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Skulls reveal scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital (2018)
- throwup238 3y ago> Armed with years of practice, detailed anatomical knowledge, and obsidian blades sharper than today's surgical steel, they made an incision in the thin space between two vertebrae in the neck, expertly decapitating the body. I found this little bit of rhetorical flourish very amusing because there’s a lot packed in that statement that’s painfully relevant to the fall of the Aztecs. It’s true that obsidian can be cleaved to be sharper than some random surgical implement but it’s relatively brittle and prone to breaking when used in combat. That’s great if you’re an Aztec warrior who’s social standing depends on collecting live bodies for sacrifice or a priest cutting someone up, but it might be the second foremost reason why Cortez was able to conquer them - the first being Montezuma’s reticence to slaughter them in the jungle when he first heard of them and his subsequent religious obsession with the white conquistadors, until it was too late and they were well established. History could have turned out very different but from the beginning, even without the guns and cannons, the Spaniards were always better equipped for life or death combat than the entire Aztec society and all their vassal cities.
- dopidopHN 3y agoHaving the vassals cities as ally because they hated the Aztec so much helped. I recommend the fall of civilization episode on the Aztec. The battle of tecnoticlan was epic. The Spaniard got lucky in many aspect as well. They would have come back, but really it was a close one. ( we have diaries from Spanish soldiers )
- r2_pilot 3y agoI second this. I watched this episode of Fall of Civilizations podcast(on YouTube) while recovering a few weeks ago, and it's very informative and well-produced (as are all the episodes).
- rhyme-boss 3y agoConquistador by Buddy Levy is also an great source on this topic. He has other books about disastrous expeditions in the Arctic. His writing theme is basically "some guys set out on an expedition and then everything went to shit."
- throwup238 3y agoI recommend Conquest by Hugh Thomas and its long list of notes and citations. A few podcast episodes isn't nearly enough to understand the nuances of the Aztec conquest. The best sources aren't their diaries but all the depositions and testimony they made while fighting over the spoils. Anyone who survived the expedition spent the next decade fighting over it in Spanish court.
- pg_1234 3y agoThe Aztecs never had a chance, this wasn't even a real war from the Spanish side. The Conquistadors were more like sponsored entrepreneurs. You can think of this as America's first contact with Venture Capitalism. If the first wave had failed, but the potential profits were there, they'd have regrouped and come back with more resources and a new "market penetration strategy".
- baal80spam 3y ago> the second foremost reason why Cortez was able to conquer them - the first being Montezuma’s reticence to slaughter them in the jungle when he first heard of them and his subsequent religious obsession with the white conquistadors I've read that the biggest reason of Aztec's fall was their panic fear of horses. Is this not true?
- jmorenoamor 3y agoDogs too, A war dog was as terrifying vision to witness for a native. But also the strategy and combat discipline of units was way superior in the old world.
- Amezarak 3y agoIt's true that the natives were initially afraid of horses, but I think that overstates it. You can find some accounts of earlier battles that went like this: > The Indians, who had never seen any horses before, could not think otherwise than that horse and rider were one body. Quite astounded at this to them so novel a sight, they quitted the plain and retreated to a rising ground. [...] Our swords had done the most carnage among them, though many were killed by our cannon. Wherever the cavalry made its appearance the enemy had most work to do. The fighting lasted about an hour; and our enemies maintained their ground so well, that they did not quit the field of battle until our horse broke in among them. There were two caziques among the five prisoners we made. But not much later, the natives recognize the importance of the horses and specifically targeted them: > Besides all this the Indians kept continually throwing sand in our faces to blind us. Here, indeed, the great mercy of God alone could save us. The chief object of the enemy was to capture one of our horses, in which they did not altogether fail; for, as Pedro de Moron on his well-trained mare, attended by three others of our cavalry, was attempting to break through the enemy's ranks, the Indians wrenched the lance out of his hand, and fell furiously upon him with their broad swords, wounding him severely. They gave his mare such a terrific cut with the same weapon in the neck, that the animal instantly fell down dead. This from The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo. At any rate, it is perfectly sensible for unmounted infantry to be terrified of horse cavalry. Mounted cavalry is hard for infantry to beat without specialized weapons and tight formations.
- Amezarak 3y agoAztec weaponry was not limited to obsidian blades. They had extremely effective slingers and other ranged weapon types that were devastating even to the armored Spanish. Excepting the cannons and horses, the Aztecs were not really significantly worse off than the Spanish in terms of weapons. If you had to choose between 100 trained Aztec slingers and 100 Spanish armed with only with their personal firearms, you'd almost certainly want to choose the slingers. edit: according to conquistador accounts, apparently even the atlatl darts could pierce their armor.
- FredPret 3y agoHow, then, did an absolutely tiny number of Spaniards regularly defeat large numbers of Aztecs?
- khuey 3y agoThe Spaniards allied with other groups the Aztecs had subjugated to increase their numbers.
- eropple 3y agoThey didn't. The Spanish invaders allied with locals, to the point where some of those locals' descendants had special--though not equal--status into the colonial era as the indios nobles.
- FredPret 3y agoThe numbers were still very skewed
- Amezarak 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_conquest_of_the_Aztec_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_conquest_of_the_Aztec_... It's fairly clear that the numbers on both sides are very rough, but it's not what I would describe as very skewed at all. Also, note the Spanish themselves suffered 50%+ losses, which is a horrific casualty rate for pre-industrialized warfare. Aside from that, it's historically very common for one side to win even against much higher numbers with good (even accidentally good) strategy and with decisive bold actions, or even just good luck. edit: also worth mentioning that the Spanish were mostly fighting with their lances and swords, not guns.
- BurningFrog 3y agoWasn't immunology in the end the biggest reason Cortez conquered them? When 80-90% of the enemy population dies from unknown diseases, victory becomes much easier.
- yowzadave 3y agoI wonder why there weren't diseases endemic to the new world that would affect Europeans in the same way that smallpox did to the indigenous populations. Were diseases better able to spread in Europe due to city size/density/public health differences?
- achates 3y agoEurasia is massive compared to the Americas and has a lot more domesticated animals, so there were more diseases percolating there.
- Joshuatanderson 3y ago"Guns, Germs, and Steel", by Jared Diamond, is basically a book-length answer to this question that I would highly recommend.
- HeatrayEnjoyer 3y agoThere are better resources than GGS, actual historians and anthropologists are quite critical of it. https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/pmu2ft/recommendation_whats_the_contemporary_equivalent/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/pmu2ft/recom... https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/historians_views#wiki_historians.27_views_of_jared_diamond.27s_.22guns.2C_germs.2C_and_steel.22 https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/historians_views...
- Symmetry 3y agoThat's what you get when you have a scientist try writing a book that's simultaneously popular science and popular history. And judged as a popular history GGS does get a lot of things wrong and isn't up to the standards historians work to hold up. But on more scientific questions like "why there weren't diseases endemic to the new world that would affect Europeans in the same way that smallpox did to the indigenous populations" it does a good job. EDIT: Really, the reception to GGS is probably one of the best illustrations of what Thomas Kuhn was talking about in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions about different paradigms having different rules that I can recall seeing in my lifetime.
- kspacewalk2 3y agoIf they slaughtered Cortez and five other Cortezes that came afterwards, it wouldn't matter. Guns, germs, steel, horses, and the seething hatred of the Aztecs by the people they brutality oppressed predetermined their fate.
- throwup238 3y agoIt took them several more centuries to conquer the Mayan civilization with New Spain as a base of operations. Without the Aztec conquest giving them that foothold, it would not have played out the same way at all. If the Aztec leaders were determined to slaughter them in the jungle it would have been impassable to the Spaniards regardless of how many cannons, guns, or horses they had. Even before the Conquistadors knew that Tenochtitlan existed, they were almost wiped out several times by tribes on the coast. Montezuma invited the Conquistadors into the city and they even held him as a hostage for months before any fighting broke out. Those alliances took a while to establish and the germs only came later into the campaign when they started sending ships back for more troops during a Caribbean smallpox outbreak. I recommend reading Conquest by Hugh Thomas. The whole story is fascinating and very nuanced - it took several expeditions to even get that far and Cortez was possibly the luckiest man alive in the 16th century.
- cpleppert 3y agoThe Mayan and Aztec conquests were completely different. The Mayan polities were situated in terrain that was much harsher for an invader, military capability doesn't mean much when a military force can't be effectively maintained in the field against. There also wasn't much incentive for the spanish to extend their domains into the mayan polities at that time. The spanish were far more focused on populous areas where they could extract wealth which was the only way for spanish conquistadors to gather volunteers. Even under these conditions the actual military engagements were very one-sided with most of the Yucatan conquered within thirty years of the Aztec conquest.
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- cpleppert 3y ago>>but it might be the second foremost reason why Cortez was able to conquer them - the first being Montezuma’s reticence to slaughter them in the jungle when he first heard of them and his subsequent religious obsession with the white conquistadors, until it was too late and they were well established. Montezuma was never in a position to slaughter the conquistadors in the jungle. The Tlaxcalans (a rival state to the mexica) engaged the conquistadors in a series of brutal skirmishes (most with the advantage of surprise) on their home turf but failed to make any real progress. Its very clear that the attacking Tlaxcalan warriors suffered horrendous casualties when they engaged the castillans in close quarters combat due to the superior steel weapons(mostly swords) of the latter. Since the Tlaxcalans vigorously defended their independence its hard to argue the Mexica could have done any better fighting at a distance that would have stretched their supply lines. As for his supposed religious obsession, its unclear and isn't necessary to explain his actions. There is certainly no evidence that Montezuma was confused or acting irrationally; he repeatedly tried to deter the conquistadors from coming and made attempts to play them off against the Tlaxcalans.
- inglor_cz 3y ago"in the jungle" This is relevant. The Aztecs were very able to slaughter the Spanish in the alleys/canals of Tenochtitlan itself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Noche_Triste https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Noche_Triste If it weren't for an epidemic of smallpox, the Spanish would have to conquer Tenochtitlan at a very high price in blood. Urban combat negated a lot of the advantages of European steel.
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- throwup238 3y agoThe Tlaxcalans made the mistake of engaging the conquistadors where their cavalry was most effective and allowed them to fortify themselves at Tzompachtepetl, at which point Spanish armor provided to be too effective for Tlaxcalan tactics (send wave after wave of troops instead of overwhelming them). Eventually they just kind of gave in and weren't really defeated in great number before allying against the Aztecs. In their very first skirmish at the edge of Tlaxcalan territory where it was mountainous and undeveloped, a small scout troop took down two horses out of the sixteen that Cortex had with him. Spanish tactics and discipline were enough to overcome large numbers only when they controlled where the battles happened. If Montezuma had used guerilla tactics during the subsequent trip, it would have been far more effective (he had plenty of spies reporting on their movements so I don't think the logistics would have been that difficult). Cortes even lengthened the journey in part to minimize how much time they'd spend in terrain that favored those tactics. Maybe "obsessed" is the wrong word but Montezuma was influenced by legends of Quetzalcoatl as a white-skinned, bearded man who opposed human sacrifices and was reluctant to just go out and slaughter the conquistadors. Their religion was definitely an influence in the whole affair beyond just the whole human sacrifice bit.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago> But the Spanish conquistadors who marched into Tenochtitlan in 1519 saw them differently. For them, the skulls—and the entire practice of human sacrifice—evinced the Mexica's barbarism and justified laying waste to the city in 1521 This almost reads like “that’s just your opinion man” with regard to human sacrifice. The Aztecs were hated by the groups they subjugated causing them to join with the Spanish against the Aztecs.
- timdiggerm 3y agoOn the one hand, I get that scholars want to maintain a neutral position so that moral judgements don't cloud their study. That makes a lot of sense to me. On the other hand, human sacrifice is bad.
- lupusreal 3y agoYeah I think it's proper for scholars to maintain a neutral frame of mind when conducting their research. The problem happens when that neutrality leaks out of the scholarly setting.
- kaliqt 3y agoThe former is more important than the latter. As in, remaining neutral should always take priority in these matters.
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoMore important for who? The scholar? Perhaps so. Society? Society cannot function for long without moral judgments. At least, it can't function well.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y agoI bet these "neutral" scholars all roundly condemn the Conquistadors.
- lll-o-lll 3y agoCultural Relativism, like so much of Post Modernism, falls apart when the logical consequences are taken to the extremes. Everything can be deconstructed, leaving nothing of meaning. “I ground him in the mill, down to subatomic particles, and there was not one atom of life! Not one particle of consciousness!” Good and Evil do not exist, or so the argument goes, only arbitrary constructs. And yet. I look at the Aztecs; their worship of death, and I question.
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- JoeAltmaier 3y agoHuman sacrifice has a context. War is often over resources. To win over a competitor has value in gaining the competitors' resources. But then, they have to quit needing those resources. It was a brutal and ugly practice. But their environment was unforgiving. Brutal. To demonize the survivor, the winner in the conflicts, is a natural impulse. But to pretend it was all futile and pointless is to miss the entire context.
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- FredPret 3y ago[flagged]
- dsabanin 3y agoExactly. I am not even sure how can someone call an environment where food just grows on trees and winter doesn’t exist brutal, compared to the mini Ice Age that was happening in Europe at that time. To me, it was only brutal because they made it so, it could have been a heaven.
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoThink again. Forestry collapse, drought, it was all a factor. Sure during the good times there's plenty. But during the bad times, the survivors did what they did. Plenty of horror in Europe, we should maybe revisit our European history. It's 'better' they just let peasants starve to death, while taxing them to penury. Because that's just a bureaucracy, not deliberate murder. Because they deliberately starved the Irish, refused aid, because it was a better world with fewer Irish in it? And Africa! My god, what a fantasy that Africa had less of a history of war and slaughter.
- dsabanin 3y agoForestry collapse, drought, famine, were all factors present everywhere around the world as well, and human sacrifice is not a solution to this. I argue that deaths due to famines, epidemics, wars, unfair food distribution, racism, slavery, exploitation are a whole different category from the human sacrifice. Each one of the former had a cause or a purpose. A lot of it was due to mismanagement, ignorance, fight for resources and control and people being assholes. Me deciding to keep food to myself to feed my family or my clique and not to share it with you, forcing you to starve, is very different from me going to your house, kidnapping you and killing you for no reason at all. Oh, pardon me, the reason was to build a fucking wall made out of you and your family skulls. You're justifying completely senseless violence here. The only thing in Europe that comes close in my mind is the burning of the witches and the holocaust, for which there was and is much repentance to this day.
- hprotagonist 3y ago[flagged]
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- michalu 3y ago[flagged]
- toenail 3y ago> Human sacrifice [...] abortions [...] is pretty much the same. Ok, so to you a fertilized egg is pretty much the same as a fully grown, developed, adult human. That's fine, but the majority seems to disagree with you.
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- thunkle 3y agoIf you are interested in learning more about the whole meeting of the Spaniards and Aztecs. Please check out Conquistadors by Buddy Levy one of my favorite books!
- tiffanyh 3y agoThanks, will do. But curious, what's the gist of their meeting?
- simonbarker87 3y agoVery cordial to begin with, mainly because the Spanish had allied with a large number of other tribes, many of which were enemies of the Aztecs. The Aztecs invited them into the city as honoured guests/curiosities. After many months the Spanish (and their tribal allies) massacred the city after a series of events internal and external to the city. It’s a fascinating episode in history, if you don’t want to read a book then the Aztec series of the podcast The Rest Is History gives an amazing 7 parts walkthrough of the saga.
- xhkkffbf 3y agoI think what many people miss about the Europeanization of North America is how often the Euros formed alliances with different tribes. Some tribes formed a bond with the French, some with the Spanish, English, Portugeuse and probably a few others too. It was much more complex than can be described in a sound bite.
- locopati 3y agoIn the end though, the Europeans and later, the Americans, mostly reneged on their treaty agreements and obligations when it suited them to do so.
- inglor_cz 3y agoInterestingly, the Spanish mostly honored their treaty with the Tlaxcalans, and it was independent Mexico which terminated it.
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- zomg 3y agoi can't wrap my mind around how this was legitimately considered normal in their society. so fascinating.
- err4nt 3y agoHuman sacrifice is still a part of many societies today, especially the West who fights for it. Today it's performed by different people for different reasons than the Aztecs, but how will the people centuries from us view our practices and reasoning for it?
- KevinMS 3y agoConsider me on team conquistador now