Thanks for choosing Quik.news! Never miss any news update from our channel. Kindly tap on the +Follow button on your screen to follow Quik.news.
The ritual practice of human sacrifice was widespread in Mesoamerica until the arrival of the Spanish. Mesoamerica is a historical and important region and cultural area in southern North America and most of Central America. It extends from approximately central Mexico through Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica.
Blood is the divine food for excellence. At least in different ancient cultures, the Mesoamerican one: the gods feed on the blood they obtain from the sacrifices that men offer them.
In the Mesoamerican religion, it is believed that the gods need to be fed. However, if they do not receive the food, they might lose their power or can even die, although they can be reborn – Dr Guilhem Olivier, a researcher at the UNAM Historical Research Institute says.
The practise of human sacrifice has been documented in different cultures and regions of the world such as Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome and in different regions of Africa, Asia and Oceania.
A story told in several versions
Much has been written about this ritual practice and probably, the more information we obtain from historical and anthropological sources, the more will be written. The reason? the controversy that existed since the time of the Conquest of the new world around human sacrifice and the various versions about it.
“To talk about this issue requires a very careful analysis based on the sources we have to study it. There are the testimonies of some conquerors who witnessed human sacrifices, the chronicles of Franciscan and Dominican friars and those written in the Nahuatl language, especially in the Florentine Codex where there are detailed descriptions of these practices”, comments the researcher.
We have, for example, information from chroniclers who claim that during the inauguration of an extension to the Templo Mayor in 1487, more than 80,000 victims were sacrificed, which contrasts with the number of human remains found in the archaeological zone and its surroundings.
Was it then an exceptional practice? No, thanks to the work of physical anthropologists and archaeologists who have found human remains that can be dated, as well as historical data on various ancient cities, it has been shown that human sacrifice was a widespread ritual practice throughout Mesoamerica, since pre-classic times until the arrival of the Spanish. What remains is to understand its meaning.
A finding that has allowed us to understand not only the importance but also the worldview around the sacrificial practice was the discovery of the Huey Tzompantli or “Great Wall of Skulls”, during a recent excavation on Guatemala Street in the Historic Center of the City of Guatemala. Mexico.
The Tzompantli Huey was a civic-religious building where the skulls of the sacrificed were placed. The heads of warriors and sacrificed slaves, chosen for the celebrations, were embedded in the walls. It is estimated that in the excavated part there are remains corresponding to around 1,000 people, but according to archaeologists, that would be only a third of the entire building.
The controversy generated by the issue has been such that some authors have sought to refute the practice of human sacrifice, arguing that it was slander to justify the conquest by the Spanish.
The gods want…
Some texts in Nahuatl from the Nahua collaborators of Fray Bernardino de Sahagún describe that some had to be dragged to go up to where they would be sacrificed, others fainted and some more wept with sadness. However, in celebrations where they had to represent an important god such as Tezcatlipoca, some warriors who were offered freedom rejected it for the honour that the celebration implied.
One of the key elements to understanding the practice of human sacrifice is that the blood not only serves to feed the gods but also to strengthen and regenerate them.
In Mexica culture, there are two categories of sacrifice: war captives and those who came from the same community. For that reason, the different victims were chosen according to the celebrated deity, hence not only the rites but also the type of sacrifice were so varied.
The most common human sacrifice consisted of extracting the heart of a victim who could be a child, a young person, an adult or an elderly person (male or female); Not only were there several techniques to extract the heart but other sacrifices were shot with arrows, burned or locked in caves, practices that obeyed symbolic and mythical reasons linked to the celebrated deities.
An example is the sacrifice dedicated to Chicomecóatl, the Mexica goddess of vegetation, which consisted of beheading a young woman who represented the goddess. The ceremony established a comparison between the decapitated head and the cob corn cut.
The war was the engine of the sacrificial practice, beyond the conquest, it was sought to provide captives for the sacrifice. On the battlefield, it was not so much about killing the enemy as about capturing him alive.
Other sacrifices were made to represent and update important mythical events such as the origin of the Sacred War, where war captives, representing the Mimixcoatl or “Cloud Serpents”, were sacrificed by extracting the heart to feed the Sun and the Earth.
Although the vast majority of deities received human sacrifices, the supreme or creator deity, who appeared as a couple formed by a man and a woman, only received prayers and copal offerings.
Similar but not the same
Since Mesoamerica is not the only region where human sacrifices were performed, it is possible to establish some differences and similarities based on the iconographic and written sources that exist.
“In the Templo Mayor, where the remains of sacrificed children have been found, it has been discovered that the majority had very acute health problems both in their teeth and in their nutritional status, unlike those found in the Andes, which were found mummified. or frozen but in a perfect state of health”, comments Dr Guilhem Olivier.
Another difference that the historian has studied is that in some civilizations such as the Greek or Roman, domestic animals were sacrificed, while in Mesoamerica this practice was done with wild animals such as deer, wolves, pumas, jaguars and even alligators.
Content created and supplied by: Quik.news (via Opera
News )
, . , . () , , , , , , , , . / , and/or . , , and/or , and/or