Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The rationale for Aztec human sacrifice was, first and foremost, a matter of survival. According to Aztec cosmology, the sun god Huitzilopochtli was waging a constant war against darkness,...
The most common form of human sacrifice was heart-extraction. The Aztec believed that the heart (tona) was both the seat of the individual and a fragment of the Sun's heat (istli). The chacmool was a very important religious tool used during sacrifices. The cut was made in the abdomen and went through the diaphragm.
The religion of the Aztec civilization which flourished in ancient Mesoamerica (1345-1521 CE) has gained an infamous reputation for bloodthirsty human sacrifice with lurid tales of the beating heart being ripped from the still-conscious victim, decapitation, skinning and dismemberment. All of these things did happen but it is important to ...
At its core, Aztec sacrifice was the act of offering gifts to the gods in the form of blood. As such, its performance was intrinsically rooted in Aztec religion. The Mexica believed that humans had to give back to the gods, who had sacrificed themselves to create the current cycle of the world.
Archaeologists uncover the remains of a giant rack of skulls beneath downtown Mexico City. The priest quickly sliced into the captive's torso and removed his still-beating heart. That sacrifice, one among thousands performed in the sacred city of Tenochtitlan, would feed the gods and ensure the continued existence of the world. Death, however ...
Was human sacrifice really practised in the Aztec empire? What was its purpose? And who were the victims? Historian Caroline Dodds Pennock explains
The Aztecs and their world of rational urban planning, sophisticated sanitation, running water, daily baths, dominant temples and insatiable human sacrifice seemed set to last forever.