Host (27:23)
Some people believe that it was done, you know, almost as like a, a, a ritual that, you know, that they would, you know, consume the flesh of a rival tribe. Obviously it would scare the, the rivals and that they'd be like, yo, these guys are crazy. We're not going to go to war with them. They're going to literally eat us. And some people within some of these tribal groups that were consuming believe that they would grow, grow stronger by taking the energy of another warrior. And, yeah, this is crazy. Apparently it's, you know, proven that in specific places at specific times that they would do this as a way to try to gain their mystical power. Like an adrenochrome, you can imagine, you know, they would drink the blood of the, of the enemies to gain their power. One specific sacrifice was the, the Chipe Totec, also known as the Lord of the flayed one. Yeah, it's possible. This might be the most gruesome sacrifice that the Aztecs did. The gods hold, again, a central place in the Aztec pantheon. But this one specifically, Chipe Totec, he was the God of rebirth, agriculture in the seasons, and craftsmanship. His worship was deeply intertwined with the cycles of renewal and decay. And he was depicted as having flayed skin, representing the shedding of the old to give way to the new, almost like a serpent. The primary festival dedicated to Chipe Totec, again, was, was called after him, and it means the, the flaying of men. You can see an image of him here sort of, you know, shedding his skin. The culmination of this big festival occurred at Chipe Toltec's temple in the heart of the capital. For 40 days prior to the sacrifice, one victim would be chosen from each ward of the city to act as a, you know, a sacrifice. And they would act as a, as a God. They would dress them up and live as Chipe Toltec until it was time for their sacrifice. When the time came, the victim was taken to an altar and the Aztec priest once again would remove the heart and he would offer it up to the gods, after which their bodies were then dismembered limb by limb. The skin of then the sacrifice victim that was then living as a God prior to this was carefully removed. Should we say, again, this is pretty morbid, but they would literally remove the skin and it would be worn by the priests and other participants basically to embody Chipe Totec himself. Again, this guy was acting as a God, and he was, you know, sort of paraded almost in this symbolic act. And again, the act of removing the skin was seen as, you know, this new life. It was the ending of the old life. And you're able to adorn the wardrobe of the gods themselves. You can see here a statue of Cipe Totec looking, you know, he's got his, you got his, he's got his nuts on there and stuff. It seems pretty wild. So again, this is a lot of, this is kind of put together and speculated, right? No one really knows, no one is really there. And, and we're just trying to draw, by we, I mean scholars are just trying to draw some type of story to really understand what the, the power of these gods were and what the importance of these, you know, sacrifices were to these people. So following this specific ritual where they're wearing the drape, the skin of a guy that they just sacrificed, you know, one participant would put on the pieces of the skin and they paraded through the city, engaging in symbolic battles and collecting tributes from the citizens. And they would all throw tributes in. And these acts again reinforced the community's connection with the deity. Again, everyone was a part of this. They were ensuring this agricultural prosperity and this renewal. And then the body parts were then distributed amongst the elites, potentially for ritual consumption or as a relic of their sacrifice to the gods. Now, again, it's important and interesting to note that many of the Aztecs did these sacrifices as a way to please the gods. And they look so much at this death and rebirth of life that they didn't see death necessarily as the end, that they thought, you know, these people were going to go on and, and live with the gods in some type of afterlife. So they weren't necessarily so concerned with the sacrifice in that exact specific moment. And they were, you know, looking at the cyclical nature of life and death. It's interesting to note that a lot of these Mesoamerican cultures had this obsession with the number 52. They saw, you know, that, you know, Che Chi, that God I mentioned before, had sent a 52 year flood and that they had this fear that the universe would collapse after a cycle of 52 years if the gods were not strong enough. So every 52 years there was a special ceremony performed that they called the new Fire ceremony. In preparation for the ceremony, all fires across the empire were extinguished, symbolizing the end of the old cycle. The Aztecs destroyed old household items. They fasted, they performed rituals to cleanse themselves spiritually and darkness would cover the empire, amplifying the tension and the Fear awaiting the gods verdict. The ceremony itself took place on the hill of the star. This is a place where the priests would prepare the sacrificial altar. Then again, they would, would choose a captive. Typically this was a warrior of great status. And they offered themselves or sometimes were chosen as an offering for this sacrifice. At the precise alignment of the pleas constellation, also known as the seven Sisters, the ritual would begin. The victim was laid on this sacrificial stone and the priest would use obsidian. That's like a very hard, you know, like almost like a glass type material that they would form into a blade that then they would remove the heart from the chest while it was still beating and then offer it to the gods as an act of renewal and gratitude. I mean these guys were hardcore. Dude, that's brutal. Then they would basically, you know, take a fire, like, you know, piece of metal and they would, they would get it like super hot and they would place it into the open chest cavity of the sacrificed warrior. And the priest then would ignite a fire directly within it. This act symbolized the rebirth of this cosmic energy. Some people believe through this offering. You can see an image here of, you know, some. The fire ceremony and this sort of, you know, igniting the fire within the hearts of one of their most feared warriors. And this would again hopefully sustain the universe for another 52 years. But they didn't just let the body sit there and burn. That'd be wasteful. So once the fire was lit, it was then carried to temples, households across the empire to then ignite the flames that had been extinguished. So they would take it through and from that same fire, then they would relight the entire city. This act of spreading the new fire again was another symbolic, you know, element to kind of give this rebirth and this continuation of life. And this ritual sort of underscored the Aztec worldview, right. Which sacrifice is essential, it's necessary and it's good and we will nourish the gods and nourish our people. And while the gods required human hearts and blood sometime to sustain the cosmos, the fire represented this divine connection between humanity and the celestial realm. But as always, there's even more to the story. You can't exactly just cover up all the bodies from the sacrifice. So what do they do with some of these bodies? Right. If some of the numbers are so high, what did they do with them? Well, some of those bodies were, you know, they would be eaten ostensibly. Some would. Some people believe. Again, I don't know if I necessarily believe that. It seems like crazy that you would do that for, you know, just famine reasons. But who knows? They would sometimes make, you know, they would. They would dismember the bodies, and the priests would then cut away sort of like the. Some of the fleshy parts and just have the skull. And then they would carve large holes into both sides of the skull, and they would put a wooden post through it, and they would build like a rack almost. This is a depiction of this rack of skulls, almost like an abacus. And they would put it in front of the temple of all the sacrificed victims. Just sort of, you know, showcase their dedication. They even would do this with Spanish soldiers, allegedly. This is what some of the Spaniards had said from their captured soldiers, that, you know, they would take them and sometimes even their horses, and they would display them in front of the temple. These skulls in this giant rack of heads would stay there for weeks, months, and sometimes even years. Over time, the skulls would then break down, and members of the tribes would use these skulls that had been sort of eroded through sun and rain, and they would take them down and wear them sometimes as masks. And the masks are wild. I mean, look at some of these. They look just crazy. And they were even decorated to match whatever ritual was being worn at that time to represent that specific God. So they would decorate these masks with jewels and other stones from around the area. And, yeah, I mean, just look at some of these here. I mean, they're, like, so ornate. And they believe that they were used as masks just by the way that they were sort of, you know, cut and that some people believe that they have sort of almost like, you know, like, leather straps behind them that have obviously eroded away. So one researcher has even pointed out that they found that the skull masks were all made from men between the ages of, like, 30 and 45, and that these people had no evidence of, you know, dental disease or other nutritional stress. So, oddly enough, they were, you know, potentially, you know, healthy or, you know, of, you know, even supreme health. Of all the people, right? They live to a good age, 30, 45 old, if you ask me. And some people suggest that, you know, this could be that the skull masks were mostly of the warriors who had been sacrificed. Scholars claim that the masks appear to have been a special fate reserved for only the most elite warriors and people with notable status. These people would most likely have had a nutritional diet. They would have had access to food, given that they were, you know, doing the ones that were, you know, doing the hunting and, you know, and that they've relied on them for survival. Some historical sources suggest that at least 20,000 people a year were sacrificed in some way by the Aztecs. That's a lot. 20,000 a year. But the accounts of the Spanish explorers claim that during the dedication of the templo mayor in 1487, that there were 4,000 to 20,000 individuals sacrificed over the span of four days and up to 80,000 a year. Again, some of these numbers may have been inflated, but, you know, if you're saying that the bottom end is, you know, 20,000, I mean, that's. That's an insane amount in a year. So as we can see, these human sacrifices were common in many parts of the Aztec empire. And then, just to end where we began, let's talk a little bit about the famous ball game that's noted in, you know, the Rotel Dorado, which began my sort of interest in this. I've always been told as a kid that these, after the end of this sort of like, hoop and ball game, that they would play that the. The winning team was actually the ones that were sacrificed, and it was seen as a great honor. So let's find out if that's true. So this Mesoamerican ball game is fascinating. Again, it's depicted in the Road Tal Dorado, obviously a great historical documentary. And this was a sport with ritual associations to be played out. At least some people put it at 1600 BC pre Columbian game of the people of ancient Mesoamerica. The sport had some different versions in different places during the millennia. And a modernized version of the game, ulama, is still played by the indigenous populations in some places. The rules of this game were not really known, but judging by its descendants, the ulama, it was probably similar to, like, racquetball, where the game was basically, you know, you had to keep the ball in play. And this stone, you know, ball court goals were, some people believe, a late addition to the game. And the most common theory of the game is that the players struck the ball with their hips, you know, if you'll remember, the hip. Although some versions allowed them to use forearms, rackets, bats, or even hand stones. The ball was made of like this solid rubber and weighed as much as nine pounds, although obviously the size of the ball differed over time and place. And the game had a ton of ritual aspects. The most, you know, major formal games were seen as ritual events. Late in the history of the game, some cultures associated that they had this combined competition of sport, war, but also religious human sacrifice. The sport was also played casually for recreation by children and Maybe was even played by women as well. So the association with human sacrifice and these ball games appear a little bit later in the archaeological record, no earlier than sort of the classical era. So the association was particularly strong within classical Veracruz and the Mayan cultures, where the most explicit depictions of human sacrifice have been seen on ball court panels. You know, they would show sometimes decapitated ball players from the Veracruz sites. And even in the post classical Maya religions and sort of the quasi historical narratives, they also link human sacrifice to the games. The captives were also, you know, often shown Mayan art. And it was assumed that these captives were sacrificed after losing a rigged ritual ball game. In this one specific depiction, you know, rather than nearly nude and sometimes battered captives, the ball court at El Tajin and Chechen Itza showed the sacrifice of practitional ball players. Perhaps the captain of the team. Decapitation is particularly associated with the ball game. Severed heads are. Are featured in much of the late classical ball game art and appear repeatedly in many of the temples and ball courts surrounding the area. There's also been speculations that the heads and the skulls were used as the balls. Yeah, some people even believe that's like an early version of soccer. Imagine that. It's interesting because the games also had this religious element in it. Some people and scholars believe that there's like an astronomy associated with it. The bouncing ball represented the sun. The stone scoring rings were supposed to signify the sunrise and the sunset or the equinoxes. There's a very clear connection with war. We even see that to this day with different sports, that the most obvious symbolic aspect was a proxy for warfare. Among the Mayas, the ball represented the vanquished enemy. Both in a lot of late classical kingdoms such as Jax Chilan, other people believed that it was associated with fertility and that formative period. Ballplayer figurines, most likely females, often wear maze icons, which, again, is associated with fertility and life. And the ballplayer sacrifice ensured the renewal of what they call pulque, an alcoholic beverage. And there's also seen this cosmic duality. The game has this struggle between day and night or a battle of life in the underworld. The courts were considered portals to the underworld and were built on key locations within central ceremonial precincts. So there you have it. It should be noted that there's very little evidence to support the idea that the winners of these ball games were the ones that were actually sacrificed. That typically, in most of the icons and depictions around these ball courts and even the temples, that it was typically the Losers. And, you know, according to some scholars, that in the specific, you know, ritual elements of the games, where the games were very high stakes, you know, in the ritual context, the losers were then sacrificed, sometimes through decapitation immediately thereafter. So again, it's not exactly perfectly clear. Some people, you know, obviously these ball courts are very real and we've seen people playing these games through many parts of Mesoamerica and Central America. And obviously human sacrifice was, was seen and understood to have existed. And it's not perfectly clear that the two were associated, although we have seen depictions that after losing the games, the losers would be decapitated. Some people say this is purely a symbol of what it means to be a loser and that by losing the games, you know, they would, you know, have lost honor or something to that effect. It's also worth noting that many, like kings and rulers of, you know, some of these areas, they would also play the games for fun. And we have records that even the kings that would lose these games, they would still live on. So perhaps they were immune from the punishment. It was just the captain of the team that was taken out. So it's pretty high stakes game. You can imagine that, right? Imagine at the end of the super bowl, they just went out and took, you know, took him to pasture. It's pretty wild, if you can imagine. So there you have it, folks. That is a brief sort of overview of some of these sacrificial and ritual properties of the ancient Aztec and, you know, some of the other Mesoamerican tribal groups in, in that time in history. I mean, it's pretty brutal, right? Like, you read about this, you're like, oh man, you gotta sacrifice kids. That's, that's tough. But we see that in the Bible, right? Like, you know, Abraham had to go sacrifice Isaac and then he didn't have to, he had you killed a ram instead. Which is. But you know, there's plenty of child sacrifice that occurs in the Bible, right? There's, you know, killing of the firstborn and, you know, the, the destroyer, the angel destroyer coming through and killing all those during Passover. So it's, it's, you know, we can look at some of these Aztec, Aztec stories and say, wow, these people were barbarians. But I think it's worth noting that sacrifice is tied with almost every culture and almost every religion from around the world. So I mean, once you, when you see the depictions, you're like, all right, that's pretty brutal. But I don't know if there's a way to sacrifice someone In a non brutal way. But let me know what you think. I'm curious if you are an expert in Mesoamerican history. I'm curious, what did I miss? What's missing in sort of this explanation? And what do you think? I mean, some people, obviously some of my conspiracy folks are like, dude, there's sacrifices going on today. The elites are sacrificing. I don't know if that's true. We gotta, I gotta see more evidence of that. I mean, I've seen Eyes Wide Shut and some people say that's what was cut out of there. But anyway, I'm curious what y'all think. But as always, this has been an episode of Religion Camp. Thank you so much for tuning in. And as always, this is happening every Sunday. All right, I'll see you there. Peace be with you. If you've made it to the end.
