Human Sacrifice in Aztec/Mayan Culture

Can we have a thread about this? I find it absolutely fascinating how it was just a part of daily life in Teotihuacan.
Michael Harner estimates that up to a quarter million people were sacrificed in Central Mexico in the 15th century, every year. In Aztec religion, the continued existence of the universe was dependent on near constant sacrifice (nextlahualli) to keep the gods pleased.

bump

>Annual killing of a quarter million
How in the world could this be possible? Let alone sustainable? I remember hearing some theory that the practice of mass-sacrifice was actually a form of remedying a crisis of overpopulation.

Cheers user.

Well that's the high estimate, 50-100k is probably more realistic. Keep in mind most of the sacrifices were prisoners of war.
And there's a theory that the rapid population growth wasn't sustainable ecologically so they resorted to ritualistic cannibalism because they were missing nutrients/proteins.

Bump.

>I remember hearing some theory that the practice of mass-sacrifice was actually a form of remedying a crisis of overpopulation

I wouldn’t say a remedy more so than a symptom. If it’s crowded as fuck, human lives probably were seen as disposable so human sacrifice was practiced rampantly. And if Spanish reports were to be believed, the population density of the middle Americas was pretty crazy for how relatively advanced they were.

>And there's a theory that the rapid population growth wasn't sustainable ecologically so they resorted to ritualistic cannibalism because they were missing nutrients/proteins

Considering the wide array of foods with proteins and nutrients they had this is ridiculous.

I don't think so.

Many ancient cultures practiced human sacrifice.

Cannibalism must be a separated matter.

> 25 million people were sacrificed in the 15th century
Not buying it desu

The Aztecs probably sacrificed around 4,000 a year

Not much has changed.

So over the course of 1,000 years they killed six million Jews?

Aztecs were only around for 200 years or so. The empire itself is less than 100 years old.

...

They pretty much just had corn i think

there was plenty of venisom and fish tribute from provinces
and shitloads of chapulines through trade

Native Americans terrify me.

>No cattle
>No pigs
>No goats
>No chickens
>Llamas and Alpacas in the Andes

As far as my understanding is they primarily ate fucking maize, which is pretty shit nutritionally.

You get proteins by mixing maize and beans. They ate plenty of insects which have a lot of protein. They also consumed plenty of nuts, fish, shrimp, shellfish, dog, turkey, duck and rabbit. Sometimes deer and crab. Not to mention all the vegetables and fruits they grew for other nutrients.

They needed another thousand years to develop.
Unfortunately the west didn't and still doesn't give a shit about that.

Yeah there's no evidence for a direct connection between Aztec cannibalism and a lack of nutrition. Maize, beans, squash, tomatoes, fish, insects, domesticated dogs and turkeys, hunted game, and gathered vegetables provide more than enough nutrition to support large, healthy populations.

This idea is based on Harner's paper, which pretty regularly references unrealistically high population and sacrifice statistics. He lists the figure of 80,400 people sacrificed in Tenochtitlan over 4 days (20,100 per day), a killing efficiency that exceeded the Auschwitz concentration camp. It doesn't seem likely that a city of 200,000 people can execute the equivalent of 10% of the city's population in 24 hours, especially considering the ritual nature of sacrifice (reconstructions of Aztec heart extractions on a fake torso took about 17 seconds to remove the heart), then move the bodies out of the city (even if they did intend to consume the bodies, the rate of victims being sacrificed would far exceed the rate at which they could be prepared for consumption), then dispose of them. A more likely figure is 20,000 people of over 4 days.

There were perhaps 10-15 million people in the empire total. It's not really possible to estimate how common human sacrifice was, because we know relatively little about Aztec life outside of the valley of Mexico.

Oh, the 80,400 figure was listed by Spanish sources discussing the consecration of the Templo Mayor in 1487.

20,000 is listed by Ross Hassig and a couple of other Aztec scholars.

that 80,000 figure was just the Aztecs bragging, to make themselves sound stronger and powerful.

Both the Spanish and Aztecs inflated the figures, but for different reasons. It's really not helpful for scholars and historians.

Magic Mushrooms are pretty cool.
I think it's hilarious that people deify McKenna and Leary, who both knew damn well that a society based on tripping ends up a meat locker.

Cortes I think gave a more realistic and reasonable estimation 3-4 thousand a year sacrificed.

Haven't read much of Cortes' writings, I really should.

The rate of sacrifice was probably much higher in Tenochtitlan than most (or perhaps all) of the other territories in the Aztec empire, so whatever number is estimated in Tenochtitlan is almost definitely an outlier when trying to estimate it for the whole region. Unfortunately, we don't really have solid figures for the imperial population, and that makes sacrifice estimates almost impossible. Even the 10-15 million population figure is a rough estimate (6 million is the lowest figure I've seen, 25 million the highest).

Does this number count war? Because the Aztec concept of War was often more voluntary than the ones we have in europe or asia-- many of them were more like football with obsidian-razor edged clubs-- organized and totally avoidable

Most of the victims of sacrifice were captured prisoners of war. I don't know of many depictions of sacrifice where the victim wasn't a military age male. It's also well attested in many sources that Aztec soldiers attempted to capture enemy soldiers alive to sacrifice them later. Aztec soldiers improved their military rank and could be accepted into professional warrior societies depending on how many enemy combatants they took captive.

Hassig suggests that about 200,000 soldiers were mobilized for the campaign against Coixtlahuacan, and 400,000 against Tototepec. So the number of captives taken during battle could be hundreds or thousands at a time.

Also war wasn't voluntary for the most part, the majority of soldiers in the army were drafted levees from the valley of Mexico and the territories under Aztec control. They served as spearmen and archers to support the professional, veteran, and elite frontline troops. Elite and veteran troops were primary nobles (pipiltin), who made up maybe 5-10% of the total population.

>quarter million is 25 million

what did (you) mean by this?

250k a year times a 100 years.

>I think

The state of this board

Jesus christ how horrifying! Earlier
civilizations disposition to violence
and superstition due to natural
circumstances, mixed with psychedelics,
would truly be a horror show. Both for the
ones tripping and the observers.

>Mayan
Did they had human sacrifices too? Also, they were a bit further south than Aztecs.
Map's not exactly perfect, but I guess it's good enough.

They did yes, although from what I've read they weren't quite as creative or proficient as the Aztecs. Preferred decapitation to the whole array of things the Aztecs did to their sacrifices.

>Mayan Empire
dropped

>I find it absolutely fascinating how it was just a part of daily life in Teotihuacan.
While they did practice human sacrifice in Teotihuacan or Tehuacan, I think you are confusing this with Tenochtitlan.