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I would have loved to live in ancient Maya or Aztec times. Playing ōllamalitzli with the boys, cracking open some cocoa, in the evening watch a proper offering

I would have loved to live in ancient Maya or Aztec times. Playing ōllamalitzli with the boys, cracking open some cocoa, in the evening watch a proper offering to the sun god. Maybe a bit more violent and shorter than modern life but definitely more exciting.

ashtonkem 5y ago
Feels like a good place to visit, not live. My sneaking suspicion is that subsistance farming feels pretty similar no matter what century and empire you do it in, and that’s the boring stuff that doesn’t make it into the history books.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  "Feels like a good place to visit, not live. " I am pretty sure if you came "to visit" aka a tourist, you likely would not have lived too long there to settle down. Unless you brought some modern day magic, like a gun or a smartphone, to convince them you are send from the gods and not to be sacrificed just yet. They literally murdered babies regulary. Why would one want to visit those, except for hardcore anthropologic studies? And subsistence farming probably did differ, depending how far away the next empire was. Some lived in total slavery and dependency and some quite undisturbed pretty much on their own (there are some villages in remote greece areas for example, claiming to never have been conquered.).
  - dang 5y ago
    Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. We don't need anti-Mayan flamewars any more than anti-any-other-$thing flamewars. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - hutzlibu 5y ago
      Seriously? "I would have loved to live in ancient Maya or Aztec times. Playing ōllamalitzli with the boys, cracking open some cocoa, in the evening watch a proper offering to the sun god. Maybe a bit more violent and shorter than modern life but definitely more exciting." The thread was literally about people wanting to enjoy human sacrifice and I expressed my disgust with that. I am not anti-mayan, nor anti aztec, nor anti historic-german tribes who practiced human sacrifice, too (which would be my heritage). There are many interesting things in their way of life. But I am anti to people who like those cultures today, because of the blood and gore. So anyway, expressing interest in human sacrifice, is ok here, but not expressing discomfort with that, because this might cause flame wars? Well, good to know.
      - dang 5y ago
        That quote doesn't say what you're describing, and of all the things to get upset about on the internet, imagining that other people enjoy human sacrifice and then getting mad about it is surely among the most avoidable. Perhaps it would be helpful to explain how this becomes a moderation issue. It's because we can't play both indignation games and curiosity games at the same time. The former very quickly drowns out and burns up the latter. HN is supposed to be for curiosity games. Therefore when people start playing indignation games (and that is certainly not just you—the temptation is ubiquitous) we try to get them to stop and to return to the intended spirit of the site. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        hutzlibu 5y ago
        " in the evening watch a proper offering to the sun god. Maybe a bit more violent and shorter than modern life but definitely more exciting" Yes, maybe I should have just asked, what exactly does he mean by "proper offering to the sun god" in the combination of "maybe a bit more violent" but "definitely more exciting". Because that just sounds like human sacrifice in that context to me. Along with other quotes like that in that thread. "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29129436 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29129436" So clear, that I did not see much point in asking. So yeah, I got a bit "agitated" with that. Still, in my perception I got the mod warning, for expressing disconcern with peoples lust with human sacrifice. And those people did not, because they expressed their desire in soft terms. It is allright. I probably just seek more other places now again.
  - halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
    I think there's some romanticization going on, which is fine to an extent.
  - h2odragon 5y ago
    We're giants, with no scars and no disfigurations. Wouldn't that be enough magic? Most of us are utterly ignorant of the most basic skills that would be universal in such times; further evidence that we must be if not Gods then the swaddled products of some form of divine grace.
    - hutzlibu 5y ago
      They believed everything is magic and from the gods. And the priests interpreted the signs. So yeah, maybe the signs said for you to be treated as a king. And then to be sacrificed the next day. A special sacrifice.
  - politician 5y ago
    > They literally murdered babies regulary. We’re going to collectively suppress discussion about this statement.
    - politician 5y ago
      Fantastic result. Just as predicted— there is no acceptable way to engage with this comment on HN.
      - hutzlibu 5y ago
        Then why did you? Did you expect a nuanced discussion from your statement?
        politician 5y ago
        I had hoped we might talk about chilling effects and our willingness to engage in self-censorship to please the collective.
        hutzlibu 5y ago
        So something very offtopic. And I do not know why you bring it, nor your point. People are arguing that my baby sacrifice point might be exaggerated and they might be right, so?
      - jazzyjackson 5y ago
        sir, this is a technology forum
      - AlotOfReading 5y ago
        Because it's factually incorrect. The Maya didn't have a particularly notable tradition of infanticide and they weren't common sacrifices.
        hutzlibu 5y ago
  - quinnjh 5y ago
    Seems like your info might be a little erm- spaniard leaning. Not dismissing the sacrifices but dont turn a blind eye to the roots of the west - https://www.britannica.com/topic/Moloch-ancient-god https://www.britannica.com/topic/Moloch-ancient-god
- i_am_proteus 5y ago
  Pre-Columbian farming in South/Central America was substantially less labor-intense than in Europe and Asia because maize has an intrinsically higher yield in terms of calories per unit labor. The downside is that maize isn't as nutritious as wheat or rice and needs to be more heavily supplemented with proper protein from meat or pulses - or the human being becomes malnourished. >Easily obtained, what is more, for maize has always been a crop that demands little effort. The archaeologist Fernando Marquez Miranda has given us an excellent account of the advantages enjoyed by peasants cultivating maize: it required them to work only fifty days in the year, one day in seven or eight, according to season. They were therefore free, perhaps a little too free. The maize-growing societies on the irrigated terraces of the Andes or on the lakesides of the Mexican plateaux resulted in theocratic totalitarian systems and all the leisure of the peasants was used for gigantic public works of the Egyptian type. (It is arguable whether the cause was indeed maize, or irrigation, or the dense population of societies which became oppressive from sheer weight of numbers.)[One] [One]https://archive.org/details/BraudelFernandCivilizationAndCapitalism/ https://archive.org/details/BraudelFernandCivilizationAndCap... p161
  - abrowne 5y ago
    On the other hand, the physical labor of grinding the kernels into meal, done by women kneeling at large mortar and pestle like tool, was intense and visible in skeletal remains.
- koheripbal 5y ago
  With no animals to help and no wheels... Every bit of soil had to be rolled by hand and every product carried by foot. ...it was most definitely worse than others.
bryanrasmussen 5y ago
think of the honor if you could actually be a proper offering to the sun god!
- mtgx 5y ago
  Being offered to the sun god - Achievement Unlocked!
jl6 5y ago
There are plenty of ways to inject violence and excitement into modern life if that’s what you’re missing!
- dunefox 5y ago
  Don't threaten me with a good time.
shrumm 5y ago
I know this isn’t the spirit of your comment but this is one of the use cases of VR that I’m most looking forward to. We’ve invested a LOT into immersing people into past worlds - think Jurassic park for dinosaurs, plenty of TV and movies about Roman times etc. VR would make all that seem so dated and boring. Work up a sweat running from a T-Rex - quick shower and off to work!
- stareatgoats 5y ago
  Looking forward to that day too. And if I may add another wish; that it becomes routine to be able immerse oneself in the ideas and culture of that time too. I realize that it is presently both easier and appeals to a larger audience to simply project our own ideas and culture onto past settings. But who knows what the future will bring. One can hope.
- L_226 5y ago
  You may enjoy the Transformation series by Neal Asher. A non-significant plot detail involves organisms being fitted with neural capture devices to record full sensory stimuli, before being killed/eaten by other organisms. These neural recordings are then sold to wealthy buyers who want to experience novelty.
  - prometheus76 5y ago
    That is also the premise behind a 1983 film called Brainstorm starring Christopher Walken.
- d3nj4l 5y ago
  Defile what I defile! Eat who I eat! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEMbLt4B4iA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEMbLt4B4iA
- jjk166 5y ago
  Actually the first time I ever used a VR headset it was a program that put you in the dinosaur era. There were some triceratopses and hadrosaurs walking around in front of me, then I heard a branch snap behind me, I turned my head and saw a Tyrannosaurus and it was legit the scariest experience of my life. The graphics weren't even that high quality, but I don't think my flight or fight response takes the time to measure a predator's polygon count.
konart 5y ago
Many places in the world can offer you such life even now. Yet you are writing it from a cozy sofa or something.
dr_dshiv 5y ago
Can you imagine the feeling of watching a human sacrifice in a crowd of 10,000 people? Or watching the king pierce his own penis with a stingray spine? The blood! And still-beating hearts! The collective empathy induced by these powerful experiences, specifically the affective resonance, would be a powerful binding force. Especially when combined with the pounding music and (occasionally) psychedelics [1]. Wikipedia has a nice article on Mayan human sacrifice [2]. It all sounds so brutal, but then again, so is Squid Game. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entheogenics_and_the_Maya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entheogenics_and_the_Maya [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice_in_Maya_culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice_in_Maya_cultur...
- goldenManatee 5y ago
  Cannot compute, mind overload, lol
- oblib 5y ago
  We still have capital punishment so, yeah. I'll offer that was probably not any more common in Mayan life than ours now and those glyphs and stories are a sort of example used to keep folks in check or aggrandize the rulers of the day and in regards to those not much has changed.
idkwhoiam 5y ago
Sounds cool until it's your turn to sacrifice yourself to the sun god
bregma 5y ago
I hate to sprinkle blow on your parade, but coca was a different civilization 3000 miles and a few centuries away from both the Maya and the Aztecs. The only thing they have in common is they or their descendents eventually had their history erased by Spanish colonizers in the name of "civilization".
- Panoramix 5y ago
  OP wrote cocoa, not coca
- ianhawes 5y ago
  I find it ironic that the Spanish get a bad rap for “colonizing” the Mayans, but all the evidence suggests the Mayan civilization was committing genocide and ethnic cleansing. Modern day countries participating in human sacrifice and mass murder would similarly be invaded and the history of their actions would be altered. See: Germany in WW2.
  - juanani 5y ago
    [dead]
  - xvilka 5y ago
    There are many places where mass murder happens right now yet nobody is even contemplating their invasion. It happens only when there is something to take, something precious.
    - elnatro 5y ago
      Well two countries were invaded by USA after 11-S. At that moment both invasions were sold to the public as justified, because “security” and “for the people living there”.

ashtonkem 5y ago

Feels like a good place to visit, not live. My sneaking suspicion is that subsistance farming feels pretty similar no matter what century and empire you do it in, and that’s the boring stuff that doesn’t make it into the history books.

hutzlibu 5y ago
"Feels like a good place to visit, not live. " I am pretty sure if you came "to visit" aka a tourist, you likely would not have lived too long there to settle down. Unless you brought some modern day magic, like a gun or a smartphone, to convince them you are send from the gods and not to be sacrificed just yet. They literally murdered babies regulary. Why would one want to visit those, except for hardcore anthropologic studies? And subsistence farming probably did differ, depending how far away the next empire was. Some lived in total slavery and dependency and some quite undisturbed pretty much on their own (there are some villages in remote greece areas for example, claiming to never have been conquered.).
- dang 5y ago
  Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. We don't need anti-Mayan flamewars any more than anti-any-other-$thing flamewars. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    Seriously? "I would have loved to live in ancient Maya or Aztec times. Playing ōllamalitzli with the boys, cracking open some cocoa, in the evening watch a proper offering to the sun god. Maybe a bit more violent and shorter than modern life but definitely more exciting." The thread was literally about people wanting to enjoy human sacrifice and I expressed my disgust with that. I am not anti-mayan, nor anti aztec, nor anti historic-german tribes who practiced human sacrifice, too (which would be my heritage). There are many interesting things in their way of life. But I am anti to people who like those cultures today, because of the blood and gore. So anyway, expressing interest in human sacrifice, is ok here, but not expressing discomfort with that, because this might cause flame wars? Well, good to know.
    - dang 5y ago
      That quote doesn't say what you're describing, and of all the things to get upset about on the internet, imagining that other people enjoy human sacrifice and then getting mad about it is surely among the most avoidable. Perhaps it would be helpful to explain how this becomes a moderation issue. It's because we can't play both indignation games and curiosity games at the same time. The former very quickly drowns out and burns up the latter. HN is supposed to be for curiosity games. Therefore when people start playing indignation games (and that is certainly not just you—the temptation is ubiquitous) we try to get them to stop and to return to the intended spirit of the site. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - hutzlibu 5y ago
        " in the evening watch a proper offering to the sun god. Maybe a bit more violent and shorter than modern life but definitely more exciting" Yes, maybe I should have just asked, what exactly does he mean by "proper offering to the sun god" in the combination of "maybe a bit more violent" but "definitely more exciting". Because that just sounds like human sacrifice in that context to me. Along with other quotes like that in that thread. "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29129436 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29129436" So clear, that I did not see much point in asking. So yeah, I got a bit "agitated" with that. Still, in my perception I got the mod warning, for expressing disconcern with peoples lust with human sacrifice. And those people did not, because they expressed their desire in soft terms. It is allright. I probably just seek more other places now again.
- halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
  I think there's some romanticization going on, which is fine to an extent.
- h2odragon 5y ago
  We're giants, with no scars and no disfigurations. Wouldn't that be enough magic? Most of us are utterly ignorant of the most basic skills that would be universal in such times; further evidence that we must be if not Gods then the swaddled products of some form of divine grace.
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    They believed everything is magic and from the gods. And the priests interpreted the signs. So yeah, maybe the signs said for you to be treated as a king. And then to be sacrificed the next day. A special sacrifice.
- politician 5y ago
  > They literally murdered babies regulary. We’re going to collectively suppress discussion about this statement.
  - politician 5y ago
    Fantastic result. Just as predicted— there is no acceptable way to engage with this comment on HN.
    - hutzlibu 5y ago
      Then why did you? Did you expect a nuanced discussion from your statement?
      - politician 5y ago
        I had hoped we might talk about chilling effects and our willingness to engage in self-censorship to please the collective.
        hutzlibu 5y ago
        So something very offtopic. And I do not know why you bring it, nor your point. People are arguing that my baby sacrifice point might be exaggerated and they might be right, so?
    - jazzyjackson 5y ago
      sir, this is a technology forum
    - AlotOfReading 5y ago
      Because it's factually incorrect. The Maya didn't have a particularly notable tradition of infanticide and they weren't common sacrifices.
      - hutzlibu 5y ago
- quinnjh 5y ago
  Seems like your info might be a little erm- spaniard leaning. Not dismissing the sacrifices but dont turn a blind eye to the roots of the west - https://www.britannica.com/topic/Moloch-ancient-god https://www.britannica.com/topic/Moloch-ancient-god
i_am_proteus 5y ago
Pre-Columbian farming in South/Central America was substantially less labor-intense than in Europe and Asia because maize has an intrinsically higher yield in terms of calories per unit labor. The downside is that maize isn't as nutritious as wheat or rice and needs to be more heavily supplemented with proper protein from meat or pulses - or the human being becomes malnourished. >Easily obtained, what is more, for maize has always been a crop that demands little effort. The archaeologist Fernando Marquez Miranda has given us an excellent account of the advantages enjoyed by peasants cultivating maize: it required them to work only fifty days in the year, one day in seven or eight, according to season. They were therefore free, perhaps a little too free. The maize-growing societies on the irrigated terraces of the Andes or on the lakesides of the Mexican plateaux resulted in theocratic totalitarian systems and all the leisure of the peasants was used for gigantic public works of the Egyptian type. (It is arguable whether the cause was indeed maize, or irrigation, or the dense population of societies which became oppressive from sheer weight of numbers.)[One] [One]https://archive.org/details/BraudelFernandCivilizationAndCapitalism/ https://archive.org/details/BraudelFernandCivilizationAndCap... p161
- abrowne 5y ago
  On the other hand, the physical labor of grinding the kernels into meal, done by women kneeling at large mortar and pestle like tool, was intense and visible in skeletal remains.
koheripbal 5y ago
With no animals to help and no wheels... Every bit of soil had to be rolled by hand and every product carried by foot. ...it was most definitely worse than others.

bryanrasmussen 5y ago

think of the honor if you could actually be a proper offering to the sun god!

mtgx 5y ago
Being offered to the sun god - Achievement Unlocked!

jl6 5y ago

There are plenty of ways to inject violence and excitement into modern life if that’s what you’re missing!

dunefox 5y ago
Don't threaten me with a good time.

shrumm 5y ago

I know this isn’t the spirit of your comment but this is one of the use cases of VR that I’m most looking forward to. We’ve invested a LOT into immersing people into past worlds - think Jurassic park for dinosaurs, plenty of TV and movies about Roman times etc. VR would make all that seem so dated and boring. Work up a sweat running from a T-Rex - quick shower and off to work!

stareatgoats 5y ago
Looking forward to that day too. And if I may add another wish; that it becomes routine to be able immerse oneself in the ideas and culture of that time too. I realize that it is presently both easier and appeals to a larger audience to simply project our own ideas and culture onto past settings. But who knows what the future will bring. One can hope.
L_226 5y ago
You may enjoy the Transformation series by Neal Asher. A non-significant plot detail involves organisms being fitted with neural capture devices to record full sensory stimuli, before being killed/eaten by other organisms. These neural recordings are then sold to wealthy buyers who want to experience novelty.
- prometheus76 5y ago
  That is also the premise behind a 1983 film called Brainstorm starring Christopher Walken.
d3nj4l 5y ago
Defile what I defile! Eat who I eat! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEMbLt4B4iA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEMbLt4B4iA
jjk166 5y ago
Actually the first time I ever used a VR headset it was a program that put you in the dinosaur era. There were some triceratopses and hadrosaurs walking around in front of me, then I heard a branch snap behind me, I turned my head and saw a Tyrannosaurus and it was legit the scariest experience of my life. The graphics weren't even that high quality, but I don't think my flight or fight response takes the time to measure a predator's polygon count.

konart 5y ago

Many places in the world can offer you such life even now. Yet you are writing it from a cozy sofa or something.

dr_dshiv 5y ago

Can you imagine the feeling of watching a human sacrifice in a crowd of 10,000 people? Or watching the king pierce his own penis with a stingray spine? The blood! And still-beating hearts! The collective empathy induced by these powerful experiences, specifically the affective resonance, would be a powerful binding force. Especially when combined with the pounding music and (occasionally) psychedelics [1]. Wikipedia has a nice article on Mayan human sacrifice [2]. It all sounds so brutal, but then again, so is Squid Game. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entheogenics_and_the_Maya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entheogenics_and_the_Maya [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice_in_Maya_culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice_in_Maya_cultur...

goldenManatee 5y ago
Cannot compute, mind overload, lol
oblib 5y ago
We still have capital punishment so, yeah. I'll offer that was probably not any more common in Mayan life than ours now and those glyphs and stories are a sort of example used to keep folks in check or aggrandize the rulers of the day and in regards to those not much has changed.

idkwhoiam 5y ago

Sounds cool until it's your turn to sacrifice yourself to the sun god

bregma 5y ago

I hate to sprinkle blow on your parade, but coca was a different civilization 3000 miles and a few centuries away from both the Maya and the Aztecs. The only thing they have in common is they or their descendents eventually had their history erased by Spanish colonizers in the name of "civilization".

Panoramix 5y ago
OP wrote cocoa, not coca
ianhawes 5y ago
I find it ironic that the Spanish get a bad rap for “colonizing” the Mayans, but all the evidence suggests the Mayan civilization was committing genocide and ethnic cleansing. Modern day countries participating in human sacrifice and mass murder would similarly be invaded and the history of their actions would be altered. See: Germany in WW2.
- juanani 5y ago
  [dead]
- xvilka 5y ago
  There are many places where mass murder happens right now yet nobody is even contemplating their invasion. It happens only when there is something to take, something precious.
  - elnatro 5y ago
    Well two countries were invaded by USA after 11-S. At that moment both invasions were sold to the public as justified, because “security” and “for the people living there”.