Posted on 08/23/2006 3:46:48 PM PDT by WmShirerAdmirer
CALPULALPAN, Mexico (Reuters) - Skeletons found at an unearthed site in Mexico show Aztecs captured, ritually sacrificed and partially ate several hundred people traveling with invading Spanish forces in 1520.
Skulls and bones from the Tecuaque archaeological site near Mexico City show about 550 victims had their hearts ripped out by Aztec priests in ritual offerings, and were dismembered or had their bones boiled or scraped clean, experts say.
The findings support accounts of Aztecs capturing and killing a caravan of Spanish conquistadors and local men, women and children traveling with them in revenge for the murder of Cacamatzin, king of the Aztec empire's No. 2 city of Texcoco.
Experts say the discovery proves some Aztecs did resist the conquistadors, led by explorer Hernan Cortes, before the Spaniards attacked the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City.
History books say many indigenous Mexicans welcomed the white-skinned horsemen in the belief they were returning gods but turned against the Spaniards once they tried to take over the Aztec seat of power in a conflict that ended in 1521.
"This is the first place that has so much evidence there was resistance to the conquest," said archaeologist Enrique Martinez, director of the dig at Calpulalpan in Tlaxcala state, near Texcoco.
"It shows it wasn't all submission. There was a fight."
The caravan was apparently captured because it was made up mostly of the mulatto, mestizo, Maya Indian and Caribbean men and women given to the Spanish as carriers and cooks when they landed in Mexico in 1519, and so was moving slowly.
The prisoners were kept in cages for months while Aztec priests selected a few each day at dawn, held them down on a sacrificial slab, cut out their hearts and offered them up to various Aztec gods.
Some may have been given hallucinogenic mushrooms or pulque -- an alcoholic milky drink made from fermented cactus juice -- to numb them to what was about to happen.
TEETH MARKS
"It was a continuous sacrifice over six months. While the prisoners were listening to their companions being sacrificed, the next ones were being selected," Martinez said, standing in his lab amid boxes of bones, some of young children.
"You can only imagine what it was like for the last ones, who were left six months before being chosen, their anguish."
The priests and town elders, who performed the rituals on the steps of temples cut off by a perimeter wall, sometimes ate their victims' raw and bloody hearts or cooked flesh from their arms and legs once it dropped off the boiling bones.
Knife cuts and even teeth marks on the bones show which ones had meat stripped off to be eaten, Martinez said.
Aztec warriors whitened the bones with lime and carried them as amulets. Some were used as ornaments in homes.
In Aztec times, the site was called Zultepec, a town of white-stucco temples and homes where some 5,000 people grew maize and beans and produced pulque to sell to traders.
Priests had to be brought in for the ritual killings because human sacrifices had never taken place there, Martinez said.
On hearing of the massacre, Cortes renamed the town Tecuaque -- meaning "where people were eaten" in the indigenous Nahuatl language -- and sent an army to wipe out its people.
When they heard the Spanish were coming, the Zultepec Aztecs threw their victims' possessions down wells, unwittingly preserving buttons and jewelry for the archaeologists.
The team began work in 1990 and is only now finishing its investigation. It found remains of domestic animals brought from Spain, like goats and pigs.
"They hid all the evidence," said Martinez. "Thanks to that act, we have been allowed to discover a chapter we were unaware of in the conquest of Mexico."
Don't deny it at all, so long as the Protestants acknowledge their vastly more numerous witch killings, and the Orthodox acknowledge their participation in barbarously tyrannical regimes (The Czars, Vlad the Impaler), and their allowing the Muslims to conquer the holy land. Not to move this interesting thread to the 'Smokey Backroom'.
These scientists had better get on the PC bandwagon, quick, and talk about this in the right way. If they don't, they'll lose their money and eventually their jobs.
I wonder if this story will be "fit to print" in the NY Times.
Amen.
Equal!? What are you talking about? Third world primitive cultures are ever so much more noble, high minded and wise than any others. They live in harmony with our mother the earth. They feel her pulse and respond with humble adoration. If we decadent westerners would only turn an attentive ear to the wisdom....of ...
...that's as much sarcasm as I can spew out in one sitting.
I couldn't agree more about Allan Eckert. I thought THE FRONTIERSMEN was his best work but I also greatly enjoyed WILDERNESS EMPIRE, THE CONQUERORS, THE WILDERNESS WAR, GATEWAY TO EMPIRE, TWILIGHT OF EMPIRE, and THAT DARK AND BLOODY RIVER. Eckert must be ancient by now. Do you happen to know if he is still writing? I also enjoyed his book about Tecumseh. I believe it was called A SORROW IN OUR HEARTS. I spent the summer of 1990 playing couch potato lost in his great books.
"...unless they get a real Mikey Moore-size porker on the spit..."
He could feed a small African or Aztec village for a week, IMO. LOL.
not in all cases....in some instances they ate the liver to show superiority...
It was a common Aztec practice to sacrifice living humans and to eat their flesh as a kind of sacrament. I guess it takes all kinds.
"It shows it wasn't all submission. There was a fight."
Oh, goody for the Aztecs! And there was a big dinner later.
Read emall. Simon Kenton became one of my heros.
LOL!
They'd all be sitting around, groaning, saying "I can't believe I ate the whole thing, and hey, that Bush-man sucks, don't he?"
""They'd all be sitting around, groaning, saying "I can't believe I ate the whole thing, and hey, that Bush-man sucks, don't he?""
LOLOLOL!
LOL I'm an atheist so no argument from me.
Don't forget the atheists. Those adherants of Materialism in Russia, China, Cambodia, Viet Nam, and North Korea have out done all the others in the game of killing.
The atheists are no different than religionists. The fundamental proposition of their core belief is unprovable. You can no more prove the existence of God than you can prove his non existence. It's a belief.
Am I the only one who gets hungry when cannibalism is talked about (not seen)? :o)
I'm quite curious. This is old news. Why is it coming out now, again? "look down the well, you'll find a Republican".. and we can do it again?" I mean, *really*... Is there a big event being planned at the site?
Please pass the liver.
I'm sure they were abused as children.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.