The Aztecs Essay Research Paper When the free essay sample

The Aztecs Essay, Research Paper When the Spaniards under Hernan Cortez gazed upon the Aztec capital of Tenochtitl? N in Mexico in 1519, the scene before them amazed them. There, in the center of a broad lake was a shimmering metropolis with bright white walls of huge edifices sitting on an island in the center of a big lake with causeways linked to it. The amazement of those first Spanish visitants shortly turned to horror when they saw the huge graduated table of ritual forfeits made by the Aztecs. Even today, it is difficult to grok the extent or principle for this ritual forfeit. It is estimated that the Aztec royalty sacrificed about 20,000 people per twelvemonth. Prisoners were taken to the top of pyramids where, upon a ritual level rock tabular array, they had their thoraxs cut upon and their Black Marias ripped out. Then the organic structures of the victims were tossed down the stairss of the pyramids. We will write a custom essay sample on The Aztecs Essay Research Paper When the or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page The scene to both the Spaniards of that clip and to us today is genuinely ghastly. But it was non mere thirst for blood that motivated the Aztecs to prosecute in this mass ritual forfeit. Critical to understanding the motive behind the ritual forfeits is the construct of # 8221 ; tonalli, # 8221 ; which means: # 8220 ; inspiring spirit. # 8221 ; The tonalli in worlds was believed to be located in the blood, which concentrates in the bosom when one becomes frightened. This explains the Gods # 8217 ; hungriness for the bosom. Without this forfeit, all gesture Michigans, even the motion of the Sun. So when the Aztecs made their forfeits, every bit far as they were concerned, they were maintaining the Sun from holding in its orbit. Particularly thirsty for blood was the war God, Huitzilopochtli. On the other manus, Quetzalcoatl was a kinder, gentler God. Quetzalcoatl merely demanded the forfeit of animate beings such as serpents and butterflies. The victims of these ritual slaughters were normally warriors captured by the Aztecs in conflicts or testimonials from vassal provinces in the signifier of worlds offered up for forfeit. This is why the Aztecs neer to the full conquered many of the environing provinces. They needed a steady supply of ritual forfeit victims. If they used their ain people for forfeit so it could do an rebellion. There was another ground for these ritual forfeits # 8212 ; cannibalism. After the Black Marias were removed and the organic structures tossed down the temple stairss, the limbs were removed and subsequently cooked. As repugnant as cannibalism is to us today, back so to the Aztecs, cooked human organic structures were looked upon as great daintinesss which explains why merely Aztec royalty, non the common people, were allowed to prosecute in cannibalism. The favourite parts for the Aztecs to crunch on were the custodies and thighs. The Aztec emperor, Moctezuma, was reported to hold been partial to cooked thighs served with tomatoes and chili Piper nigrum sauce. This scene might turn our tummies but it must besides be remembered that the Aztecs had no domestic farm animal so the organic structure leftovers ( the Black Marias given to the Gods were the chief class ) from the ritual forfeits was a manner for the Aztec royalty to obtain proteins and fats. Therefore in the Aztecs we can see a mingling of faith and nutriment which resulted in human forfeit. The Aztecs: Ambivalence and Beauty The Aztecs were besides known as the Tenocha or the Mexica and the name Mexico comes from this. They were the dominant peoples of Central America at the clip of the Spanish conquering in the early 1500s. Read The Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Diaz for an perfectly gripping history of this by a conquistador who was at that place. The centre of Aztec civilization was the metropolis of Tenochtitl? n [ Teh-noche-TEE-tlahn- place of the bristly pear cactus ] in the Valley of Mexico. This was on the location of the present twenty-four hours site of Mexico City. It is estimated that at the clip of the Spanish conquering Tenochtitl? N had in the part of 200,000-300,000 people and it was seemingly a beautiful sight. It would hold been larger than any European metropolis of the clip. It contained more than forty finely adorned pyramids, big residential countries, and six major canals which acted as conveyance paths along which the dwellers traveled by canoes. Family life was of import to the Aztecs. When babes were born, a accoucheuse assisted the bringing. Midwifes were extremely regarded professionals. As Aztec adult females married when they were every bit immature as 15 the first birth was frequently to a adolescent miss of a immature age. The accoucheuse would cut the umbilical cord, wash the babe, and so offer a supplication to Chalchiuhtlicue [ Jade-Her-Skirt ] . Baby male childs were told that life was hard and full of enduring and that they were likely to decease in conflict or as forfeits. The umbilical cord of male child was given to warriors to be buried on the battlegrounds. Male childs were educated at place by their male parents until they were approximately ten when they started school. The umbilical cord of a miss was buried following to the fireplace. The domestic function was seen as the most of import portion of a adult female # 8217 ; s life. The adult females by and large stayed within the place and cooked and mad e vesture. When girl babes were born the helping accoucheuse told them that they were to the house as the bosom was to the organic structure. Girls stayed in the place with their female parents and began their # 8220 ; developing # 8221 ; when they were four. By the age of 12 they were accomplished weavers. The adult females dressed in wraparound skirts and sleeveless blouses. Womans frequently colored their faces in a pale xanthous ocher pulverization to heighten their attraction. A adult male could hold one chief married woman but a figure of secondary married womans. It was of import to Aztec adult females, like adult females everyplace, to be thought to be beautiful. Mature, married Aztec adult females typically wore their hair in two horn-like tussocks while younger adult females frequently wore it straight and long sometimes down to the waist. Like the Egyptians cleanliness was valued as was a pleasant aroma. Womans used to have on Garlands of pleasant smelling flowers around their cervixs. Aztec adult females were non to set ruddy on their oral cavities and were to maintain clean and wash if they wanted their hubbies to go on to love them. Most Aztec adult females did non wear makeups but some adult females accompanied warriors and these wore a xanthous ocher and died their dentitions red. Aztec adult females decorated themselves with jewellery including shell, clay, cherished metals, and plumes. The ideal Aztec adult female was non excessively thin and immature adult females were told non to hold early babes because of what it would make to their figures! Aztec adult females were supposed to be modest in their sexual behavior though there were cocottes within the civilization. Female criminal conversation was punishable by decease. The Aztecs loved flowers and # 8216 ; Flowers-and-song # 8217 ; was their name for poesy, art and symbolism. Some of their poesy is emotionally really expressive and one of their preoccupations was how ephemeral and temporary life is-perhaps merely like a dream or a flower that blossoms to melt. Judging by facets of their art the Aztecs were, as many civilizations have been, really ambivalent in their positions of adult females. There is a ten-foot diameter round sculpture from the temple of Huitzilopochtli in Tenochtitlan that illustrates this. It depicts the organic structure of a bare adult female ( Coyolxauhqui ) that has been dismembered. This was the sister of Huitzilopochtli who, with her boies, planned to kill him when he was born. He emerged from the uterus of his female parent full sized and armed for war. He chased away his nephews and decapitated his sister. This mythic narrative diagrammatically represents sibling competition, warnings to the enemies of the Aztecs what will go on to them, and the attractive and scaring power of adult females. Coaticlue is the name of the serpent-skirted female parent of the war-god. A statue shows her with duplicate rattler caputs and a necklace of human custodies and Black Marias. She could transform herself into a beautiful adult female that would so take work forces to their deceases. Many goddesses of ancient people were associated with beauty, gender and war. Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, took the God of war as her lover. Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess of love and gender, was besides really warlike. This association reveals a psychological truth that is that the attraction of female beauty is frequently connected with, but does non do, struggle between work forces. This is besides true in much of the carnal universe where there is struggle between male animate beings over sexual entree to females. [ Beauty, Sex, and War ] The Aztecs were great lovers of poesy, flowers, and cocoa which was a favourite drink of the Aztec aristocracy. It was made by drying chocolate tree beans, roasting them over a fire, thumping them to a paste and blending them with H2O. Other spices including chili, sweet pepper and vanilla were frequently added to it. It was thought to hold both medicative belongingss and to be an aphrodisiac. There was a celebrated assemblage of Aztec wise work forces and poets about 1490 when they met to discourse the true significance of poesy. It took topographic point at the house of Godhead Tecayehuatzin, prince of Huexotzinco. The poets and wise work forces put on mats and were served baccy and frothing mugs of cocoa by retainers while they discussed the true significance of flowers-and-song which is what the Aztecs called poesy. One Aztec metaphor for blood can be translated as # 8216 ; flower # 8217 ; . Dead warriors spilled their blood to feed the Gods and became eagle work forces who flew into the Sun Xipe Totec, the God of spring. Spring was greeted by giving imitators of Xipe Totec. These sacrificial victims would be skinned and the tegument so worn by the believers. This seemingly repeated the rhythm of the chaff of maize about to mature and the Earth being rhenium newed with flora. Through what we call their myths it is possible to see how these people tried to cover with their ambivalent feelings about both the beauty and premium of their environment and its possible to bring mayhem and cause injury. We find their pattern of human forfeit rather hideous yet it is rather possible to see how these myths and ritualized patterns may hold originated as a consequence of the impact on the heads of the peoples being subjected to both the violent forces of nature-jaguars, hurricanes, fiery rain ( perchance vents ) , inundations, temblors and drouth every bit good as the beauty and premium of nature. One position of ritual forfeit is that it is a manner of adhering tenseness and struggle within a community so that the choler within a community is displaced onto the sacrificial victims thereby halting the community from rupturing itself apart. Drought and other natural catastrophes could convey dearth. The Gods gave their blood to the universe. In order to maintain the universe traveling and the spring rains falling adult male had to give blood back. From the point of position of modern psychological science an apprehension of how what we call trauma and station traumatic emphasis upset leads to interesting guesss on some of the more hideous facets of Mesoamerican ritual patterns. There would hold been important morbidity among the early dwellers of this part due to human weakness in the face of the powerful and destructive forces of nature such as temblors, vents, drouth, inundations, and hurricanes. Awful marauders like the panther, cougar, or toxicant serpents would besides hold taken a important toll. These myths and faith seem to map as efforts to get the hang and command this anxiousness and yet, at the same clip, are a reenactment and repeat of the injury. Aztec/Christian analogues or opposite parallels The Aztecs carved the bosom out of an alive human war prisoner, dedicated his bosom # 8217 ; s blood to the Sun, and ate his organic structure in order to honour their Gods and to continue the universe ; Christians beheld their man-god nailed alive to a cross, and Ate and imbibe his organic structure and blood in a symbolic ceremonial in order to salvage themselves. At the temples of both faiths one could meet black clad priests executing cryptic rites ; the Aztecs pinned the skulls of their victims onto racks outside their temples ; the Spanish church featured auto-da-fe # 8217 ; s staged by the Inquisition in which legion misbelievers would be burned alive in wicker baskets in the town square. ] The victim was led to the communion table at the top of the pyramid, stretched across a rock by three priests [ look into figure, think 4 held and 5th ripped out, would double 4 central points plus Sun as centre of Aztec wheel ] who held his limbs, while a 4th ripped out the populating bosom, keeping it up so that the spraying blood might splatter about # 8211 ; it was a definite award to be sprayed with the blood, one that the priests reserved for themselves and sing very important persons. Calciferol: therefore human forfeit was a portion of many Native American civilizations on both continents, for many 1000s of old ages. The Aztecs had come to keep it as a day-to-day necessity to prolong the Sun in its class. They levied human testimonial from their liege states # 8211 ; one of Cortez # 8217 ; first mainland experiences was to witness such a demand on the coastal cempoallans. Some provinces, like the tlaxcala, the Aztec refused to suppress # 8211 ; go forthing it independent so that they might war against it. In consequence the Aztecs were reaping worlds within and without their boundary lines in their ardor for maintaining the wheels of the existence good greased. For particular occasions # 8211 ; such as the dedication of the great pyramid of Huitzilopochtli in our twelvemonth 1486 # 8211 ; 10s of 1000s of victims, harvested and kept captive for old ages # 8211 ; were offered up, and their lines extended for stat mis rearward from the centre of forfeit. The p yramids glistened black with blood # 8211 ; a mark of great power and energy for that is how the Sun God drank # 8211 ; and great hills of skulls grew up. In Tenochtitl? n the extra organic structures were fed to the animate beings in the menagerie. Although this was a normative experience in Aztec civilization # 8211 ; one the Aztecs felt comfy with as they might state in Marin County, it seems clear that their neighbours were experiencing oppressed and threatened. One of the pretenses of Cortez was that of a liberator. Slide # 8211 ; after the forfeit # 8211 ; a victim thrown down the stairss of the pyramid. The organic structures of the excardiated victims were flung down the stairss of the pyramid, possibly as a unsmooth and ready signifier of tenderising the meat. The bole and limbs would be severed, and the stamp parts, the thighs and the custodies reserved for ritual banqueting. Moctezuma was said to be partial to the thighs of immature work forces, served with a nice tomato and chili Piper nigrum sauce. Prescott captures the European sense of horror # 8220 ; This was non the harsh meal of ravenous man-eaters, but a feast pullulating with delightful drinks and delicate commissariats, prepared with art, and attended by both sexes, who, as we shall see afterlife, conducted themselves with all the decorousness of civilised life. Surely, neer were refinement and the extreme of brutality brought so closely in contact with each other! # 8221 ; reader Ritual forfeit and cannibalism: pros and cons Indeed, the Aztecs don # 8217 ; t seem so bad if you put their wonts next to those of the Spanish Inquisition. At least the Aztec sacrificed their victims to their Gods and into heaven ; the Inquisition burned its victims and consigned them to hell. And modern authors stress the centrality, the necessity, of human forfeit in Aztec society. If you believe what they did, that the Sun needed a day-to-day ration of human blood, so worlds had to be sacrificed to the Sun. It was a tough occupation, in other words, but person had to make it. The victims, some say, were good cared for and honored before their deceases. And they were non persons in our modern western sense # 8211 ; they were honored themselves to be chosen, to make their spot, as it were, to maintain the Sun traveling for the remainder of humanity. Another principle is that human forfeit # 8211 ; largely, but non ever, of immature males captured in war, was a cultural device to extinguish excess males from the population. The 1s botchy plenty in war got caught, the more cagey 1s survived to reproduce # 8211 ; so instead than contending bloody and deathly wars with an overkill factor, the Mexicans were ordaining a comparatively humane and structured process in their captive reaping warfare. But eating their victims afterwards? Even though this excessively is a clip honored ritual, widely testified to in the Americas, Many now suspect that studies of cannibalism in the Americas are greatly overdone and the consequences of Europeans spooking themselves with their ain horror narratives. But with the Aztecs, with so much fume, there likely is some fire. Prescott # 8217 ; s sense of horror continues to impact our present position. One can merely state # 8211 ; yes, in certain societies, one can be civilized and eat one # 8217 ; s neighbor excessively. How to grok this mentality? Partaking of the flesh of the victim, one partakes of the victim # 8217 ; s indispensable nature, does him or her award, while honouring the Gods. The banquet is therefore a echt rite of regard and Communion. The Christian mass itself is a re-enactment of such a banquet # 8211 ; merely in the mass it is the flesh and blood of the God that is eaten # 8211 ; a chance that might hold horrified the Aztecs. One historian even suggested that the meat of the sacrificial victims provided a important beginning of protein in a society where the largest signifier of carnal farm animal was the poulet. Were the Aztecs merely endeavoring for a balanced diet? Whatever the accounts, it was this last pattern that most horrified the Spaniards and led them to reason that the Aztecs were beyond the picket of humanity, unless they could be saved by another faith. Fear, ardor, and greed were all portion of the coming brush between Cortez and Moctezuma. Sacrifice to Huitzilopochtli During the Sun God forfeit ceremonial, a priest carved out the individual # 8217 ; s bosom with an obsidian blade knife. At this clip in the individual was still alive and witting. The priest would so take the bosom from the individual # 8217 ; s thorax. During this ceremonial, the individual being sacrificed seldom uttered a word. The sacrificed individual was so thrown down the side of the temple, and after making the underside, the sacrificed individual # 8217 ; s weaponries and legs were severed. These appendages were so cooked in a clay oven, and served as a stamp daintiness. In eating their victims, or partaking in them, the Aztecs believed that they were honouring them, every bit good as honouring the Sun God. The rite of the bosom being cut out of the forfeit victim was to honour merely the Sun God. Other Sacrificial Ceremonies The Aztec besides preformed other sacrificial ceremonials. During the ceremonial by and large preformed in respect to Wipe Tote, the forfeit was preformed by hiting the victim with pointers. In this case, beads of blood falling from victims represented life giving rain. In award of the Aztec fire God, the forfeit was made by covering the victim with hashish, and so puting them into fire. In specific ceremonials throughout the Aztec twelvemonth, people who were traveling to be sacrificed frequently dressed up as the God to which they would be sacrificed. The sacrificial victims frequently felt honored to be sacrificed, and society held these people up as model and honest.