Human Sacrifice. Perhaps the most haunting two words attributed to any religious ceremony ever. It is the most notorious practice that has filled the nightmares of many throughout the world and it has alienated the sentiments of thousands throughout the west, filling both their memoirs and horror stories.
There may be no one better at that horrifying practice than the Aztecs! According to the sources we have on hand (most of which come from the Spanish who conquered them) the claims of human sacrifice for the Aztecs were in the thousands! For the rest of humanity, especially the Christianized Europeans who encountered them, we must ask why? Why all the bloodshed?
The first reason behind the collection of sacrifices lies in the religion of the Aztecs. Knocking upon the ancient ideas of mimicking the gods’ “primordial sacrifice to create the world” many cultures followed these actions in their own way. As renowned historian of religions Mircea Eliade has observed and reflected upon in the relationship of the primordial beings found in both Norse and ancient Sumerian mythology. This appears to also be the case regarding the sacrifices of the Aztecs and possibly the Nahua peoples as a whole. Different gods required different sacrifices and so the case for sacrifice would differ in number and execution of the ritual. The Aztec calendar would comprise of an eighteen-month cycle followed by a short period of resting and fasting near our new year date. Each month (which was 20 days long) there would be a new sacrifice to appease the specific god(s). Depending on which god(s) are being celebrated or revered in the religious ceremonies of that month, so too would the style of sacrifices be changed.
The most common practice regarding human sacrifice is the tearing out of the victim’s heart occurring in at least eleven of the eighteen monthly sacrifices. However, drowning, starvation, sacrifice by fire, beheading, flaying of skin and the priest then wearing said skin (I know, gross!), and ritualistic cannibalism all were part of the horrifying practice.
To give an example, Huitzilopochtli, the sun and war god and principal deity among the Mexica (the top tribe of the Aztec empire), required a great number of humans in his sacrifices. According to Aztec mythology, Huitzilopochtli defended the earth from sure destruction dealt by his wicked brothers and sisters. In physical terms, the Aztec religion believed Huitzilopochtli to the be the sun and the wicked brothers and sisters to be the stars during night. If Huitzilopochtli became weak, the wicked brothers and sisters would overpower him and destroy the world. To keep up the defense, Huitzilopochtli required sacrifice to maintain his strength and, as such, would result in the largest demonstrations of human sacrifice in the empire. Many of the sacrifices were slaves conquered from war or given as tribute. This is best represented in the Hymn of Huitzilopochtli, “And when his festival was celebrated, Captives were slain, Washed slaves were slain, The merchants washed them”.
In other cases, Aztec citizens themselves would be selected as the sacrificial victim; a high honor to receive in the culture. This would be seen in the sacrifices to the deities of water (Tlaloc) and fire (Xiuhtecuhtli/Ixcozauhqui). To appease the water deity, Tlaloc, sacrifices, sometimes of children, had to be made. On three important occasions called veintanas (Atlcahualo, Tozoztontli, and Atemoztli), the priests would adorn the sacrificial children to look like the god Tlaloc. They would be taken to sacred mountaintops or caves and be sacrificed, typically by extraction of the heart. If the child cried along the way, it was a good omen of the rains to come, and if they didn’t, they would be made to by pulling out their fingernails. The children sacrificed would normally either be the children of slaves or the second born children of nobles. For a long time, many academics believed this abhorrent claim to be Spanish propaganda (since much of this information was found in the Florentine Codex written by Bernadino de Sahagun), but recent archeological digs in and around Mexico have found the remains of children sacrificed to the water deity. A truly sobering realization.
In the second case, the god Xiuhtecuhtli was the god of fire and, as such, would demand sacrifices by fire. Xiuhtecuhtli was also to the overseer of the majorly important New Fire festival, which occurred every 52 years (the end of the Aztec calendar, xiuhmolpilli). In this ceremony, the Aztecs would symbolically extinguish all of the fires in the empire (this included everything from temples to homes). The priests would scale the mountain Uixachtecatl/Citlaltepec near the capital Tenochtitlan and at the precise moment when the stars were aligned would perform the sacrificial cutting out the heart, and then lighting a fire in the cavity. If the fire was lit well, then all was right in the world, and from this fire, the rest of the fires in the empire would be lit as well. If the fire did not light, however, then it would be predicted that horrible monsters known as Tzitzimime would roam the earth in the darkness, consuming all of mankind.
Now of course these are just a few examples of the religious aspect falling into the sacrifices of the Aztecs. There are still many other gods that for length reasons, I will omit getting into, their names however are: Ometeotl (the primordial god that created everything, including the other gods involved in human affairs), Xipe Totec, Quetzalcoatl, Mictlantecuhtli, Tezcatlipoca, Chalchiuhtlicue, Mixcoatl, Coatlicue, Xochiquetzal, and Tonatiuh. All of these deities had their own worshippers and rituals performed on behalf of their believers.
The second aspect regarding Aztec ritual human sacrifice to consider is the possibility of an ecological motivation especially in regard to scale. Michael Harner published a paper on this particular subject in 1977 that I believe is rather interesting. He begins with the paper suggesting the case for the scale of human sacrifice was based in overhunting of the mammalian population in Mesoamerica. This eradicated a large portion of herbivorous mammals from the area that had the possibility of domestication. This assertion is made in comparison to the sacrificial tendencies of the Inca in modern day Peru. The Inca were able to domesticate the llama, alpaca, and guinea pig, all of which are herbivores and would not be competing for protein with their owners.
This not being the case for the Aztecs to the north, resorted instead to domesticating fowl in the area, such as turkeys and others, however, this would not be able to serve the needs of the population as a whole. This is where the cannibalistic culture of the Aztec rituals comes to play. Harner theorizes the development of cannibalism in the Aztec religious rituals/sacrifices could be connected to the point of a necessity for protein.*
With population growing and little sources of protein to feed the masses we must ask, where did the Aztecs get their protein in lieu of contemporary sources? Other than cannibalism, much of the diet for the Aztecs consisted of a combination of maize and beans to supplement their protein shortages. But, when a community lives and dies by harvest yields, when famine strikes, crisis is right around the corner. Thus, Harner posits the theory (along with others) that the turn to cannibalism was made by the ruling elite, for the ruling elite. To further clarify, both Sahagun and Duran claim that the Aztec commoners were normally not partakers of the cannibalistic feasts. Most of this was done by the nobles, merchants, and royals. Commoners would normally only partake of this grisly repast if they were invited to the table. This begs the question, “Why would the average Aztec risk their lives on the battlefield to capture prisoners/slaves for this particular reason, when defeat would mean death, and being eaten by their enemies?” (Since they practiced the same thing).
This brings us to my final aspect of the Aztecs sacrificial culture, the political motivations. Harner writes, “Superficially, it might appear the prohibition against human flesh-eating by ordinary, lower class persons would cast doubt upon the potentiality of cannibalism to motivate the masses of Aztec society to engage in wars for prisoners. Actually, however, the prohibition was, if anything, a goad to the lower class to participate in wars, since the right to eat human flesh could normally be achieved by single-handedly taking captives in battle”.
That’s right! The way to increase your social standing in the Aztec society was to contribute to the war effort and gather the prisoners and slaves that could be sacrificed. The individual captors of such would be given most of the flesh to be made into stew. Through their invitation to their kin to participate in their own feasts, they elevated their status within the society. (The more feasts you threw, the more popular and thereby more influential). This is how the Aztecs fueled their war machine, how they provided protein to their populace in lieu of domesticated livestock, and how they managed to hold their fearsome grip over their enemies.
Demented, perhaps, completely alien to modern and even period sensibilities, surely, unbelievably effective, absolutely. The Aztecs reign of terror lasted nearly one hundred years, but, as you can see, came to end. Their enemies loathed them, conspired against them, and eventually annihilated them. Conservative estimates on annual sacrifices made by the Aztecs still lie in the thousands, others in the tens to hundreds of thousands. The mind-boggling amount of death to sustain the society consequently, ended up meeting a similar end to others who engaged in it. The Aztecs were purged by their conquerors, much like the Carthaginians, Druids, and Canaanites before them.
Footnotes
*He utilizes the most primary sources he can on the subject, the writings of the Spaniards, Cortes, Diaz, Sahagun, Torquemada, and Duran. He also includes writings from Tozozomoc and Ixtlilxochitl as well as contemporary works from the 20th century. Sahagun is an important resource in regard to this information, due to the immediacy of his research following the conquest of Tenochtitlan. Sahagun’s focus on not just describing the Spanish motivations, but also the Nahua’s is also important to note, this is evidenced firstly in Sahagun’s correspondence with native Nahua, which led him to write the Florentine codex in both Spanish and Nahua.
