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The Fall of Civilizations podcast does a very good long-form story-telling about the invasion and collapse of the Aztec empire. I really do recommend it and the rest in the series.
I am actually currently near the end of the second video about the Aztecs. Well researched, well narrated and accompanied by memorable pictures and captivating film/animation-sequences just like the rest of the series.
Had to pause it yesterday though. The depiction of a depressed Moctezuma before the final collapse got to me. Both he and we know how it is going to end.
We never know how it's going to end.
Good podcast! The Aztecs (or Mexica) also have a written history from before the Europeans came. See great summaries in the two books below:
A Rain of Darts: The Mexica Aztecs by Burr Cartwright Brundage
Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs by Camilla Townsend
> The Aztecs (or Mexica) also have a written history from before the Europeans came.
This might come off as a dick reply, but I kind of doubt that seeing as how, as far as I know, the Aztecs were an illiterate civilization.
Were they really? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_writing & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_codices
Maybe the masses, but not their priesthood, elites, or such. Similar to ancient egypt, I think. You don't say they were illiterate just because they used cuneiform, or do you?
> Were they really?
I'm no linguist, but every time I've looked into this the answer has been yes. Though there is this weird trend to heavily suggest otherwise even in supposed serious sources, which has given me a major chip on my shoulder on this issue.
What they have is proto-writing. The Mayans have full writing, supposedly, and Aztec "script" seems to look like the Mayan's so many assume it must be the same, when it is not at all. Proto-writing pictograms are not at all like cuneiform or Chinese characters. There's no word, for example, for the to be verb in any Aztec script/pictogram. What nouns you can say exist are only what any picture anywhere would have. You can't say "Tototl was feeling despondent on the rainy day of 5th reed" and have someone else read that thought a century later because there are no words to construct a spoken sentence like such. The best you could do is draw a mural with a guy, with rebus device to suggest his name, surrounded by rain, hoping to convey such a sentence. But at that point you're just guessing.
It changes things a lot. I was reading the blurb on that Fifth Sun book and they were getting quite romantic suggesting a narrative of the true forgotten story of the Aztec in their own words the Spanish conquerors didn't want you to know! That's so dishonest to a naive audience. Whatever scholarship they are doing it has to be a combination of post-colonial recordings of oral history, post-colonial Spanish or Spanish influenced contemporary writings, and archeology. There is no other way.
> This might come off as a dick reply
Was a bit of a dick reply. You instead might have done a cursory google search, and found that there were not written but pictorial records, which I think is more interesting to the discussion than shutting down someone's comment.
Second this, Fall of Civilisations is outstanding, and easily the most beautifully produced and impeccably researched history / prehistory podcast that's out there. It's BBC radio quality. Just astonishing that it's free to download.
Many writers get lost in wanting to attribute a deist philosophy to the Náhuatl race, when their cosmogony tells us otherwise.
They understood a creative being, Ometecuhtli, but that creator was the element of fire (matter), and the creation occurred by the fact of omeycualiztli (matter). The cretaor was the eternal (Ayamictlán), but the imperishable continued to be fire (matter). The gods are the four material beings, the four stars: Tonacatecuhtli, Tonacacíhuatl, Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca. They deified the rains in Tlaloc and the sea in Chalchiuhtlicue, these deities also being material. To explain the appearance of men, they resorted to the action of fire on earth (matter again), the marriage between Tonacatecuhtli and Tonacacíhuatl. The idea of a spiritual being was not perceived.
The Nahuas were not deists, nor can it be said that their philosophy was Asian-pantheism. It was materialism based on the eternity of matter. Their religion was the Sabaeism of the four stars, and like their philosophy, it was also materialistic.
Somehow it doesnt feel good for me to try to learn from Aztec philosophy, werent these the guys with the appaling human sacrifices?
In 1491, Charles Mann makes the case that the number of ritual sacrifices was far fewer than the number of public executions in European countries during these times. In both cases, people were killed in an effort to bind the citizenry together in the shared belief in the leadership.
The initial horror at the Aztec using innocents is tempered when you think about the crimes that many in Europe would likely have committed. I think medieval European justice is probably not much better.
>In both cases, people were killed in an effort to bind the citizenry together in the shared belief in the leadership.
Are you suggesting that it doesn't make a difference whether you're executing people for crimes or for fun? Yes, the medieval European justice system was far from perfect, yes, it was so imperfect that people now call things "medieval" when they're cruel and stupid, but surely there is something to be said for the fact that the people being executed in Europe had sometimes done something wrong to get there.
First off, I’m just relaying information that I found interesting. Relax and try to have an interesting conversation rather than win an internet point.
I think the European criminal system was far more widespread than Aztec sacrifices, so net net maybe it would be similar. It’s also probably worth noting the religious aspect of it - people in religions sometimes seem willing to sacrifice their life for their gods, so I’m not 100% sure that the sacrifice victims or society didn’t get something out of it. In fact, they got the same thing as Europe - a tighter societal bond.
That being said, we know so little about the Aztecs compared to Europe that it would be impossible to make an informed if absurd decision as to which way I would want to be executed.
>I think the European criminal system was far more widespread than Aztec sacrifices, so net net maybe it would be similar.
You have to evaluate ideological systems by their net good/evil per follower, otherwise their relative scales would dominate any comparison. For example, medical malpractice has killed unimaginably more people than any suicidal cult ever has. Still, that does not mean it's better to join a suicidal cult than it is to visit the doctor's office.
>we know so little about the Aztecs compared to Europe that it would be impossible to make an informed if absurd decision as to which way I would want to be executed.
The reason you'd want to pick the justice system is that justice systems, even when imperfect, can still declare innocent people innocent. A justice system sometimes makes mistakes, the Aztec temple only made mistakes.
Thomas More, author of "Utopia", had six people burned at the stake for heresy when he was Lord Chancellor of England in 1529-32.
That's no different from human sacrifice to a god.
The fact that the justice system was so shoddy, and the fact that public executions were a form of entertainment, really makes this a distinction without a difference.
Execution “for fun” seems inappropriate here, doesn’t it? The comparison to medieval European justice also seems a little apples and oranges. Maybe a comparison to the Inquisition and/or the burning of supposed witches - both religious in nature, both horrendous, both seemingly an attempt to unify societies under a common belief?
Moral relativism is a black hole. It's hard to say the actor in one atrocity is better or worse than another actor in another atrocity. But I think it could be said that the Aztec civilization was complicated, and of which the kidnap and brutal sacrifice from its neighboring tribes was one (rather sensationalized) aspect. And I've said it elsewhere, but the podcast really gives you a sense of what it was like to live in the place and time - as much as one can from researching the extant artifacts.
A lot of "witches" and heretics tortured and executed in medieval times probably didnt do much wrong
That seems like a fair comparison, though the scale of Aztec sacrifice was pretty remarkable[1]. I would say in either case that it's incredible to me to think of societies where people were more valuable dead than alive - I suppose it suggests they were flourishing, to be able to afford it, but it's hard to imagine.
1: https://phys.org/news/2018-06-skull-tower-rack-evidence-azte...
Did the Aztecs execute criminals in similar proportion to Europeans?
"I think medieval European justice is probably not much better. "
I also rarely hear people suggesting to learn from medieval europe.
But there is still respect, for example it does bother me, that all those kings still have a "great" in their name, when what it was what they were good at, was large scale slaughtering. King Karl the great? Not for me. By that standards Hitler would be a "Great", too.
And that our awesome justice system roots in ancient rome. Which was mainly a empire. Conquering the world to steal riches and slaves.
Consider this sentence: "Covid19 has caused a great loss of life."
The word 'great' is not simply a more emphatic word for 'good', though in some contexts it might mean that. Great Britain isn't great because it's better than the other Britains, but because it encompasses all of the British Isles. I think it may also be the case that people are called great when their impact on history seems to have a great scale. For instance I think Catherine the Great is called great not because she was particularly benevolent (she personally owned half a million people), but because Russia became more powerful and expansive during her reign.
"catherine the Great is called great not because she was particularly benevolent, but because Russia became more powerful and expansive during her reign. "
Yes, I am aware of that. But in classic history this seems to be the same. Good and great is having conquered much. And also in the general perception. The hollywood movies of Caesar or Alexander? Pure admiration. No serious criticism(or any at all), I remember of. Nothing against presenting history as it was. But there is still lots of glorification going on.
My school history classes were also speaking mainly great of the "great" people. Even though we would call them brutal dictators and barbaric enslavers if they would exist today.
I only know as much from the podcast I mentioned in the sibling comment, but it seem they were somewhat caricaturized. If you listen to the Podcast you learn the other side of how they were massacred by Cortes, which doesn't really cast the Spanish in a good light. (But surely we can learn from the Spanish despite the acts of Cortes?)
Edit:
A cursory wiki search leads to this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice_in_Aztec_cultu...
By "massacred by Cortes", surely you mean "Massacred by 700 Spanish people, and 90,000 natives who were really pissed at the Aztecs and wanted revenge". Sources indicate(if you can trust them) that the Spanish tried to stop some of the widespread atrocities that the allied natives were doing to the Aztecs, but were powerless against a group 100x their size.
Supplying the armor and weapons necessary to an army that size, knowing the likely outcome, makes Cortes culpable. And the outcome is exactly what he intended, and enabled. This could be said of any of the proxy wars fought around the world today.
But yes, not excusing a brutal tradition of sacrifice. I think my argument stands, though, that you can learn positive things from any population/civilization that has cruel actors (or cruel traditions) within it. Be it the Spaniards, despite the conquistadors, or the Aztecs, because of the warrior elite.
Not excusing any behavior by Cortes. However, the sacrifices seem to have been as gruesome as typically depicted. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/06/feeding-gods-hundred...
What does Cortes have to do with their practice of human sacrifice?
Nothing, he's simply drawing the parallel that the Spanish did atrocities as well and that did not stop us from learning "from" them.
I say we can all appreciate the good without embracing the bad.
Not sure where I came across this info but there's a theory that observations of sacrifices may have been at a time of great despair for Aztec society, sacrifice being an act of desperation.
Yeah, I vaguely recollected (again that podcast I linked) while their civilization was under siege by Cortes, they wondered why the gods had forsaken them. The whole thing is really tragic.
Edit: The wiki article states around 20k prisoners per year were captured for sacrifice, though perhaps the number might have been inflated to intimidate their enemies.
> Every Aztec warrior would have to provide at least one prisoner for sacrifice. All the male population was trained to be warriors, but only the few who succeeded in providing captives could become full-time members of the warrior elite. Accounts also state that several young warriors could unite to capture a single prisoner, which suggests that capturing prisoners for sacrifice was challenging
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice_in_Aztec_cultu...
> which suggests that capturing prisoners for sacrifice was challenging
Who knew... mortal combat was challenging?
The prisoner did not have to be a warrior or adult.
Were they worst then Ancient Greecks, Romans, Sparta, whatever church done in European history, genocide of native Americans called for by American founding fathers? Human sacrifice was a real thing and Aztecs were cruel toward those they dominated. So were those above mentioned - and many colorful reports of human sacrifice are result of torture and paranoid imagination.
Some dominant groups are more appaling then others - nazi and Stalin come to mind. But we are not throwing away everything German or Russian either. Nor we are throwing away everything Sparta despite them being literally violent totalitarian state.
Good question, but to counter: we do not throw away everything German, but everything in the Nazi ideology, dont we? It is not that I say we shouldnt learn from the successors of the culture, but isnt this post saying we should learn from that culture itself? To me (bringing back in the German example) it sounds like (trying to transfer the example) 'learn how to get organized with nazi ideology'.
Adressing your first point, I really think that human (including children) sacrifice is quite unique and not present in the cultures you mentioned.
> we do not throw away everything German, but everything in the Nazi ideology, dont we?
No, we did not. To large extend, people don't even know what Nazi ideology and goals actually were except that they killed most Jews. But first here, you would have to show they were overall like Nazi.
> Adressing your first point, I really think that human (including children) sacrifice is quite unique and not present in the cultures you mentioned.
Soldiers working for colonial Britain would cut kids hands if parents did not worked fast enough. Columbus did cut peoples hands too, I think that including children hands if locals did not produced as much as he wanted. He also took kids as sexual slaves for his men. Cortes behavior was not normal either. Hunting witches and torturing old people assumed is not generally normal either.
American slavery routinely involved kids being sold away from parents before age of 10 .. and quite a lot of them died.
None of it is exactly same as human sacrifice, but not much better either.
It's not quite so black-and-white. Most of our historical sources are people who definitely want to play up the human sacrifice aspect. The Europeans would do so in order to justify the genocide they would commit; the Aztecs themselves to demonstrate their legitimacy to power. So the extent to which Aztecs did human sacrifice is probably exaggerated, although most historians would agree that Aztecs were the most prolific practitioners we know of nonetheless.
A more important thing to consider is the actual context of sacrifice in Aztec religion. Their mythology held that the gods literally sacrificed themselves to bring the (current) world into existence, and they recreated these sacrifices both as a means of honoring their gods as well as ensuring the continuation of the effects of that sacrifice. This isn't actually all that far off from Christianity, which recreates the sacrifice of Jesus in the form of the Eucharist, which can (and historically was!) be seen as a form of human sacrifice. Indeed, in broader theological terms, Aztecs need to undergo personal sacrifice of their own flesh and blood, while Christians make do with merely sacrificing personal possessions or (more commonly) abstract desires.
The Aztecs had made so many enemies from slavery and sacrificing children in their rise to power, the Spanish had a broad choice of allies. Even if the Aztecs had instead sacrificed those 20k warriors on Spanish swords instead of the priest's knives, they still would have lost.
History is written by the victors. It would be in their interests to demonize the Aztecs as much as possible. Stories about sacrifices should be taken with a grain of salt unless there is hard evidence. Even if there were sacrifices, it would be good to find the exact reasons and circumstances for why that occured.
> Stories about sacrifices should be taken with a grain of salt unless there is hard evidence
Such hard evidence has been found, in the form of human remains mutilated in the manner described by contemporary sources.
Ehh, not even trying to be snarky - the US was basically sacrificing children during the industrial revolution, purely in the name of profit.
AFAIK, the aztecs at least thought they were appeasing all powerful gods when doing it. Don't think the same could be said of us...
> the US was basically sacrificing children during the industrial revolution
Well, and more recently...for example, just a few years ago on a huge scale in Iraq. (Not to mention ongoing birth defects)
You could probably argue that the US children were also sacrificed to gods... they just happened to be represented by money rather than some metaphysical beliefs.
This kind of moral equivocation is why our society is so divided.