writing tho.
Josiah Lopez
Savages.
Justin Hill
Aztec women were qt
Carson Bailey
Why was human sacrifice so abhorrent to the europeans when it was common for them to burn people alive, break them at the wheel, flay them, break their bones one by one, cut noses, ears and fingers, gouge eyes out and torture people for days before finally executing them in front of a cheering crowd?
Justin Turner
> Why was human sacrifice so abhorrent to the europeans
I've never seen evidence they found it worse than all the other unchristian activity. It's not like the Europeans toured the facilities, drew a pros and cons list, and circled "human sacrifice" twice before they started fucking things up. The idea that that was the one thing sounds like after the fact mythology.
Carter Brown
Most cultures in the old world phased out human sacrifice around the Iron Age.
Early Greek and Roman sources mention it with a tone of disdain as something that backwards hicks had done.
The Binding of Isaac in the Old Testament is supposed to be a parable for how the Canaanites gave up human sacrifice.
Mesoamerica was still firmly bronze age in terms of society.
Logan Martin
It sounds hypocritical considering european methods of execution were slow and painful until the french revolution.
Asher Campbell
ive always wondered what was found in the Codices of the city that triggered Cortez and ordered his men to burn hundreds if not thousand of paper rolls, like seriously it was the first this they did
Jason Hill
The paper rolls werent bibles, that was enough for him I bet.
William Russell
Execution =\= human sacrifice
Lucas Brooks
Full records of the Aztec decent from Aztlan (Atlantis) and how our mythology is just based off of the escapees from Atlantis. All their pyramidal knowledge and their societal rules are based off of it. Just like Sumerian, Egyptian, Greek, and Indian cultures.
Jayden Turner
Why is this board so full of crazy people?
Nolan Adams
Or trolls
Oliver Gray
Their aesthetics are unique as fuck.
Andrew Johnson
Aparently Tenochtitlan was a very impresive city. This is one witness account:
"When we saw so many cities and villages built in the water and other great towns on dry land we were amazed and said that it was like the enchantments (...) on account of the great towers and cues and buildings rising from the water, and all built of masonry. And some of our soldiers even asked whether the things that we saw were not a dream? (...) I do not know how to describe it, seeing things as we did that had never been heard of or seen before, not even dreamed about. —Bernal Díaz del Castillo,
Matthew King
I always thought about this. They were going around mutilating people, raping women and burning people alive for no reason other than they could.
Anthony Morgan
If you erase their history you can better erase their identity and culture which makes it easier to control them since at that point they are without knowledge of a prideful past. Basically it was to earse who they were and remold them into something different that they could control.
Chase Sanchez
what that user said isnt crazy, many traditions have a flood story, is it hard to believe that all the melting ice from the last ice age caused the sea level to rise and cause Atlantis to 'sink' into the sea? the people escaped or knew it was coming and went to find new lands to settle, this would explain the many similarities between ancient civilisations
Daniel Ward
I'd love to see it at its peak.
Connor Morales
>the many similarities between ancient civilizations
is this a troll?
Zachary Lopez
Because the point of ethics is to justify what you've already decided. It doesn't matter how absurdly contradictory the rules may be; if the other guys are dead and you're sailing back to Europe with a shipful of gold, your system worked.
Robert Anderson
>many traditions have a flood story
It's almost as if newer cultures absorb elements of older traditions.
Angel Ward
I doubt that makes any difference to the victim
Jeremiah Garcia
It makes one for the societies involved and was in lieu of vigilantism and blood feuds.
Alexander Brooks
>'Technochitalin' this wasn't the rave and party capital of Mesoamerica dude. I know the spelling's pretty fucked up but it's Tenochtitlan
Jack Parker
the city at the time of Conquest 1
Charles Evans
the city at the time of Conquest 2
Josiah Barnes
the city at the time of Conquest 3 this one if I'm not mistaken is at the National Anthropology Museum
James Cox
He was probably spelling it how he pronounced it, tec(h)-nock-tillan is how I learned how to pronounce it and tho I'm pretty sure it's wrong it doesn't mean you didn't get the point he was trying to make.
Aiden Miller
it's Teh / nosh / tee / tlan as I said, it's a pretty fucked up language, phonetically. Not beautiful at all. You might be interested to know 'tlan' means place. Many names of places in modern day Mexico have this ending: Acatlan, Mazatlan, etc