Aztec Human Sacrifices : Normalization of Violence in Aztec Society

! Extra Information & Clarifications ! Corrections are in the description. 0:00 The conversation around Aztec sacrifices and the Aztec normalization of killing humans is often rife with tu quoque argumentation. The most discussed tu quoque argument is that of the Spanish Auto-da-fé. Even though the Spanish were disgusted by the "horrors" of Aztec human sacrifices, it could be argued that they themselves practiced their own type of "religious sacrifice", the Auto-da-fé. The Auto-da-fé was an elaborate execution of a person or people who were found to be guilty of impiety by the Spanish Inquisition. The argument is that in some ways the religious manner of the Auto-da-fé executions could be compared to that of the ritualistic Aztec sacrifices and, therefore, we should not call the Aztecs "barbarians" or even worse. Auto-da-fé is the most common pointed out tu quoque argument but there are many others which people use. As for me, outside of acknowledging at the start of my video that human sacrifices happened in almost every corner of the world at some point in history, I did not find it necessary to partake in the tu quoque arguments. As, I believe the Aztec violence should be discussed in its own context without trying to compare it to other people's violence because that could be done for almost anyone. There are no saints in history. Caroline D. Pennock. "Mass Murder or Religious Homicide? Rethinking Human Sacrifice and Interpersonal Violence in Aztec Society". 0:48 The Mexica weren't just people from the city of Tenochtitlan, however, Tenochtitlan was the most important Mexica city, hence, my use of the word "capital" here. Even though it wouldn't necessarily have been a "capital" of the Mexica in the traditional sense as the word Mexica is an ethnos, not a nationhood. The Mexica also had a "kinship alliance" with Culhua so the ethnos is sometimes referred to as the Culhua-Mexica. Lastly, the Mexica from Tenochtitlan were traditionally referred to as the Tenochca. Tenochca is a specific altepetl name of, in this case, the Mexica from Tenochtitlan, however, altepetls as institutions existed all across pre and even post-Columbian Mexico not just in Mexica society. Altepetl is a kind of pre-Columbian city state that often played into defining people's ethnic identity but did not solely dictate it (more on this later in the comment). These altepetls could form larger polities like the Aztec Empire but could also be created and destroyed by internal and external forces and, as such, specially in the powerful Aztec Empire, they functioned more like state subdivisions rather than actual city states. 2:29 Just like most geographical terms "Central Mexico" isn't a precise term, however, that is on purpose. In the video I show a line defining Central Mexico with a faded border to symbolize the fact that the "Aztec Religion/Culture" didn't really have borders. There were cultural and religious variations among the people in Central Mexico whose differences increased the further apart two specific places where. As such, it is important to know that the religious and cultural difference in Central Mexico worked as a continuum. 2:42 The Aztec Religion involved much more than just human sacrifices. There were elaborate religious rituals without sacrifices, sacrifices of animals, and various other religious aspects. However, this video focuses on the ritual human sacrifices of the Central Mexican societies and, therefore, I largely skipped over the rest of the religious rituals as it would make the already long video even longer. 5:44 The Central Mexicans also believed that the current iteration of the sun, the fifth sun, and its humans (us) will be destroyed with earthquakes and sky monsters. They also believed that the destruction of the world can only happen on one specific day, the new fire day, that occurs every 52 years. The world cannot end on any other day between those 52 years. However, the Aztecs didn't know how many iterations of those 52 years there will be. If you're interested, the next New Fire day is suppose to happen in 2027. 7:41 "Similar" but not identical. Just as the various mythologies differed slightly so did most likely the details of the rituals between various central Mexican cities differed all while sharing common themes. 8:34 The flower wars weren't conducted by the Mexica and other central Mexican peoples just to feed their need for more human sacrifices. There were also political and economic reasons why these wars were conducted but there was no time to mention it. If you want to know more read; Hassig R., Aztec Warfare, University of Oklahoma Press, 1988. 13:45 I did not mention this but speeches by rulers and priests would be common during these ceremonies and, also, dancing and music along with the singing. 19:05 I will briefly mention here the ball game. There were many popular ball games in Mesoamerican culture and the pre-Columbian Central Mexicans had their own version of this ball game called ōllamalitzli. Unlike in some other Mesoamerican cultures, the ballgame in Central Mexican culture was viewed as more of a sport. There was some kind of ritualistic symbolism associated with it but in practice the ballgame was viewed as a game. A game that you could play between different sports teams, different cities, a game that you could bet on. The game was also more associated with the nobility and Noble kids were taught to play it in their special schools. The point of the ball game in Central Mexican culture was for sport, not ritual or sacrifice. On special occasions special ball games were played where the losers did get sacrificed but these were ceremonies, special, and separate from the actual sporting aspect of the game. Scarborough V. L., The Mesoamerican Ballgame, University of Arizona Press, 1991. 26:46 Ok so I said "wrote" here because I did not have the time to go into the complicated nature of pre-Colonial Central Mexican codices. At the moment the scholars are divided on whether the the pre-Colonial codices were semasiographical or grammatological. Either way, all scholars agree that pre-Columbian Central Mexican codices used largely pictures, combined with oral tradition, to transmit most of their information. Therefore, you could say the pre-Columbian peoples of Central Mexico (it wasn't just Nahuas who made codices) "painted" their codices not wrote them. 27:26 There are many accounts of the Spanish calling the Mesoamericans as "illiterate" and "barbarians". Neither of which are really true. Florescano E., National Narratives in Mexico, University of Oklahoma Press, 2006. p. 67-8. 29:32 You could argue that I am showing here (in the video) language differences rather than the ethnic and cultural differences that I am talking about, which is a valid point. However, ethnicity in pre-Columbian Central Mexico is very complicated and, sometimes (I would argue often times), people's ethnic identity was partly defined by their language, which is why I chose to go with the language map. Although, ethnic identity was also defined by ones Altepetl. Even though Altepetls could be and often were multiethnic. So, one must consider the fact that the pre-Columbian people of Central Mexico could have viewed language, ethnic, cultural, and national (city state) identities as separate from each other but also most likely effecting each other. If this is true I don't really have any effective way of showing that in the video hence my use of the language distributions of pre-Columbian Mexico. So just keep in mind this is a very complicated subject that I am kind of glossing over in the video because, I do not have the time nor expertise to address it. 30:28 Also, what I did not mention was the fact that the pre-Columbian central Mexicans "wrote" in a different way than the Europeans. Not only did their picture books rely heavily on pictographs (which means, as we discussed above, the use of the word "written" as I use in the video might be inappropriate here) but they were also considered as works of art not just records of information. Hence they had a different mentality and goals when "writing" these codices compared to European writing. Also Amerindian historical accounts themselves were written in a different way than the European ones. They would often write about the same event multiple times from multiple perspectives. This different style of historical "writing" (painting) or just "writing" in general clashed with the colonial Spanish writing of history that resulted in some books and codices which may seem very chaotic and weird (with a lot of possible mistakes) to our western perceptions of record keeping. Ramos G., Indigenous Intellectuals, Durham, 2014. p. 137-8. 31:08 To continue the idea of the statement in the video but seemed unnecessary to mention directly in it. As Charles Gibson states “Indian poetry and oral tales occasionally touched upon the military glories of Chalco or Acolhuacan (other people than just the Mexica). But these were weak reminders of the tribal structure, and they were deliberately nostalgic … it tended to single out particular towns, to fix its attention on celebrated individuals … or to speak vaguely of a composite Indian (in contrast to the Spanish) culture.” These did not, however, represent the true cultural ethnic difference of the pre-Columbian societies and were often nostalgic for a single world, the "Indian World". As such, in later years the most powerful and well known Nahua tribe, the Mexica, became the main tribe that was written about and looked back to as the heritage of not just all the Nahuas but also most of the Mexican Amerindians. This Amerindian historical narrative survives to this day. After all, there’s a reason the country is called Mexico and not Texcoco or something else. Gibson C., The Aztecs under Spanish Rule, Stanford, 1964. p. 31.

I wonder if any of the priests wearing bloody flayed skins of their victims ever thought "this is kind of messed up".

I feel bad for the poor Aztec janitors who had to do festival cleanup.

I liked the part where you said "Most people think of the sacrifice involving cutting out the heart". Made me think for a second perhaps they weren't all as brutal. But no the alternatives were even worse.

"Oh mom! thank god you're here. the town, they're gonna-" "Hey uhhh... once you die, be sure to ask for a profitable harvest this year. Thanks!" "what? mom!" walks away

As a chronic enemy of stairs, I can only imagine how many people must have slipped on a bloodstain and fallen down those stairs trying to climb up

When I visited the Mayan city of Tulum, my guide talked about the importance of science and religion to politics. To maintain what was essentially a dictatorship requires the compliance of the masses. In secret, the priests (scientists) would predict astronomical events down to the hour, and would inform the civilians that the king was causing these events. They would time it with sacrifices, etc, as an elaborate show of what looked like cosmic power, though it truly was the power of suggestion! I know that the Maya culture is distinct from the Mexica, but it shares some elements that may help us understand the latter.

They just recently found thousands of skulls. It was a litteral mountain of skulls there

I threw this video on to try and sleep. I don't know what I was thinking.

Pre-colonial Mexico reminds me of how historians talk about the Balkans. Easily simplified but once you go into just ONE layer of complexity then suddenly you have to explain 7-9 different people groups, multiple languages, age old hatred, alliances held together by treads, and many other factors just to talk about one thing.

Man I'm so impressed by how you not only manage to pick interesting after interesting niche topic, but then also present everything in such fascinating detail. Excellent video

This feels almost too well researched for a youtube video. Really amazing effort putting this all together into such a concise yet extensive format. Also, the aesthetics really reflect the time period. I love the color scheme especially. Used to study history myself but wasnt able to stick with it. This reminds me of everything i did love about the field. A+

I think a huge factor in not only the normalization but glorification of human sacrifice in Aztec society was due to their predecessors the Toltecs. Their priest king Ce Acatl Topiltzin opposed human sacrifice, he was also believed to be an incarnation of Quetzalcoatl the god of compassion who loved humans his creations and abhorred the practice harming them, rather being sustained by animal sacrifices. However this outlaw of the practice upset a political faction and sparked a war resulting in Ce Acatl to flee with his supporters from Tollan and founding other Nahua speaking areas like the Pipil of El Salvador and as far as parts of Costa Rica. But with this hostile takeover of Tollan it legitimized the practice into the culture of central mexico which the Mexica would later pick up.

Imagine trying to climb those corpse-strewn bloody steps WHILE tripping out of your mind on hallucinogenic drugs. Like, I’ve seen people have bad trips just sitting on a couch in the comfort of a living room.

You are basically making thesis-level works as videos for free on the internet. Mad respect. Edit: Before you disagree, read what has already been written in this comment chain and make an actual argument.

For the effort put into this, very informative and I love learning about my Mexican culture. Bs that this isn’t monetized

Thank you for the video. For years I've commented on various sites that the Aztecs and other civilizations---Mayans and Incas----practiced human sacrifice for one reason or another. Other commenters posted there was no sacrifice in the Americas----that everyone lived a happy existence pre-Columbus, all dancing around sacred fires and trees, with people content with their rulers; no wars ever occurred, no famines, no infanticide, no killing of prisoners, and more importantly----no slavery. These commenters want to rewrite history to remove all the realities of life, but the truth is out there. Thank you for making the video and daring to state that human sacrifice did occur.

The things that this video made me think about 😱 I remembered a study on pigeons in which the scientists gave the pigeons food on random bases. One of the pigeons accidentally made a full turn in front of the feeding tube just before the grain appeared. So when he did it again the scientists confirmed his conclusion by giving him another grain. By the end of the day all pigeons were turning as approaching the feeding tube. Even when the grain giving whent back to random, the pigeons kept turning multiple times until the food arrived. So I can see how once a group is convinced that human sacrifice is the way to get things (rain, sun…) then no matter how long it take they will sacrifice as many as they have to until the result is accomplished.

As soon as you started picking appart what the word Aztec actually refered to, you had me. Subscribed.

As a native American, I thank you for making this video. A lot of people don't like to talk about the savage history of the tribes nor even admit to the horrible things that many tribes have done.