Thesis on "Human Sacrifice Among the Aztecs"

Thesis 8 pages (2310 words) Sources: 4 Style: APA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Human Sacrifice Among the Aztecs

The Aztecs were one of many pre-Hispanic Mexico and Central America's cultures that practiced human sacrifice. To the modern western eye, this ritualistic killing of a captive or slave seems brutal and cruel. But human sacrifice performed many functions in Aztec society and helped to reinforce the social, political, and economical hierarchy of the culture. This act performed many functions in Aztec society and helped to cement cultural and social ties and understandings between the Aztec people and their kings and gods. In order to maintain a high level of social order in a growing and often extremely militaristic society, the cultural elites needed a way of preserving the power structure through legitimized, religious means. They used human sacrifice and in some cases cannibalism as a way to reinforce cultural norms and expectations as well as honor their most celebrated warriors and kings. To understand the Aztecs culture, one must fully understand the social and cultural functions of their rituals and practices, no matter how barbaric or anti-human nature these practices may seem to be.

The Cultural and Social Functions of Human Sacrifice: Theories

Many scholars have debated the function of Aztec human sacrifice and each has come up with their own explanation. Some scholars believe that it was a way in which the Aztecs practiced their religious beliefs, or even as a means of population control. These explanations offer inaccurate reflections of Aztec life, and often assume that the culture was war-like and perpetually violent (Ingham, 1984, pp. 379) One of the best theories for the reason why the Aztecs sacrificed human beings in a ritualistic way is described by Professor John Ingham (1984, pp. 376) in his book on the subject of pre-Hispanic Mexican cultures,

Various students of ancient Mexico have noticed, if only in passing, that human sacrifice was an instrument of political repression. & #8230;this is not an incidental finding but rather an important key to the social meaning of pre-Hispanic religion. Whatever else it may have been, human sacrifice was a symbolic expression of political domination and economic appropriation and, at the same time, a means to their social production and reproduction. The images of gods reified superordination (and subordination), and sacrifice to them was symbolically equivalent to payment of tribute. The sacrificing of slaves and war captives and the offering of their hearts and blood to the sun thus encoded the essential character of social hierarchy and imperial order and provided a suitable instrument for intimidating and punishing subordination.

According to Ingham, the practice of human sacrifice was more than just a barbaric religious practice in the Aztec culture. It performed a multitude of functions, encompassing many modern-day deterrents to insubordination and tithing. Politically, it motivated people to accept the current hierarchy or Aztec status quo, while it reinforced the power that the Aztec leaders had as well as their supposed direct connection with the gods. The only humans powerful and godlike enough to perform the human sacrifices were the priests that acted for the kings by proxy (CITE POSS. Ingham)

The U.S. currently executes criminals based on certain criteria similar to the way the Aztecs sacrificed humans for insubordination. Murder, no matter what a person believes, is still an act of social and cultural insubordination in the United States, and therefore is dealt with in a way that makes an example out of the person who committed the crime. The Aztecs used human sacrifice in a similar way, to show the general population that their leaders were serious about being taken seriously. In a sense, sacrifice was about controlling the population.

Social Evolutionary Considerations

The evolution of a culture is often complex and multifaceted, as with the Aztec. Many cultural anthropologists and social scientists believe that once a society reaches a certain number in population, there is a major shift from sustaining the culture to controlling its citizens. Smaller civilizations have more of a concern for growth and sustainability. As the Aztec society grew in size, and its culture grew in influence, there became an intense need to control the population from the lens of their pre-established belief system (Harner, 1977). Perhaps it would have been less socially acceptable for the Aztec kings to treat insubordinates differently, perhaps incarcerating or banishing them. But the kings and their priests needed a way to strike both fear and intense feelings of subordination and religious dependence into the hearts of their citizens (Harner, 1977). This is the root of Aztec human sacrifice. It is surely deeply rooted in their belief system but it serves extremely important cultural and social purposes.

As Aztec society progressed, the practice of human sacrifice may have taken on new meanings or social importance. Some have even suggested that during the later years of the Aztec civilization there was a shortage of meat, and human sacrifice and cannibalism way a way to dole out prized pieces of meat for honored citizens, kings, and priests to consume, thereby further reinforcing the social and religious hierarchy of the society (Gould and Lewontin, 1979, pp. 147). This theory is centered on the idea of protein scarcity and most scholars disagree with it. This theory certainly presents an interesting set of questions however, and shows that the practice of human sacrifice is a complex topic and could have been adapted by the Aztec to perform a multitude of functions from social deterrent to god worship.

Cross Cultural Considerations

An excellent way of examining the cultural importance of a practice like human sacrifice is to take a closer look at it in other cultures to hopefully gain some insight into its sociological and cultural significance as a multi-functional ritual. The practice of human sacrifice in Aztec culture correlates well with the same practice in other cultures when population density and growth is taken into consideration (Winkelman, 1998). This is a clue as to when and why the practice developed both in the Aztec culture and in other cultures worldwide. Other Mesoamerican cultures were using human sacrifice in religious rituals centuries before the Aztecs, where this method of social order and control had been successfully employed. Winkelman (1998) states that, "While human sacrifice has no significant correlations with measures of agricultural potential, protein, total food, food storage adequacy, and famine risk, there are significant positive correlations with population density, population pressure, and war for land and resources." As the Aztec culture developed and began to thrive, there was more and more need for population control through religious and sacrificial means.

The Aztec social elite understood that in order to exert control on the general population and to maintain their social status among other neighboring cultures, they had to develop a religious or ritualistic system of exerting their power and influence. This took the form of human sacrifice with the Aztecs as well as other cultures both nearby and elsewhere on the planet (Winkelman, 1998). In order to legitimize human sacrifice in the eyes of the general population, the practice was included into the religious and ritualistic practices of the Aztec culture. This in turn legitimized the control that the kings and priests and other elites needed to maintain on the ever-growing population. This legitimate human sacrifice was carried out by Aztec religious leaders as a normative social activity (Winkelman, 1998).

Class Mobility and Societal Pressures

Human sacrifice served yet another unique function in Aztec culture. While it was popular in the warrior-cults of the early Aztec civilization, among other warrior cult in Mesoamerica, human sacrifice was rarely widely accepted into the general society before the rise of the complex Aztec civilization (Conrad, Geoffrey W. And Demarest, Arthur Andrew, 2002, pp. 18). Often times war captives and slaves from neighboring warrior clans were used in sacrificial rituals that reinforced the superiority and the victory of the clan's warriors over another (Wineklman, 1998). The flesh of the sacrificed, specifically the heart was seen as sacred, and to eat that flesh a person needed to have high social, political, or religious status (Conrad and Demarest, 2002, pp. 46). It was uncommon for Aztecs to eat their own people, at least not people from the same village or city, but the consumption of flesh was seen as a sacred and important method of reinforcing the power structure of the Aztec culture, as evidenced by Winkelman's theory that the consumption of flesh maintained the hierarchy for the elite while simultaneously allowing for the selective upward mobility of Aztec warriors.

The Aztecs did not ordinarily eat people from their own polity, but practiced warfare, called "flowery wars," as rituals to obtain sacrificial victims. The conquered territories nearby were a convenient source of victims. Although the consumption of human flesh was reserved for the elite, the class system allowed for upward mobility of great warriors, so wars to obtain victims for sacrifice were supported by a hungry population which desired both prestige and protein in the form of human flesh. Great warriors could also receive the right to consume human… READ MORE

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