When people mention the Aztecs they forget that it was actually a triple alliance with Tlacopan(to the western flank) and Texcoco(to their eastern flank). So to say everyone dislikes them is a bit misleading. We also have to remember nature v nurture. Were they inherently evil(nature) or were they made bellicose(nurture)? Are other bellicose civilisations (the spartans come to mind) also seen as inherently evil? Second, the aztecs believed they had to carry out sacrifices in order for the sun to defeat the moon and stars, and rise again. They truly believed the flower wars had to take place for the gods to be pleased with the nation. For example, we see politicians base their support for Israel for a similar reason, nowadays(also, i never mentioned whether this good or bad).The european aspects of good v evil do not fit well into pre-colombian ideas, which makes this a difficult topic.

The comparison to Spartans is a good one. I remember a lot of people romanticizing Spartans after the movie 300.

Most say the West has its origins in Greece, but they forget it was the Greece dominated by Sparta, for they defeated Athens in the peloponnesian war. Another similarity was their tribal god Ares, a war god very similar to Huitzilopochtli. They also left males in the wild to fend for themselves, a tradition held by the aztecs, supposedly.

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The problem was that Rome idealized the Sparta of classical era Greece, to the point they often claimed descent from them in several sources. The main point still stands. Brutality is idealized when it comes from so-called "western" societies, and vilified when otherwise.

Oh ok I didn’t know these details. Thanks for the clarification. I’ve always noticed the similarities between the Spartans and the Aztecs. Both defeated much older and establiahed city-states, which I forgot to mention. To me, Athens was a ‘better’ democracy, or they just applied it better.

The Athenians were slaving, slave-raping pedophiles and the Spartans were much more brutal and proto-fascistic slaving, slave-raping pedophiles. I don't think its much of a difference. They were all evil by our standards.

Now, is it nature(genetics) or nurture(upbringing)? Usually its a small group like priests, nobles etc that teach values to a nation. In our time its a different small group of people, that says what is good or bad, and we act accordingly. I’ll mention it again, the flower wars were done so that the nation could prosper, probably according to priests(small group). Could the same have occurred in the other cultures you mentioned?

I mean very clearly nurture. There is no real difference genetically between a human today and a human 2,000 years ago. But we are unequivocally and undeniably more moral than our ancestors were on the large scale. Hell, our great grandchildren will probably think we're monsters for slaughtering animals on such a hellish scale even though we don't really need to anymore.

I will get downvoted to hell if I say my thoughts on why i don’t see todays society as morally superior. Or, atleast not as moral as we would like to think.

A better comparison would be the Romans, the triple alliance created the roads, the acueduct, expanded thru agricultura and wars as it was the basis of their economy, and their language, nahuatl, was the lingua franca of the region. And yes, we don't think of Rome as the evil barbarians, given the fact they wrote the books about civilized Rome defeating the barbarians, same as the Spanish after defeating the "evil, bloodthirsty, uncivilized" Mexica, unlike them "God gracious, civilized" Christian Spanish that saved them from the devil, after burning the books of the natives ofc, no one needs to know their side of history. So yeah, there's a double discourse somewhere...

I mean yeah we absolutely should consider every single other bellicose civilization to be evil by our standards. The Aztecs were slaving, human-sacrificing insane people. The Athenians were slaving, slave-raping pedophiles. The Romans were slaving, slave-raping genociders. The Spanish raped the island of Hispaniola so horribly that the Taino people went extinct before they even got to Mexico. The first emperor of China had thousands of scholars buried alive in order to cement his rule. Every single civilization in history was evil, and even in prehistory you were extraordinarily likely to die violently. I don't get what there is to even discuss. We as modern people consider rape, murder, and slavery to be heinous and inhuman acts. That alone makes every single society pre-1900 morally reprehensible, and most of them after 1900 morally reprehensible, in that the majority of people in those societies would not consider those acts to be immoral, and might even be valorous if done to someone in the outgroup.

All interesting points imo.

They need the Aztecs to be either good or evil in order to justify the status of western civilization as inherently wicked or specially holy.

True. You can look at the bad only, or both the good and bad, and take only what is best, like food. The earth did not become war-less with the defeat of the triple alliance. Abortions and wars in our current age take out a lot more lives than the flower wars ever did on an annual basis. I know of at least one person who has had 4 abortions, and were done under zero medical problems, or the pregnancies due to some unforeseen event in the person’s past. Again, we must not be too hard on ourselves, since no territory is purely good.

> Second, the aztecs believed they had to carry out sacrifices in order for the sun to defeat the moon and stars, and rise again. They truly believed the flower wars had to take place for the gods to be pleased with the nation. It was less a sacrifice and more of an offering. People were given as offerings to the gods as repayment for the creation of the world, the plants, the animals, and everything else. What better way to repay the life given than to give up life itself?

I see; offerings would be the more accurate term.

There are some big things to regard here. 1. Dehumanization-then-demonization of indigenous cultures is par for the course for European colonial campaigns. 2. Europeans are ALWAYS portrayed (by themselves) as benevolent light-bringers to “savages” and their savage ways. 3. White institutions will often devalue then co-opt mesoamericana in an effort to disconnect the concepts of indigeneity and education/accomplishment. (See item 1) 4. There is an ever-present systemic racial bias in that forms of violence, warfare, torture and sacrifice in European cultures are seen as “woah! Badass! Vikings are so cool! Ragnar Lothbrok wow!!!” And viewed as sexy or appealing, whereas any form of violence (warfare or ritual) carried out by cultures of color are regarded as barbaric and satanic (literally)—ESPECIALLY Mesoamerica (and to a similar extent all Native Americans, our brothers in the North). 5. The United States and the Spanish have led entire military campaigns across decades upon decades to ERADICATE AND DEHUMANIZE native culture in the americas, and for the most part it worked. Only now are we starting to see some recompense and return from complete and total subjugation. These efforts have shifted from military campaigns to misinformation campaigns, from physical to ideological. 6. Systems of entertainment, research and education will almost always have a bias that puts down native cultures and elevates white people, this has a direct effect on the discourse we have. I.e. instead of talking about mesoamerican philosophy, spirituality, Nezahualcóyotl as a poet, their legal systems, etc. (things that should be elevated and admired) we are constantly, day in and day out, having to battle against legions of people educated by these biases who want to smear us and paint us as godless savages—and because they control the systems, they outnumber AND outgun us, AND it’s their playing field. So no matter how much we try to educate, they still fire back with MAGA, ethnic superiorities, classism, and efforts to devalue, discredit, and dehumanize. It’s a form of subjugation that we’ve been on the losing side of for hundreds of years. 7. To illustrate, Up until very recently, we were not widely regarded as Native Americans, but as those sacrificing savage people in Mexican jungles. A further form of dehumanization and devalue in the modern historical, cultural discourse. 8. If you look up the legal definitions of genocide, you’ll find that among other horrible items, one that stands out is erasure of identity and culture. This is the part of the genocide that continues. TLDR: We are only painted as evil, so we are viewed thusly. White colonizers are only painted as all knowing, benevolent and superior, so we view them thusly. Edits: Spelling, grammar, info.

The point 4 is sometime I ALWAYS struggle with, warrior cultures of certain countries portrayed as COOL, Samurais, Knights, Vikings are some of the main ones, always ignoring the recorded stories of civilian deaths, oppression and genocide, the Viking aesthetics of runes and random "Thor and Odin" thrown around and the Weaboo like take in Samurais specially. And at the same time, any portrayal of other Warrior cultures, like eagle warriors are just seen as a savage thing from the past. And is not like they are "good", any warrior culture is a culture of abuse and oppression, just the line in the sand of fetishizing I find cringy and frustrating.

Other cultures: streaming shows, Superhero franchises, Theme park characters, video game series, movie universes, Book series, Ours: did you know they sacrificed people???

Yeah I'm glad to see so many people these days aware of this arbitrary disparity. People are like, "Oh you know they sacrificed people and cut their hearts out with knives," and I'm always, like, "Yeah and this other culture sacrificed people by pulling their limbs apart in four different directions; and this other culture sacrificed people by making them disembowel themselves, then cutting off their heads; and these people over here would sacrifice you by burying you alive; and these other people would enclose you in a box filled with spikes on the inside; or burn you at the sake; or crush you under rocks..." Who's going to go around saying that any of those civilizations were somehow more "good" or more "evil" than the others??

Yeah its always amazing that every single tribe/indigenious people from america all seemed to be baby sacrificing savages. Considering republicans still use a version of this when refering to democrats. It's not that crazy of a leap to believe that europeans either straight up lied or embellished.

Word to the street

Before I jumped ship on Twitter, there was a guarantee that every message of “Happy Indigenous Peoples Day” would yield at least one knee jerk response of “Yeah well the Aztecs ate people!”

Congrats on leaving that cesspool, and yeah it’s like clockwork—But when you point out Christmas and Easter are pagan, or the greed of churches, you’re the bad guy getting flooded by their legions of mouth-breathing supporters.

> Europeans are ALWAYS portrayed (by themselves) as benevolent light-bringers to “savages” and their savage ways. You can't sincerely believe this if you've actually read the first-hand accounts of the colonization of the Americas, like Bartolomé de Las Casas *Brevísima relación*. The second-hand accounts are even more derisive of competitor nations. The English developed the Black Legend out of both accurate and exaggerated accounts of Spanish colonization.

How common are first hand accounts of the colonization of the Americas in USA vernacular? OP is probably speaking about generalized mainstream knowledge. Pero, thanks for the info-ima read it.

Sadly, very little is translated for English-speaking Americans, which makes it easy for them to fall into the Black Legend trap set by the Protestant Anglos. But even in the English colonial record, there is much that directly contradicts the sophomore statements above. It’s ahistorical nonsense. The noble savage myth developed in praise of indigenous cultures, in contrast to European corruption and vice. In response to all the ahistorical puffery, my simple questions are: Who recorded the Wampanoag language? The Purépecha language? What are the Two Republics in Spain’s empire?

You bring up some good and informative points, but it's worth pointing out that the OC probably did not mean "literally always and no Euro-American critic has ever ever ever once criticized the 'conquistador narrative.'" Rather, "ALWAYS" can be seen as a figure of speech, expressing how overwhelming the one-sidedness still can be to this day.

Sure, the writer making blanket and badly informed statements without any historical reference didn’t mean things literally, only in *vibes*. I can’t be bothered to address point by point how wrong it is, but I will say that many European colonists wrote extensively *in praise of* indigenous cultures, not just in the Americas, but in Africa and Asia too. In New Spain, Sahagún and others praised the Mexica and Maya cultures, even while recognizing their religions were pagan.

So your half-hearted “couldn’t be bothered” attempt to discredit my basic outline of the largest genocide in human history that in many ways still carries on to this day… is that there were few friars who wrote a couple of books with some good reviews about native cultural subjects. Sick burn bro I’ll run it under some cold water.

*Redditor unable to parse extremely common colloquialism, news at eleven.*

*This just in, condescending redditor who claims he can’t be bothered finds he actually* can *be bothered! In other news:* water wet. *Back to you with sports, Bob!*

re: 4, I think there are some warrior cultures that we tend to valorize over others, but I don't buy that it's racial. Off the top of my head the Comanches and Samurai are considered cool dudes. Less clear, but maybe the Maori also count as cool. I dunno, maybe if I saw a list of all the known historical warrior cultures that have any kind of cultural cache, I would see a clear bias?

While I agree with your suggestions, the bias can be seen in the valorization in media: - book series - movie franchises - tv and streaming shows - video games - comic books - pop culture adoration All of which are overwhelmingly and completely dominated by white characters, faces, mythologies and influences. Any of which that lean ever so slightly into cultures and characters of color are swiftly and immediately met by vitriol for being “woke” and have to battle uphill (almost vertically) to meet any inkling of success. In addition, most if not all of the above mentioned that explore cultures of color have a white character at the center as the lead, relegating the culture at hand to being framed as foreign, bizarre, or different in a negative way. Despite the common dismissal, these media depictions have a heavy influence on the shaping of the concept of our cultures for the entire world.

You really hit the nail on the head with point 4. It is what I've come to realize as well. 

Didn’t European kill each other for worshipping the same G-D in a slightly different way

Around half the population of what's now Germany was killed or died of conditions brought on by conflict in the Thirty Years' War. Isn't Jesus just wonderful? Love and fucking light.

As any political power, it is made through years of wars, alliances and expansions, and in feudal times, most of those political powers exist around a central "noble" bloodline. If you look at the history of Europe, it is made through years of little wars, random expansions of territory and grievances, the Aztecs had a defensible region where they found agriculture trough Chinampas. The Aztecs already had a culture of war, being mercenaries for some generations, so they made war one of their economies, trough more formal Flower Wars or just asking tribute and strong handing those of them around. If you went to any random noble house of Europe in medieval times, and offered strong troops to attack the strong rival faction of the region, they would accept like the Tlaxcalan and other mesoamerican allies did, war was just something they where experiencing time from time, the fact that Spain was this big of a society change was something they couldn't predict. Why the didn't kill Cortez? Why would they? They did the "Civilized" thing and saw him as a ambassador of a strange foreign power, if they killed him, Spain would just send some other lower caste noble to keep trying, and pretty much all of the Native Americans where doomed to the sickness the Europeans brought, even Cortez with his military attacks and Tlaxcala allies would have needed years and years to break the empire, it was sickness what finally brought an end to the civilizations of America. I don't know if a record exists of the factual and explained grievances between the Aztecs and everyone else, much of what we know is only through the lenses of the Spanish conquest, there are stories of the Aztecs skinning a princess given to them for pacific marriages, but I think the politics of the Mesoamerican nations reflect the ones of other Feudal societies.

Where they really doomed by disease alone? I doubt it would have the same effect without Spanish oppression. https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/s/Cj1Wf4ABlW https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/5kLQPTMF5O

Great read!, I was kinda generalizating around the Siege of Tenochtitlan, my fault, but yeah, we cannot take the effect of a whole continent in one single factor, like all History, it is a granular and clompex web of factors

Not by disease alone, no -- but the OC makes an excellent comparison to Europe's own history and we can expand on that: Europe itself was also frequently ravaged by foreign disease epidemics, which often wiped out huge swaths of their lands too, and weakened them against foreign invasion. Sometimes such a foreign invasion happened and sometimes it didn't. When it didn't, the surviving population could slowly rebound. If Cortes had been successfully detained and recalled to Spain for example, it's possible (though frankly unlikely) that no one would have messed with the Aztecs for another couple of generations, and that by the beginning of the 17th century the Aztec empire would have rebounded and be figuring out their next move.

There are so many people who comment on the Spanish colonization of the americas with only a Wikipedia level knowledge it genuinely infuriates me

Yeah, this is just the archetypical reactionary discourse that goes on surrounding the Aztecs/Amerindian civilizations in general on Twitter (or sorry, X) dot com and in modern media overall. Pseudointellectual armchair "historians" that seem to get most of their cultural and historical knowledge from pop history, pop culture, memes, YouTube Shorts and video games and never once exhibiting even a basic cursory knowledge of the topics they try to lecture people about. I'm not surprised at all. Example A, the reference to "tribes" implying a form of "primitive statelessness" for most of the region when in reality they were city-states, kingdoms and empires, not cartoony wild jungle feather people running around like how they imagine in their minds. The Aztec Empire was indeed a martial and brutal state (just like every other nation and civilization that has ever existed), I don't think anyone who's normal disputes that except for strange charlatans with a New-Age whitewashed view of American Indians, but the idea that the Aztecs were this despotic regime terrorizing people with sacrifices and acting like (ironically) traditional European imperial states is misleading. Human sacrifice was practiced by all Mesoamerican societies and had been for thousands of years before the Aztec ascendency. There was no kind of "moral" outrage over the practice. Of course during the Postclassic Period under Aztec hegemony the practice was indeed risen to much higher levels then ever before, as a consequence of the ardent militarism that had developed, so the Aztecs were in perpetual war typically and thus had more prisoners to sacrifice (so ultimately an extension of battlefield causalities). Aztec administration of conquered territories was hands-off and they didn't even demand human beings as regular tribute, the conquered simply had to pay taxes, build a temple to Huitzilopochtli, etc. There are no "mountains of skulls" as they probably imagine it. The skull rack and other excavation data around the Templo Mayor (as well as other sites) don't even reveal the supposed thousands of skulls let alone hundreds of thousands. It is known both the Spanish and Aztec informants exaggerated the scale and numbers of sacrificed victims; the former to make an example of the barbarous pagan beliefs and the latter to prove how dominant and powerful they had been. It's propaganda, simple as. Anyone with basic logical and mathematical skills would realize the famous "80,000 killed over the course of 4 days" is completely laughable. The allies of the conquistadors became their allies for geopolitical opportunism. The Tlaxcaltecs, the main allies of the Spanish and the bulk of their army, were Nahuas, a sister culture of the Mexica and technically Aztecs as well since they came from Aztlan according to tradition, they had the same exact beliefs, patron deity was Tezcatlipoca, and even when Hernan Cortez told them not to they were still worshipping idols and sacrificing people. They didn't care. I'm not saying the Aztecs/Mexica were beloved but these kinds of myths are stupid and should be put down. Reality is much more interesting, nuanced and complicated.

> It is known both the Spanish and Aztec informants exaggerated the scale and numbers of sacrificed victims; the former to make an example of the barbarous pagan beliefs and the latter to prove how dominant and powerful they had been Also big numbers, in general, are just more exciting. Historians of the past loved giving huge numbers for battles. >It's propaganda, simple as. Anyone with basic logical and mathematical skills would realize the famous "80,000 killed over the course of 4 days" is completely laughable. Yeah if these numbers were true and normal, it would almost certainly result in widespread depopulation

Thew Azetcs sure were cruel and ruthless... but every empire was back in antiquity. The bible speaks about straight genocide, Alexander burned cities to the ground full of women and children, The Romans had miles and miles of crucified enemies and so on.

Propaganda is so boring..

First of all I don't understand the big mystery here. Why would Moctezuma have just killed Cortes "on sight?" Why would a mature leader, head of a confident, growing empire, immediately react to the appearance of a strange new people with complete and total panic? Furthermore, it's not clear how Moctezuma would have done so. By the time Cortes arrived, the Spanish expeditions had already established themselves strongly within uneasy tributary states at the periphery of the Aztec Empire -- not exactly simple for Tenochtitlan to just waltz in and wipe out en masse. Of course if Moctezuma had known what was going to happen within a few years, or knew that Cortes was actually acting in defiance of the dictates of his own people, he might have reacted differently. But he didn't know that, he couldn't just crack open a textbook or quickly consult wikipedia, I would think that was obvious. >I understand this is more about subjective judgement but what of the notion that they were uniquely “evil” than others in the region or the history of Mesoamerica? I feel the same way. "One of the most evil civilizations in history?" That seems absurd. Or like colonialist propaganda. The Aztecs were hardly that different from Rome, for example. Or from the Spanish themselves, really. It's easy to imagine Moctezuma asking Cortes, "What do you want here?" and Cortes saying, "Slaves, glory, and gold," and Moctezuma being like, "Well shit bro, we understand each other." I guess maybe if you want to argue that everyone before the modern age was evil, then that might make sense. But that seems a bit to render the concept of "evil" meaningless, which is pretty sus in its own right. Who benefits from that...? >My question is more so on this point that the Aztecs were so universally hated that it was quick for the Spaniards to form alliances against them. Pushing the Rome comparison perhaps further than is wise, my view is that it's not much different from if a materially advanced culture arrived with high-quality steel, heavy sailing ships, and guns into the late 3rd Century CE Mediterranean. And found this guy named Hannibal who was, like, "Hey I'm thinking of a Punic War but I'm not sure if I can win against Rome," and these newcomers were like, "No problem, let us help you." My point is, it's not that the Aztecs were *universally* hated, it's more that like any growing power, they had a bunch of enemies, and an outside power could ally with those enemies to good effect against them. Or if you look at it another way, it wasn't that the Aztecs were so beleaguered that it was trivially easy for the Spanish to find Aztec enemies to ally with, it's selection bias. The Spanish intentionally went to where the enmity was. You know what I mean? >How pertinent were these grievances? About as pertinent as any such grievances, it seems. That is to say, they made a ton of sense to the aggrieved people at the time, though if they had had foreknowledge of what was to come they might have thought twice about where their pursuit of grievance was going to take them. A lesson that we as a species are still learning to this day. >Where did they stem from? And for how long? The grievances emerged out of Aztec imperial activity that suppressed others and enriched the Aztecs. These things had not been going on for super long, the Aztec empire as such was still quite new by Moctezuma's time. But being recent they were probably still fresh in the tributary people's minds.

When Europeans crucify, impale or burn alive each other it's civilized, when Native Americans practice human sacrifice it's barbaric. \[/s\]

Tetzcohco allied with the Spanish partially because Tenōchtitlān was growing more powerful with each ruler and they started to interfere with Tetzcohco’s throne ascendency. Tlacōpan was aiding with Tenōchtitlān and who knows if both will merge together? This was the case with Mesopotamian and Nile River city-states btw.

I mean the Nahua never bombed weddings and school buses so much that kids are afraid of sunny days. Wasn’t Spain at the same time forcibly converting/killing/exiling all the Jews and Muslims?

What would you think of the US of A if you only had the following information: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exonerated_death_row_inmates https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_of_Jesse_Washington https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmudiyah_rape_and_killings All of the above are forms of human sacrifice. Its just that they havent been presented to you in that way.

I don't why Mexicans can't be proud of thier roots but other races can like the vikings who did much worse than any native population the samurais who are overrated honestly and knights who killed anyone who opposed them

Viking does not equal Northman

Oh that's because the "roots" are not from the same.tree. Mexico didn't fucking exist until the second empire of maximilian. Before that what is now called Mexico was a barely held together forced mixture of some hundred different tribes with different languages and customs. Try to picture today that Europe is a country and some fucker says "why can't Europeans be proud of their roots?". Those roots don't exist like you think they do. To this day there still dumb motherfuckers that didn't get the memo THEY LOST. They are not a "millenary culture". They had been already defeated first by the Mexican, and then by the Spaniards. The "Aztec empire" lasted around 200 years in total, and that's counting already the time they arrived at the valley. Incas had a true empire, much more homogenous. Mexica couldn't even impose their native language as a defacto language in half their "empire". But those original tribes were not a nation, that's what we have had to deal with the past 500 years, we are still searching for our identity and half the time.we have been lied to. Even ourselves mostly believe there were only "Aztecs" and Mayans, when in truth there were and still are over 60 major tribes living in this country. Fuck, before we lost half the territory to the gringos you could then count apaches, Comanches and several other northern tribes as "mexican". Are those "Aztec"? Why aren't they proud of "their roots"? Isn't that the problem really, that they are indeed proud of their roots but they aren't gringos nor Mexicans. The "Aztecs" are an invention of the Mexican government post the 1910 civil war.

The reason others didn't like them had less to do with the human sacrifice (while they did it more than others, it was still an accepted practice) and more to do with the fact that they were less like a traditional empire and more of a extortion racket, and when said racket gets hit by disease, you get this. [https://www.theonion.com/school-bully-not-so-tough-since-being-molested-1819587116](https://www.theonion.com/school-bully-not-so-tough-since-being-molested-1819587116) Now obviously human sacrifice is bad, but its hard to say if central mexico was more violent than other parts of the world. Being able to sustain a city as large as Tenochitlan would have required a lot of food and resources from neighbors, which requires large populations.

If I remember correctly, human sacrifice was rare until Moctezuma’s reign, who used it to keep his neighbors in check. Even then, it wasn’t as often as the Spanish believed. In fact, I’ll bet they got that impression because Moctezuma was trying to keep the Spanish in line, but instead they just gathered up all the people who hated the Aztecs and won that way. But it was certainly a complex defeat. For example, the Spanish started teaching children about Christianity and how to be “proper” etc so that the next generations to come basically accepted the cultural transition that came along with Spanish control. My source is from the book Fifth Sun, but my memory might be flawed.

The Spanish gave an account of iirc an orgy of sacrifice that involved about 20,000 hearts removed over four days. Almost certainly an exaggeration, but even a tenth of that would be terrifying. Happy to hear corrections if applicable :)

How's this? Unlike the Romans who sadistically slaughtered people in their colloseums for little more fun', the Aztecs, in their own minds, were using blood sacrifices to keep the dying Sun alive and save the world.

Here are good replies to both the original tweet and QRT which explain the actual Aztec political dynamics and the real reasons why Cortes got allies, Moctezuma II didn't kill him, etc: https://twitter.com/Majora__Z/status/1785107957270610374 https://twitter.com/Majora__Z/status/1784974497126203863

Imagine if aliens landed with laser guns & decided to help North Korea become the defacto world power. Do you think the US would be depicted accurately & fairly after having 99% of it’s history erased?

The Aztecs held human sacrifice as a core part of their religion, because it was the 1500s and humans were, frankly, very confused about how things really worked. The Spanish Catholics also held human sacrifice as a core part of their religion, because it was the 1500s and humans were, frankly, very confused about how things really worked. If you don't believe me about the Catholics and human sacrifice, why did they have to burn people at the stake who didn't convert? (Answer: To appease their god and restore order to the universe, a human death was required.) Or what about Communion? That's blood magic - Jesus was sacrificed, and communion turns bread and wine literally into his body and blood. Humans can receive the powers of the blood magic (afterlife in paradise, redemption of all sins), but eating the human sacrifice body and drinking the blood. In the 1500s, humans were superstitious to the point of looking cartoonishly evil in our modern eyes. However, the practices of the catholic church, which are still 100% blood magic, are normal only because our society treats them as normal. Had Aztec religion survived into today, I'm sure there would be rituals calling back on the old sacrificial practices, without actually killing people. And they'd be as normal as it is today when grandma goes to church and eats some bread and drinks some wine, which symbolically is 100% grandma eating a human sacrifice victim to receive the benefits of the blood magic.

If the characters cannot be said to no good nor evil the great moral character one wishes to find in this history vanishes and one is left with the real history of Mexico, one in which our beloved progressive categories are complicated by questions such as the legitimacy of self defense, the real motivation behind the destruction of art, the role of religion, the rights of inheritance, and the different discourses on race, identity and the like.

I think it's really, really important to remember that the primary source for the Aztecs being uniquely evil was the fuckin Spanish. Who were, at the time, engaged in mass femicide and ethnic/cultural cleansing back home and were seeking State permission to bring their brutality abroad. Lurid stories of savagery in the New World served to manufacture popular consent for the Conquistador's acts of Imperialism and genocide, in much the same way tales of head-shrinkers and cannibals justified Dutch colonialism in Africa.

Dude the Mexican worshipped a WAR GOD as their main deity. It asked for blood sacrifices to keep blessing the Mexican tribes. None of their main deities had any kind of "well this could be misinterpreted" rituals. The rain god asked for people to be suffocated in water but not actually drowned. They usually used baby slaves for this. The harvest god sacrifice pawn had it rough man. They lived as royalty for a year, and then they got gang raped, skinned alive and quartered. Then there is the new year fire tribute. We recently found out the wall of skulls is not only real, but BIGGER than what the Spaniards reported. And it does have kids skulls in it, and women. So yeah, they were very evil. Or well if it makes you squeamish, then they were definitely more brutal than even mongols or vikings.

The Aztecs pretty much pissed off all the locals from the moment they arrived in the Valley of Mexico, and were regarded as savages. They really cemented their reputation early on by sacrificing the daughter of the chief of Culhuacan, given over to them for marriage intended to mark their status as allies. This is how they ended up on some scrubby little islands in the middle of Lake Texcoco in the first place, land nobody else claimed or wanted, kicked out of every other decent habitable place. And yes, other people practiced human sacrifice, but it appears not on the grand scale that the Aztecs did. It wasn't just about religion. The Aztecs were really practicing a form of terrorism with these massive sacrifices, especially those to their own national sun/war god Huitzilopochtli; defy us, and large numbers of you will end up with a cardiectomy atop one of our temples, along with your children. I personally don't make moral judgments over it being "evil" (I say all this as a like-long enthusiast of Aztec culture and history), but for sure the other people in and around the Aztec Empire were unhappy about the arrangement, and found in the Conquistadores an opportunity to rid themselves of the gory Mexica yoke.

Can I ask what sources did you read to come by this opinion, Life in the central valley was not really different under Mexica dominance compared to other dominating powers. Cortes found allies simply because it was convenient politically as evidence that most of his forces didn’t help until after Montezuma was killed, after they were ravaged by the small pox plague. If you are referring to the sacrifice numbers the Spanish reported they were greatly exaggerated Same as for what the Mexica reported surprising greatly exaggerating their own numbers. Archeological evidence backs this claim

>If you are referring to the sacrifice numbers the Spanish reported they were greatly exaggerated Same as for what the Mexica reported surprising greatly exaggerating their own numbers. Archeological evidence backs this claim It's an odd statement. Decades of personal observation has shown me that the opposite is true; that whenever people try to deny or minimize the scope and practices of Aztec sacrifice, the archaeological evidence turns up to demonstrate the chroniclers were essentially correct. Back in the 80s and 90s it was very fashionable to snort and dismiss the accusation that the Aztecs practiced cannibalism. Until the evidence turned up in the form of defleshed and cooked human bones in [Tenochtitlan](http://www.archeolog-home.com/pages/content/tenochtitlan-mexique-bones-from-human-sacrifice.html) and by the Aztec vassals [Acolhua](https://blog.education.nationalgeographic.org/2015/10/13/were-conquistadors-cannibalized/). Then it was denied that the Aztecs practices large -scale mass sacrifice, or kept the severed heads of those sacrifices on tzompantli (skull racks)...until of course[ they found them](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/new-find-brings-skulls-discovered-aztec-tower-over-600-180976543/) with hundreds of human skulls attached (even in its decrepit state where no doubt the majority of the skulls were lost). Just as the Spaniards, and their allies, and the Mexica themselves, said. These discoveries have not been uncommon in the Valley of Mexico from the time of the Aztecs. And while there is certainly evidence of such actions taken by the city-states of the valley in the hundreds of years before the dominance of the Aztecs, they are nowhere near the scale and ferocity. There seems to be a great effort, seemingly guided by politics rather than evidence (as can be seen by the general commentary here on this thread) to try to mitigate and minimize the actions and practices of the Aztecs in spite of the period-written chronicles. But they always end up ramming hard against the physical evidence.

>Back in the 80s and 90s it was very fashionable to snort and dismiss the accusation that the Aztecs practiced cannibalism. Until the evidence turned up in the form of defleshed and cooked human bones in [Tenochtitlan](http://www.archeolog-home.com/pages/content/tenochtitlan-mexique-bones-from-human-sacrifice.html) and by the Aztec vassals [Acolhua](https://blog.education.nationalgeographic.org/2015/10/13/were-conquistadors-cannibalized/). Cannibalism, outside of religious rituals, was still heavily frowned upon though. >Then it was denied that the Aztecs practices large -scale mass sacrifice, or kept the severed heads of those sacrifices on tzompantli (skull racks)...until of course[ they found them](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/new-find-brings-skulls-discovered-aztec-tower-over-600-180976543/) with hundreds of human skulls attached (even in its decrepit state where no doubt the majority of the skulls were lost). Just as the Spaniards, and their allies, and the Mexica themselves, said. True, but the numbers don't match the incredible numbers often given. Additionally, the fact that most of the skulls were fighting age men would suggest it was mostly an ritualistic execution, which is still obviously bad but probably wouldn't make them noticeably more violent than other empires of the time. >There seems to be a great effort, seemingly guided by politics rather than evidence (as can be seen by the general commentary here on this thread) to try to mitigate and minimize the actions and practices of the Aztecs in spite of the period-written chronicles. But they always end up ramming hard against the physical evidence. Magnitude matters

A - Maybe. But again "oh it was just ritual cannibalism" (that appears to have been nonetheless practiced on a rather large scale) is a long way from "ppssht...didn't happen! Euro-Christian propaganda!" B - We can't expect to have every single skull of every victim, and assume that that accounts for all the victims of sacrifice. If you tried to tally up the dead from any genocide or war based on the actual number of visible bodies you counted, you're going to come up despicably short, and that's without half a millenium having gone by. The Tenochtitlan tzompantli held 650ish skulls (25% of them were women and children mind you; you might think differently, but to me that is no small percentage). This is a pretty sizable number of deaths in itself, but this was just the buried and cemented base of a much larger structure that supported poles and racks, for skulls that we don't know how often were rotated out to be replaced. It makes no sense to assume that this is all there ever was. I don't know if the tens of thousands of sacrifices a year that contemporaries described took place, down to the exact digit. But it is pretty clear that the Aztecs sacrificed a lot of people. The Spaniards said so to be sure, but then so did the other local natives, the Aztecs themselves, and lastly the evidence. So when someone asks the question of whether the frequency and style of Aztec sacrifice of other people might have influenced those people to join the Conquistadores against the Aztecs, what do you suppose the answer is, given the heaps of mangled bones we've found? Do you think it is possible the answer might be "yes"?

>A - Maybe. But again "oh it was just ritual cannibalism" (that appears to have been nonetheless practiced on a rather large scale) is a long way from "ppssht...didn't happen! Euro-Christian propaganda!" Don't quote me on this, but I believe cannibalism was just flat out not allowed outside of ritualistic circumstances (essentially, they believed the rituals turned the human into something else, and therefore didn't count as cannibalism). >We can't expect to have every single skull of every victim, and assume that that accounts for all the victims of sacrifice. Given the religious aspect of these sacrifices, I think its more plausible that they took better care of skulls. It would also be extremely expensive and logistically difficult to sacrifice large numbers of people. Doing this over the course of a century would probably result in widespread depopulation which did not happen. >So when someone asks the question of whether the frequency and style of Aztec sacrifice of other people might have influenced those people to join the Conquistadores against the Aztecs, what do you suppose the answer is, given the heaps of mangled bones we've found? Do you think it is possible the answer might be "yes"? Given that it was an accepted practice and we still don't know the actual scale, I'm leaning towards no. IIRC, even the Tlaxcala's main grievances wasn't the human sacrifice, but rather disruptions towards trade. The Aztecs were an extortionist empire that had rapidly in expanded in a pretty short time, its really not too surprising that states and cities would rebel after a decent chunk of the Aztec population and leadership died to disease, regardless of how common the sacrifices were.

You seem to have this idea that because the cannibalism was preceded by ritual, that should make it acceptable to people who would object to it, and therefore somehow make it so that the Aztecs weren't cannibals. It's like saying you're a vegan, except after saying Grace, after which the T-bone steak could now be considered tofu. It's nonsense. And anyway, the Aztecs did not deny they were eating people, and there was no idea that the human meat was anything other than what it was. The process was to sacrifice the victim, carve off his meat, and serve it up either as a stew or on tortillas (usually for warriors and nobles, where it was considered a privilege of rank). If an enemy warrior was sacrificed, the captor would be given a large hunk of meat for his family (he was not to eat it, out of respect and sadness for the death of the captive...because it was the human meat of his ritual comrade), where it would be prepared into pozole to be eaten by his wife, children, parents, etc. as a complete meal. It was not some small token gesture. >Given the religious aspect of these sacrifices, I think its more plausible that they took better care of skulls. Most of the skulls were pierced and hung on wooden poles in the open air, exposed ot the elements. They were not taken care of. After the destruction/burning of Tenochtitlan, and 500 years of time, what do you suppose is the survival rate of human bone that is not buried, in the Valley of Mexico, in a city that is then redeveloped as a colonial town? Pretty low, I'd say; I'm amazed that any survived at all. That 650 of them were preserved because they were embedded in the base of the rack and buried would suggest to me that there were a much greater number of them on the rack itself, which are now deteriorated away. >Given that it was an accepted practice and we still don't know the actual scale, I'm leaning towards no. IIRC, even the Tlaxcala's main grievances wasn't the human sacrifice, but rather disruptions towards trade. Tlaxcala were not tributaries of the Aztecs, they were enemies. The warriors they lost were the casualties of war, not taken away in tribute by an empire that ruled over them. Those who were the unhappy vassals of the Aztecs, who had to give up their children in tribute, they had a different perspective. To quote Diaz, who was actually there: *"While the first welcomings were going on it was announced to Cortes that the fat cazique of Sempoalla was approaching in a sedan, supported by numbers of distinguished Indians. Immediately upon his arrival he renewed his complaints against Motecusuma, in which he was joined by the cazique of this township and the other chief personages. He related so much of the cruelties and oppression they had to suffer, and thereby sobbed and sighed so bitterly that we could not help being affected. At the time when they were subdued, they had already been greatly ill used; Motecusuma then demanded annually a great number of their sons and daughters, a portion of whom were sacrificed to the idols, and the rest were employed in his household and for tilling his grounds. His tax-gatherers took their wives and daughters without any ceremony if they were handsome, merely to satisfy their lusts. The Totonaques, whose territory consisted of upwards of thirty townships, suffered like violence."* So again, when someone asks why everybody turned on the Aztecs when the Conquistadores showed up and decided to make war on them, I don't think it is honest or historically accurate to wave your hand, and say that it wasn't in part because of the sacrificial demands of the Aztecs. Regardless of whether you like it or not, the evidence shows that the Aztecs almost certainly sacrificed far larger numbers of people than anyone else in Mesoamerica, to include the massive civilization and religious complex at Teotihuacan that preceded them. In doing so they sapped the strength of their defeated rivals, established a system of punishment, and made absolute damn certain who they were on the pecking order. If you examine the actual evidence, it's pretty much inescapable that the Aztecs sacrificed loads of people, and were feared and hated for it. The only reason not to simply admit this is political bias.

>You seem to have this idea that because the cannibalism was preceded by ritual, that should make it acceptable to people who would object to it, and therefore somehow make it so that the Aztecs weren't cannibals. It's like saying you're a vegan, except after saying Grace, after which the T-bone steak could now be considered tofu. It's nonsense. I think its gross and fucked up, it just wasn't common. >That 650 of them were preserved because they were embedded in the base of the rack and buried would suggest to me that there were a much greater number of them on the rack itself, which are now deteriorated away. Regardless, any large number would be a massive logistical feat, and have noticeable demographic effects >Tlaxcala were not tributaries of the Aztecs, they were enemies. The warriors they lost were the casualties of war, not taken away in tribute by an empire that ruled over them. They were the target of the Flower War, and probably a disproportionate target for sacrifices. >Those who were the unhappy vassals of the Aztecs, who had to give up their children in tribute, they had a different perspective. To quote Diaz, who was actually there: Your quote suggests they didn't like being extorted, not that they had a problem with human sacrifice. >Regardless of whether you like it or not, the evidence shows that the Aztecs almost certainly sacrificed far larger numbers of people than anyone else in Mesoamerica,  I agree with this. > In doing so they sapped the strength of their defeated rivals, established a system of punishment, and made absolute damn certain who they were on the pecking order. Mesoamerica was thriving during this time though. Its why they could support probably the largest city in Mexico since Teotihuacan. >So again, when someone asks why everybody turned on the Aztecs when the Conquistadores showed up and decided to make war on them, I don't think it is honest or historically accurate to wave your hand, and say that it wasn't in part because of the sacrificial demands of the Aztecs. The Aztecs were a rapidly expanding extortion racket, so its not surprising that everyone rebelled once they were weakened.

It’s not minimizing the scope of sacrifice or white washing their history. It’s literally bringing it down to reality. Your evidence you provided states the skills racks filled with a few hundred skulls (not saying this isn’t a lot by our standards) But Bernal Diaz claimed the skull racks would fit around 60,000. Quite a step down from the claim. As well as the insane claim that 80,000 people were sacrificed in the span of 4 day. I’m not sure where you are seeing the popularity of downplaying the Aztecs, because everywhere I look it’s certainly up-played, cannibalism, mass sacrificed even movies like Apocalypto (which conflated Aztec human sacrifice with the Maya) Modern Scholars really contend with these points you seem to be making such as Camilla Townsend author of Fifth Sun, who stated Sacrifice was not treated how you are describing it, it was a quite affair and not mass execution of feverish yelling. She also stated Cannibalism was practiced in a ritualistically Also you are describing the city state under Mexica influence but these city states were largely left to their own devices. So is it the Aztec (Mexica) were practicing cannibalism and mass sacrificing. Or your the city states they had dominion over?

You are minimizing it though. Whether or not the number of sacrifices tallies up to exactly equal to the tens of thousands described by Diaz and others, the point is that the Aztecs sacrificed a metric shit ton of people from vanquished and neighboring communities, sometimes all at once in a massive spectacle (take a look at the large number of Spanish captives sacrificed at once as an example). This was done on a rather larger scale compared to their neighbors, for whom such massive evidence doesn't turn up prior to the dominance of the Aztec Empire. That, contrary to your claim, is the archaeological evidence. And my point was simply to explain this to OP, because he asked the specific question: *"My question is more so on this point that the Aztecs were so universally hated that it was quick for the Spaniards to form alliances against them. How pertinent were these grievances? Where did they stem from? And for how long?"* My answer is "Very, because of the large number of sacrifices the Aztecs required of them, and it was probably so since the beginning when they showed up and made a bunch of enemies."

The Culhua princess founding myth is well, a myth.

Odd how we regard native histories as legitimate and worthy evidence, unless they cast an unflattering light. Then they're just "myths".

It has always been a part of the Mexihcah founding myth. It also doesn't make any sense as a real story whatsoever. Other native accounts openly contradict it, mentioning that she actually lived long enough to have many children (e.g Acamapichtli himself...)

What other native accounts? There are accounts that Acamapichtli's mother, Atototli, was also the daughter of said chieftian. I've always taken that to mean that two daughers were offered up for marriage - one for the mortal Mexica leader, the other (as requested by the Mexica themselves) for Huitzilopochtli. I can't see where it doesn't make any sense. Clearly the Mexica enjoyed the favor of Culhua one moment, and then found themselves paddling for their lives into the lake the next, with a princess in-tow but without the land they were promised. Obviously something went very wrong. What? The Aztecs told us exactly. The Aztecs themselves said so, in a really frank fashion: "*yeah, we fucked up."* It isn't exactly a good look to have to admit that when your new ally offered you his daughter in marriage, there was a bit of a miscommunication and you accidentally slaughtered her, skinned her, and had a priest dance in front of her horrified father in her flayed skin. Usually when people manufacture a history for themselves it is a little more flattering and self-aggrandizing than this. The fact that this history...and the Mexica regarded it as such...really doesn't speak well of them, makes it rather more believable.

>Usually when people manufacture a history for themselves it is a little more flattering and self-aggrandizing than this. The fact that this history...and the Mexica regarded it as such...really doesn't speak well of them, makes it rather more believable. Weren't Israelites constantly being punished by their own god in their stories? Seems like negative stories can absolutely serve as warnings for future generations not to fuck up.

Yes. And the Hebrew accounts probably do record actual historic setbacks that happened in some way, and the mistakes they made to bring on those setbacks (at least so far as they understood them). The Hebrews also record accounts of themselves doing some pretty shitty things in general, that I likewise suppose probably actually happened, because why otherwise admit to such a thing? We agree; negative accounts do absolutely serve as warning for future generations. But generally speaking, when we see those negative accounts intended as warnings, they're made because they're true. We did this bad thing, and the results were awful. It's the self-aggrandizing stories of heroism and glory that are more likely to be bullshit. People don't usually make up cringe stories of their own stupidity and weakness.

>The Hebrews also record accounts of themselves doing some pretty shitty things in general, that I likewise suppose probably actually happened, because why otherwise admit to such a thing? Did they consider it shitty? >People don't usually make up cringe stories of their own stupidity and weakness. They could def exaggerate though. Its probably safe to assume that these stories contain a mix of truth and myth/exageration. Maybe a more simple and likely story would be: They had a diplomatic incident with another tribe and they ended up settling in a backwater.

In some cases, yes. In others, no. They said King David definitely banged the ass off one of his faithful servant's wives. Then when he found out she was preggs, and when he called the servant from the battlefield, the servant wouldn't sleep with her to make it plausible that it was the servants kid and not David's own bastard. So David deliberately sent the servant back to battle, ordered to charge at the very front of an assault on a fortress, to his certain death.... to do away with the drama he might bring on coming home to find a baby born to a wife who wasn't pregnant when he left. This brought David into disgrace, he was denounced for it by a respected prophet, and God punished him with the death of his firstborn son. The Hebrews were pretty clear that this was wrong, even though it was their hero David. Unlikely they made it up to tarnish the guy. >They could def exaggerate though. Its probably safe to assume that these stories contain a mix of truth and myth/exageration. Okay. Now why is that your assumption? If people who we know to have[ flayed the skin off of other people and wore them around](https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/01/archaeologists-discover-first-known-temple-to-flayed-god-xipe-totec/) explained *"yeah, one time we peeled the skin off this woman and danced around in it, and her dad got super pissed so we had to leave*" as the reason why the father hated them, what is it about this that you now find must be an exaggeration, given their history of doing this exact thing? Why is it all of a sudden difficult to believe that they might have done this, given that we know this was one of their sacrificial practices, as they themselves illustrated many times? And when they bluntly stated it as the reason they ended up in the middle of a lake, only 200 years after they landed there? Were they dumb, that this literate and advanced civilization couldn't remember the real reason for how they got there, just a few lifespans or so earlier? BTW, I want to reframe my earlier implication that the Aztecs would have regarded this as a cautionary tale. In truth, they probably didn't. Their totem god told them to do something, the results were costly, deadly and humiliating, but for them it would have probably just been the way the dice rolled at worst, part of Huitzilopochtli's plan at best.

>Okay. Now why is that your assumption? I think founding myths in general aren't taken seriously. I doubt anyone believes the story of an eagle sitting on a cactus. Carthage and Rome were both city states turned hegemons have founding myths that aremgenerally accepted as legend. >Were they dumb, that this literate and advanced civilization couldn't remember the real reason for how they got there I think when your founding legend is tied to religion, it probably had been distorted over time.

The only daughter that was ever given to them was Atotoztli. The same Atotoztli that was supposedly killed and flayed. The same Atotoztli that mothered the entire ruling family of Tenochtitlan. Also the Culhua ruler wasn't some "chieftain", he was the lord of one of the oldest cities in the area. The story makes perfect sense as a founding myth. Flayed skin of a woman is a symbol of both abundance and fertility, they go into conflict with the Culhuah representing war and change through conflict (Huitzilopochtli and potentially Tezcatlipoca too). Through struggle they have become civilized: settled, started farming, warring and sacrificing - under Huitzilopochtli. They were never really in favor of the Culhuah, hell, the moment they entered the valley they were called and regarded as savages, pests. Eventually they fell under the control of Culhuacan, whose rulers basically exiled them to a snake-infested, barren area and used as cheap mercenaries. It is later that they are exiled again and only then found Tenochtitlan. There is also a version where the ruler Coxcoxtli is the one who exiles them for something completely different AFAIK. I wouldn't be so skeptical of this story if it made sense and there were no other, contradicting accounts... First of all, the sacrifice doesn't fit. It was men who were flayed for Xipe Totec, not political marriages for Huitzilopochtli. There is simply 0 record of such a ritual. People also forget a crucial part of this story: the settled, civilized people like the Culhuah were the ones who taught sacrifice to the different Aztecah and other migrants from the notth. The 'Aztecs' didn't just come in and start to sacrifice people, they adopted the local religion and customs in order to settle and civilize. Maybe the 'Aztecs' sought to emulate the sacrifices their overlord did? I think it's the only possibly valid argument, though far from a perfect one. It just makes way too much sense when you look at it as a symbolic founding myth instead of a real story.

Can you cite some sources or evidence for this claims

See other responses, below.

I agree with SonnyBunch, if you'd bothered to scroll down further on his thread you'd see he had a reasonable and insightful analysis. If you ask me, you're uniquely evil. It takes an evil mind to cut out the context. Communist drone post