In college, I got into a debate at the dining hall with another student. I don’t remember what started the debate, and I’m sure it was quite “free-wheeling”, covering many topics. I was already stridently pro-Capitalist and I had been reading Ayn Rand for several years by that point. During the debate, I mentioned the fact that the Aztecs has practiced human sacrifice. My “liberal” debating opponent said he didn’t believe this happened. I was so shocked by his denial of this historical fact that I think I discontinued the debate soon after. This occurred around 1995.
I have recently discovered that there were many in the academic community that did deny that the Aztecs ever engaged in ritual murder. They said such evidence came from accounts by Spanish conquerors. They claimed that the Spaniards had reason to lie, because it justified their settling of Mexico, Central America, and South America.
Leftists and academics operated under the assumption that primitive cultures were largely peaceful and non-violent. This attitude probably has its origins in Rousseau and Karl Marx. (Marx and Engels believed in a prehistoric “golden age” of primitive communism. Warfare for Marx/Engels was a byproduct of “capitalistic exploitation”.)
Unfortunately for them, the archeological facts are increasingly painting a different, violent, picture of pre-Columbian America. Violence seems to have been common throughout North and South America, long before the white man arrived.
Aztec and Mayan Ritual Murder-Cannibalism
“When the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés and his men arrived in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán in 1521, they described witnessing a grisly ceremony. Aztec priests, using razor-sharp obsidian blades, sliced open the chests of sacrificial victims and offered their still-beating hearts to the gods. They then tossed the victims’ lifeless bodies down the steps of the towering Templo Mayor…
… Reading these accounts hundreds of years later, many historians dismissed the 16th-century reports as wildly exaggerated propaganda meant to justify the murder of Aztec emperor Moctezuma, the ruthless destruction of Tenochtitlán and the enslavement of its people. But in 2015 and 2018, archeologists working at the Templo Mayor excavation site in Mexico City discovered proof of widespread human sacrifice among the Aztecs—none other than the very skull towers and skull racks that conquistadors had described in their accounts.” https://www.history.com/news/aztec-human-sacrifice-religion
“Children were said to be frequent victims, in part because they were considered pure and unspoiled…. ‘It was considered a good omen if they cried a lot at the time of sacrifice,’ which was probably done by slitting their throats, Roman Berrelleza said.” https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-jan-23-adfg-sacrifice23-story.html
“The Maya, whose culture peaked farther east about 400 years before the Aztecs founded Mexico City in 1325, had a similar taste for sacrifice, Harvard University anthropologist David Stuart wrote in a 2003 article.” https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-jan-23-adfg-sacrifice23-story.html
“The dig turned up other clues to support descriptions of sacrifices in the Magliabecchi codex, a pictorial account painted between 1600 and 1650 that includes human body parts stuffed into cooking dishes, and people sitting around eating, as the god of death looks on.
‘We have found cooking dishes just like that,’ said archeologist Luis Manuel Gamboa.” https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-jan-23-adfg-sacrifice23-story.html
Mass-torture And Murder At Sacred Ridge Colorado Around 800 A.D.
“The bones that Osterholtz saw showed evidence of broken ankles, used to hobble the victims, beatings of the soles of the feet that were so severe the bone peeled away, and crushing and scraping to the top of the feet.” https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/archeologists-find-evidence-torture-1200-year-old-massacre-180951922/
“More than a massacre, the scene at Sacred Ridge betrayed evidence of at least 33 people, men and women alike, having been not only butchered and burned, but, according to new research — also tortured.” http://westerndigs.org/evidence-of-hobbling-torture-discovered-at-ancient-massacre-site-in-colorado/
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Anasazi Mass Murder, Scalping, and Cannibalism In The 13th Century
“By 1993, Kuckelman’s crew had concluded that they were excavating the site of a major massacre. Though they dug only 5 percent of the pueblo, they identified the remains of at least 41 individuals, all of whom probably died violently. ‘Evidently,’ Kuckelman told me, ‘the massacre ended the occupation of Castle Rock.’
More recently, the excavators at Castle Rock recognized that some of the dead had been cannibalized. They also found evidence of scalping, decapitation and ‘face removing’—a practice that may have turned the victim’s head into a deboned portable trophy.” https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/riddles-of-the-anasazi-85274508/
Evidence of wide-spread cannibalism
“Suspicions of Anasazi cannibalism were first raised in the late 19th century, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that a handful of physical anthropologists, including Christy Turner of Arizona State University, really pushed the argument. Turner’s 1999 book, Man Corn, documents evidence of 76 different cases of prehistoric cannibalism in the Southwest that he uncovered during more than 30 years of research. Turner developed six criteria for detecting cannibalism from bones: the breaking of long bones to get at marrow, cut marks on bones made by stone knives, the burning of bones, ‘anvil abrasions’ resulting from placing a bone on a rock and pounding it with another rock, the pulverizing of vertebrae, and ‘pot polishing’—a sheen left on bones when they are boiled for a long time in a clay vessel. To strengthen his argument, Turner refuses to attribute the damage on a given set of bones to cannibalism unless all six criteria are met.” https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/riddles-of-the-anasazi-85274508/
Evidence of Human Remains In Human Feces Increases Probability of Anasazi Cannibalism
“Predictably, Turner’s claims aroused controversy. Many of today’s Pueblo Indians were deeply offended by the allegations, as were a number of Anglo archaeologists and anthropologists who saw the assertions as exaggerated and part of a pattern of condescension toward Native Americans…. Kurt Dongoske, an Anglo archaeologist who works for the Hopi, told me in 1994, ‘As far as I’m concerned, you can’t prove cannibalism until you actually find human remains in human coprolite [fossilized excrement].’” https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/riddles-of-the-anasazi-85274508/
“A few years later, University of Colorado biochemist Richard Marlar and his team did just that. At an Anasazi site in southwestern Colorado called CowboyWash, excavators found three pit houses—semi-subterranean dwellings—whose floors were littered with the disarticulated skeletons of seven victims. The bones seemed to bear most of Christy Turner’s hallmarks of cannibalism. The team also found coprolite in one of the pit houses. In a study published in Nature in 2000, Marlar and his colleagues reported the presence in the coprolite of a human protein called myoglobin, which occurs only in human muscle tissue. Its presence could have resulted only from the consumption of human flesh.”
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/riddles-of-the-anasazi-85274508/
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Massacre of Men, Women, and Children In Southeast Utah 2,000 Years Ago
“Nearly a hundred skeletons buried in a cave in southeast Utah offer grisly evidence that ancient Americans waged war on each other as much as 2,000 years ago, according to new research.
Dozens of bodies, dating from the first century CE, bear clear signs of hand-to-hand combat: skulls crushed as if by cudgels; limbs broken at the time of death; and, most damning, weapons still lodged in the back, breast and pelvic bones of some victims — including stone points, bone awls, and knives made of obsidian glass.
Signs of violence were evident in 58 of the approximately 90 bodies found in the cave. Most of the victims were men, but at least 16 women were also found among the dead, as well as nearly 20 children, some as young as three months old.” http://westerndigs.org/skeletons-in-utah-cave-are-victims-of-prehistoric-war-study-says/
Did The Violence Occur Over a Long Period of Time?- Maybe, But Evidence Seems to Say No
“The carnage found in Cave 7 could only be explained, Wetherill concluded, by the ‘sudden and violent destruction of a community by battle or massacre.’
And this interpretation held for more than a century, until 2012, when radiocarbon dating of some of the bones from the cave showed that the burials actually spanned many centuries — from the first century CE to the early 300s — suggesting that the dead represented several, smaller conflicts over time.
Now, a new analysis of the Cave 7 remains finds that, while the dates do cover a range, the victims of violence in particular appear to date from the same period, intimating that they’re evidence of a ‘single-event mass killing.’”
http://westerndigs.org/skeletons-in-utah-cave-are-victims-of-prehistoric-war-study-says/
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Mass-Murder In South-Central South Dakota around 1325 A.D.
“At Crow Creek, a large Initial Coalescent village in South Dakota with a terminal occupation around A.D. 1325,2such extrapolation is unnecessary (Willey,1990; Willey and Emerson, 1993; Zimmerman and Bradley, 1993; Zimmerman et al., 1981). Here, a mass deposit containing the remains of a minimum of 486men, women, and children was discovered in 1978 in a fortification ditch that par-tially surrounded the entrenched village. Most of these bodies had been mutilated, and many showed signs of exposure before interment. At least 89% of 415 identified frontal bones had cut marks indicative of scalping, and 41% of 101 identified skulls had round or ellipsoid depression fractures from round and axe like club-bing implements. Decapitation and possible tongue removal by humans also was evident by anatomical placement of cut marks on occipital bones, cervical verte-brae, and mandibles. Hands and feet may also have been purposefully removed, although carnivore damage also suggests scavenger activity. Isolated bones and body parts in various other contexts (Willey, 1990; Willey and Emerson, 1993),as well as burning of all identified structures (Bamforth, 1994), support the anni-hilative intent of the attack. However, a pronounced bias against 15–24 year old females, as well as the act of burial itself, suggests that some people may have survived through capture or escape (Willey, 1990; Willey and Emerson, 1993).In scale, the Crow Creek massacre is unparalleled anywhere in prehistoric North America, except possibly that at the broadly contemporaneous center at Casas Grandes described above.” (“The Archaeology of War: A North American Perspective” by Patricia M. Lambert, Pg. 225; Journal of Archaeological Research, Vol. 10, No. 3, September 2002 )
https://courses.washington.edu/war101/readings/Lambert–archy%20of%20N%20Am%20warfare.pdf
Another Apparent Academic Dissertation About this Event, Which Notes that 60% of This Tribe Was killed:
“The major findings can be summarized as follows: At least 486 Arikara were buried, that number probably constituting roughly 60 percent of the village inhabitants.” https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/268790968.pdf
This would probably be considered “genocide” today.
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Evidence of Warfare in California/Western Great Basin
“Injuries from projectile weapons also have a long history of occurrence in this region, first appearing in the fifth millennium B.C. Identified based on the presence of stone or bone spear, dart, and arrow points embedded in bone, bone scars attributed to these projectiles, or projectiles found lodged in body cavities, projectile injuries are more common in males than females overall (3:1) and tend to affect those between the ages of 18 and 40 years. Victims are relatively uncommon in samples antedating A.D. 600, ranging in frequency from about0 to 5% (Lambert, 1994). Projectile injuries are much more frequent in samples dating between A.D. 580 and 1380 (Lambert, 1994, 1997; Lambert and Walker,1991; Walker and Lambert, 1989), affecting 10% (39/402) of the sample from this time period in frequencies ranging from 0 to 22% for individual sites (Lambert,1994). Although clustering within and among graves is present (Lambert, 1994,pp. 141–147), mass graves are rare, suggesting constant but small-scale forms of engagement that nonetheless resulted in a high death toll over time (Lambert, 1994;see also discussions in Milner, 1999; Milneret al., 1991).” (“The Archaeology of War: A North American Perspective” by Patricia M. Lambert, Pg. 217-218; Journal of Archaeological Research, Vol. 10, No. 3, September 2002 )
https://courses.washington.edu/war101/readings/Lambert–archy%20of%20N%20Am%20warfare.pdf
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Why do I bring this up? Two reasons:
(1) It puts to rest the Marxist “Multiculturalist” notion that somehow the aboriginal people of the Americas learned violence from Europeans. (Note that, in the case of the massacre in 1300’s South Dakota, scalping did occur prior to arrival of the white man.)
(2) Cultures can and should be changed. These cultures were objectively inferior to Western culture at the time, to say nothing of Western or “Modern” culture today. Individuals have rights to life and liberty. Cultures that ignore those rights can and should be changed or done away with.
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