The Meaning of Human Sacrifice

Deities were strongly associated with nature and celestial bodies (and their movement). Their beneficial and destructive aspects represented the ambivalent relation between society, environment and history.

Human sacrifice was generally perceived as tribute, gift or debt payment to gods in return for their protection, favour and the preservation of the well-being of state and society in the Americas. Divine violence was experienced on earth in the form of natural disasters or military defeat. Among the Aztecs: ‘Men acquired water and crops, and were free of illness and plagues in exchange for offerings of blood, hearts, fire, copal incense, and quails. The vocabulary in use indicated that in reality it was a kind of business transaction: sacrifice was called nextlahualiztli, literally an “act of payment”, and offering fire was tlenamaca, meaning “to sell fire”.’^{^[775]} The gods had practised auto-sacrifice in the process of creation to bring into being, energise and move the sun and the moon and to sustain men with corn and life according to some myths. However, the energy consumed had to be restored or recharged by sacrifice, otherwise the gods would languish and become unable to maintain the cosmic order.1^{^[776]} The following paragraphs will briefly discuss possible meanings of human sacrifice in the Americas.

Dying Like a God

Mesoamerican temple-pyramids have been characterised as stages for rituals. and the buildings as symbols of sacred mountains. The two sides of the Templo Mayor have been interpreted as symbolising the Tlaloc-related Tonacatepetl (Mountain of Sustenance) where man obtained corn from Quetzalcoatl, and as Coatepetl (Snake Mountain) where Huizilopochtli was born fully dressed and armed and defended his mother, the earth goddess Coatlicue (also known as the Mother of the Gods), against his aggressive siblings (the so-called Centzohuitznahua or Gods of the South).

Thus, the human sacrifices at the temple during festivals such as panquetzalistli and etzalcualiztli dedicated to Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc may be interpreted as parts of mythical dramas.1^{^[777]} The sacrificial death of a victim as divine impersonator was called teomiqui (‘dying like a god’). The re-enactment of the god’s dying in sacrifice can be seen as the necessary condition for his or her subsequent rebirth, rejuvenation and regeneration by transforming death into life.1^{^[778]} In a third of the yearly festivals in Tenochtitlan women were chosen as victims, mostly to become impersonators of goddesses.^{^[779]} Female impersonators were primarily sacrificed in rituals related ‘to the earth and to naturally occurring forces, substance and conditions’.²¹ Before being killed, the victims were costumed and treated as if they were gods over a period ranging between a few days and four years. They had to pass through their different roles, aspects and transformations.^{^[780]} Such re-enactments including sacrifice are also known from the Maya and Moche cultures, among others. Decapitation (ch'ak b'aah) by axe was associated with creation myths in the Maya region and the ruler executing this act thus represented a primordial creator of the cosmic order.^{^[781]} Among the Moche, human sacrifice was part of burial rites as well as of regular and special ritual events directed by highstatus elites. According to Christopher Donnan, various themes in Moche iconography mirror actual activities of leaders identifiable by elaborate clothing, weapons, ornaments and position. Numerous narrative sequences show humans, men and women, who apparently take over the roles of heroes and mythological beings while interacting with gods, ancestors or representations of natural powers. Humans and supernatural actors are shown killing victims by slitting the throat with a ritual knife (tumi) or cutting off the head and drinking the blood.

These sacrificial re-enactments are often symbolically related to the agricultural cycle and to fertility.^{^[782]}

Energy for the Gods

The belief in the possibility to transfer animistic energy or vital force from a person to a receptor is central for understanding ritual sacrifice and autosacrifice in the Americas. Thus the preparation, execution and post-mortem processing of the victims should be understood as a procedure to control and deliver vital energy to the supernatural beneficiaries. The rituals were strongly influenced by emic concepts about the victims and their bodies. Aztec metaphors for the human heart (‘precious eagle cactus fruit', quauh- nochtli) and for the blood (‘precious liquid', chalchiuhatl) indicate that certain fluids, organs and other body parts were considered the gods' preferred food.^{^[783]} Hearts and blood caught on paper were burned immediately after the sacrifice in order to deliver their vital force to the supernatural. Blood was sprinkled on the floors and walls to charge the temple with energy or smeared into the mouth of the sculptures that represented the gods.^{^[784]}

The Aztecs recognised three main centres of force in the human body: the head (cuaitl), the heart (yollotl) and the liver (elli), with their respective animistic forces tonalli, yolia (or teyolia) and ihiyotl. The shock of hair (temil- lotl) on the crown of the head was considered the seat of the tonalli, which was sent from the gods to the unborn child and determined his temperament. The tonalli could increase during one's life-time by gaining prestige in the fulfilment of public duties. It could also leave a person temporally or be damaged by transgressions, sickness or fright. Representations depicting the capturer grasping his enemy's shock of hair not only symbolise the victim's subjection but also the appropriation of his tonalli. The yolia, received before birth, was associated with vitality, knowledge, inclination and fondness.

The ihiyotl entered the body during childbirth. Since the liver housed passions, feelings and vigour it was considered a source of emotional energy. These divine forces were released at the moment of death and returned to energise the gods during the sacrifice.^{^[785]}

Perceived as divine or as the gods' representatives on earth, rulers could also be rejuvenated or empowered by absorbing the vital force of sacrificial victims.^{^[786]} Inauguration rites were generally accompanied by human sacrifices. The widespread killing of children in these contexts is probably related to the belief that they were pure and fresh contributors of energy.^{^[787]} During the Aztec Festival of the Flaying Men (tlacaxipehualiztli) dedicated to Xipe Totec (typically depicted as wearing a human skin), a prominent male captive was sacrificed and skinned. The Aztec supreme ruler became the impersonator of the deity while dancing clothed with the victim's skin. The skins of additional victims provided novice warriors with divine energy in an initiation ceremony.³⁰

Enhancing Energy?

Among the Aztecs, war captives were not the personal property of their captor but ultimately belonged to the gods. Their treatment varied according to their behaviour, the roles they were to play in the rituals, and the strategies of the responsible authorities. Although attempts to escape are reported, many captives apparently accepted their destiny and tried to die conforming to the ritual norms.³¹ While the impersonators of gods received much respect for a certain time period, other victims were brutally dragged up the temple by their shocks of hair accompanied by malice and scolding on the day of their sacrifice.

Most Aztec rituals required a mobilisation of the victim's energy by various means. In the vigils during the eighth festival of huey tecuilhuitl dedicated to the young corn goddess Xilonen and in vigils of other festivals, for example, music, singing and dance were employed to prevent the victims from falling asleep.

They often had to dance to the point of exhaustion. In some rituals, adolescent women had sexual intercourse before being killed. Tension was produced by torture in other cases. The infants who represented the water and rain deity or his helpers during the festival of atl caualo, for example, were disquieted to keep them awake and their fingernails were torn out to make them cry because their tears stood for the rain to be summoned. During the festival of xocotl huetzi the victims were thrown into a large fire and almost burned to death. Then they were withdrawn from the large brazier and sacrificed by heart extraction.^{^[788]}

Torture was also employed in other parts of Mesoamerica. Murals found at the Maya site of Bonampak, for example, display nude captives whose fingernails had been torn out expecting their death in sacrifice. A famous painting on a Maya vessel shows a ritual procession accompanied by musicians approaching a bound and stripped victim on a scaffold. While he is still alive his intestines are torn out by a man using his lance.^{^[789]}

At the Moche Huaca de la Luna architectural complex near Trujillo, Peru, the remains of numerous sacrificial victims have been recently discovered. That most of them were adolescents or young male adults between 15 and 35 years of age suggests that they were warriors. Before being killed, mainly by slashing their throats to collect their blood, the victims had been tortured and made to bleed, for example by being struck on the face. Still alive, their noses were fractured, their scalps slashed, their faces probably flayed and their fingers and toes injured. These findings confirm depictions in Moche iconography showing similar treatments of nude bound captives.^{^[790]}

Duverger considers the pre-sacrificial violence and torture, at least in the Aztec case, mainly as means to discharge as much vital force or energy from the victim as possible.^{^[791]}

Ritual Anthropophagy and Relics

The human became sacred through the act of sacrifice according to Aztec beliefs.

While some parts of his body were offered to the gods or consumed by the priests, the remains were delivered to the captor's family for a ceremonial meal and the manufacture of relics. Thus, the victim's spiritual force ritually energised the social group participating in the meal besides nourishing the gods. The flesh was regarded as ‘consecrated and blessed and they ate it with such reverence and so many ceremonies and fastidiousness as if it were something celestial'.^{^[792]} According to some sources, the captor could not eat the meat since a symbolic kin-relationship had been established with the victim.^{^[793]} The victim's head, skin, hair, mandibles or femurs were conserved as a lasting manifestation of the sacred energy appropriated by the captor and piously spent for the gods. The relics or trophies also demonstrated the military or economic success of the victims' providers. The hundreds or thousands of enemy skulls on the skull racks illustrated not only the gods' repletion and hence the community's well-being, but also the power of the Aztec state.^{^[794]}

The collection and display of trophies has also been reported from the Mississippian, Anasazi, Maya, Wari, Paracas, Nasca, Cupisnique and Moche cultures in North, Central and South America, among others. The head was particularly sought after as an ‘entry point of the human self and important animistic centre of vital forces, as ethnohistoric sources from the Aymara, Central Mexicans and Maya suggest. While some of the heads found in the archaeological record may have been the remains of venerated ancestors, most were actual trophies obtained during warfare or sacrifice and sometimes used for magical purposes: Nasca interments of headless male and female adults and children as well as trophy heads were excavated at the Peruvian south coast. Early Nasca art associates trophy heads with mythical beings and fertility symbolism. They probably served religious specialists using hallucinogenic drugs to communicate with the spiritual world to foster the regeneration of plants and secure a good harvest.^{^[795]} Magical powers (such as protective, oracle or mediator functions) may have also been important in

the Wari culture, where heads, often of children, were preserved for ritual purposes.^{^[796]}

Animating ‘Things' and Honouring the Dead

The animating, rejuvenating and strengthening powers of blood and human sacrifices were also employed in the dedication and sanctification rituals of buildings or other sacred sites. This is indicated by caches containing human victims (often children) or by deposited corpses found at the corners or in the centre of buildings and beneath important monuments. As the findings at the Akapama, a large architectural complex in the Andean political centre of Tiwanaku (500-1000 ce) reveal, some rituals were accompanied by great dedication feasts while others represented more intimate venerations of ancestors.^{^[797]} Altars in the temples on top of pyramids covering the tombs of Maya rulers or in front of their stelae (e.g., at Copan) were locations for ritual sacrifices dedicated to their commemoration or invocation. Features, such as tubes connected to tombs (psychoducts), helped to deliver the offerings to the deceased ancestors as in the Late Classic sepulchre ofJanaab’ Pakal at Palenque. Stela 40 at Piedras Negras shows a ruler delivering his blood through a channel in the building to an ancestor awaiting it in the tomb below.^{^[798]}

Burial Rites and Human Sacrifices

Human sacrifice also constituted an important element of burials rites in the American ranked and stratified societies; 272 individuals, most of them probably sacrificial victims, were buried in at least six burial episodes spanning from c. 950 ce over about 100 years in the earthen Mound 72 at Cahokia near St. Louis, one of the largest Mississippian centres. In episode Sub 1, two males were buried close to each other with numerous grave goods. One of them, the famous ‘Birdman’, is deemed to have been a ruler. His cape was decorated in the design of a falcon and covered with 20,000 shell beads. Several slain men, some of them without hands and skulls, accompanied both individuals. In addition, fifty-three young women were arranged in two separate layers in a mass grave.^{^[799]}

The sacrificial victims found in Teotihuacan's Temple of the Feathered Serpent had also once accompanied important dignitaries. Additionally, in a recent excavation of the site's second largest pyramid, the Temple of the Moon, erected between 50 and 400 ce, the remains of three dignitaries with rich offerings, killed animals and several sacrificed humans, most of them with the hands tied on their back, were discovered.^{^[800]}

Slain individuals, including children, also accompanied the deceased kings and queens in the Maya area. Such is documented for the burial ofJanaab' Pakal in the Temple of Inscriptions at Palenque. Maya rulers were usually buried capped and gowned and their tombs richly furnished with goods such as elaborate vessels filled with cacao and other nourishing substances. The faces of the deceased were covered with vivid masks of jadeite and other precious materials and red pigment (such as cinnabar and hematite) to symbolise the preservation of their life force for the afterlife. Some of the kings were also mummified. The meticulous documentation of the well- preserved Moche elite tombs in the Huaca Rajada at Sipan in the coastal valley of Lambayeque, Peru, dating between 50 and 260 ce allows archaeologists to distinguish between victims sacrificed as companions (probably wives), retainers (servants), guardians (soldiers) and high-ranking individuals (military leaders). Some victims had their feet amputated presumably to prevent their spirits from abandoning the ruler. Llamas and dogs were also killed.^{^[801]}

While only a few humans were sacrificed in Sipan, deceased Aztec dignitaries were generally accompanied by many victims who became their ‘beds' (pepechtin).^{^[802]}6 During the funeral ceremonies of Axayacatl, for example, all his female and male slaves, hunchbacks and dwarfs perished on the sacrificial stone. The hearts of the fifty to sixty victims were thrown into the fire during the cremation of the deceased ruler.^{^[803]} The more elite members were distinguished from commoners in the ranked and stratified societies, the more divine they became, and the more animistic energy was conceded to them for their afterlife. In addition, the elite's special living conditions, such as courtly life, had to be continued after death, which was not perceived as a final stage but as passage into a new sphere. Slaves, captured warriors, retainers, soldiers, military chiefs, counsellors and wives had to follow the deceased ruler for his company, support, entertainment and protection, thus confirming and communicating his social status in the afterlife.

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Source: Gordon Matthew, Kaeuper Richard, Zurndorfer Harriet (eds.). The Cambridge World History of Violence. Volume 2: AD 500-AD 1500. Cambridge University Press,2020. — 696 p.. 2020

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