Sacrifice

To answer question D: my conclusion is that there is still much to learn about “Aztec” (Mexica) and the nature of its human sacrifices. There are very few things that historians agree on when it comes to Mexica’s history of human sacrifices. Michael Harner theorized that Mexica’s indigenous peoples performed human sacrifices out of necessity as they lacked a reliable source of protein and fat. Patricia R. Anawalt set out to dispel some common rumors about Mexica’s human sacrifices. Kurly Tlapoyawa, however, did not even think that human sacrifice took place. His perspective is that the Spaniards fabricated human sacrifice to demonize Mexica’s indigenous peoples, and that most of those “rumors” are based on the words of two men. While this has certainly been a muddy, multifaceted issue, I do believe that there was sufficient enough evidence to justify that human sacrifice actually did occur. But the question is: to what scale? The amount of skulls and human remains found demonstrating evidence of sacrifice greatly undermines most sacrifice figures. I think that there are far too many misconceptions floating around to draw an accurate conclusion on the true nature of Mexica human sacrifice. Many mistakes were left uncorrected for a very long time. While we are on mistakes, my biggest mistake during this unit was hastily jumping to the conclusion that Kurly Tlapoyawa’s writings were just based on emotion rather than fact. I regret not keeping a more open mind towards his point of view simply because he had some emotional connections to this argument. What I will take away from this is to hear the entire argument out, regardless of emotion involved.