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Is pretty lucky that us visiting Europeans didn't know there could be writing in them, otherwise we would have burnt the lot long ago, like we did with the writ
by starbeast 8y ago
Is pretty lucky that us visiting Europeans didn't know there could be writing in them, otherwise we would have burnt the lot long ago, like we did with the written records of the Maya.
- pjmlp 8y agoWalking around on the surviving remains of Maya and Aztec cities is quite impressive. As European it saddens me how we almost wiped everything out back then.
- starbeast 8y agoFrom what I have read, there are maybe 14 surviving books out of the hundreds of thousands that we took. Possibly less since that museum fire. We destroyed 2000 years of an entire continents written history. And many people simply do not give a shit. Was talking to someone who identifies strongly as Christian about this recently. She said that she didn't care what had happened to the Maya, because these people practiced human sacrifice. I had to point out to her that you do not get to complain about human sacrifice after committing genocide.
- tragomaskhalos 8y agoHuman sacrifice was practiced by the Aztecs too of course (don't know about the Incas, but it was clearly an accepted and unremarkable part of life for a large region of the new world); the revulsion that it provoked in the Conquistadors was surely a significant factor in enabling them to convince themselves that destroying these cultures was justified. But I suspect that the conquest would have played out very similarly even if the Europeans hadn't been confronted with pyramids caked in human blood.
- empath75 8y agoWell just look at the Inca. They didn’t do human sacrifice.
- Mediterraneo10 8y agoThe Inca did indeed practice human sacrifice.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummy_Juanita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummy_Juanita
- blacksmith_tb 8y agoTrue, but the scale on which the Inca practiced sacrifice is not exactly comparable to the Aztecs, e.g [1]. 1: https://phys.org/news/2018-06-skull-tower-rack-evidence-aztec.html https://phys.org/news/2018-06-skull-tower-rack-evidence-azte...
- YeGoblynQueenne 8y agoIn The True History of the Conquest of New Spain [1] (a first-hand account of Hernán Cortés' expedition in Mexico, that brought down Monetzuma's Aztec empire) there is a passage where the author, discusses the matter of human sacrifice and cannibalism with some local priests (I think these are not Aztec, but Tlascalan priests, from one of the cities allied to Cortés). I can't find the passage in my hard copy of the book, but, from memory, the priests basically state that offering human sacrifices to the gods is the pious and proper thing to do. Castillo ends up persuaded of this, although he continues to abhor the acts they perform, of course. These priests also practiced self-mutilation, so they had noses and fingers, etc, missing. I think the point was that they were offering parts of themselves, too, as sacrifice to their gods. There's no doubt that human sacrifice is a barbaric custom, that was historically practiced by few societies in the same scale as it was by the Aztecs. However, it is important to understand that, to them, it was not an act of evil, or even of righteous revenge towards their enemies. It was an act of worship to their gods. My point is that we cannot apply our own concept of morality, which is probably influenced by the dominant religion of the western world, Christianity, to the manner by which people lived their life in a society that might have, for all intends and purposes, been on another planet for most of its history. If we are to judge those people, it must be on their own terms. And on their own terms, human sacrifice and cannibalism was what their faith (and therefore, their morality) required of them. _____________________ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historia_verdadera_de_la_conquista_de_la_Nueva_Espa%C3%B1a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historia_verdadera_de_la_conqu... [2] Bernal Díaz del Castillo, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernal_D%C3%ADaz_del_Castillo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernal_D%C3%ADaz_del_Castillo
- YeGoblynQueenne 8y agoBtw, Bernal del Castillo's account is a beautiful tale. Real life doesn't come closer to epic fantasy than this. There's wild, mysterious lands, powerful empires, barbarian heroes, battles between armies of thousands of men, even magic, in a sense, in the awesome power of the gunpowder weapons and the never-before seen horses they rode, which must all have looked sueprnatural to the Mexicans. It's on project Gutenberg, online: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32474 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32474
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- mmjaa 8y ago> We destroyed 2000 years of an entire continents written history. The Australian aborigines have been around for 60,000 years. Their oral history has survived for 40,000 years. We can't even maintain an oral history in the so-called West for 80 years. Sometimes its a wonder we are so sophisticated at all. I guess going to Mars makes a difference. But often I wonder if in fact the oldest cultures on the planet aren't, possibly, the wiser ..
- UI_at_80x24 8y ago>us visiting Europeans That's a rather gentle sounding euphemism for what really happened. Your statement may have been tongue-in-cheek though.
- starbeast 8y agoIt is usually best to assume that I am indulging myself in facetious sardony. It is a moral failing on my part, but it keeps me entertained.
- ar-jan 8y agoUnfortunately many thousands of quipus were actually destroyed after the Spanish conquest, because it was known they contained information.