
Who Did the Maya Sacrifice? - jkuria
https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2019/08/01/who-did-the-maya-sacrifice
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mensetmanusman
It is hard to imagine the horror of exploring a new place and coming across
Tzompantli made from children.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzompantli](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzompantli)

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puranjay
To be fair, the people who were the first explorers in these lands were hardly
the squeamish type

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mtsr
But they were likely the zealous type for whom this was plenty justification
to classify Maya as subhuman and have no trouble killing all of them.

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_petronius
At least for the first conquistadores, this is wildly incorrect. It is true
that they saw the Mesoamerican culture as wrong (particularly the human
sacrifice bit), and put the conquest of territory for Spain as of high
importance, but their understanding of the world was more complex than what
you describe. I really recommend reading Bernal Díaz del Castillo‘a firsthand
account of the conquest of “New Spain” to get an idea of how these people
viewed the world!

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neonate
[https://outline.com/urvuEC](https://outline.com/urvuEC)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20190803011609/https://www.econo...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190803011609/https://www.economist.com/science-
and-technology/2019/08/01/who-did-the-maya-sacrifice)

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mark-r
Thanks for trying, but neither link worked for me.

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rosser
[https://archive.fo/UvEKU](https://archive.fo/UvEKU) works for me.

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gwern
Hm. Is it that bad?

The data would seem to at least falsify the warfare hypothesis: if they were
mostly prisoners-of-war, you'd expect a few localities & demographics to be
overrepresented (as they are from the usual enemy city-states, or a burst of
young male sacrifices from a victorious battle with many prisoners).

And a gradual dispersion of victims falling off steadily with distance yet
with a long tail of very remote origins sounds to me like what you'd get from
a mature long-distance network of slave traders.

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throwaway2048
I think the idea that they sacrificed slaves (exclusively?) is a bit overhasty
of a conclusion, the Spanish reported that when they "freed" many "victims"
waiting to be sacrificed by the Aztecs, they were indignant and demanded to be
returned and sacrificed.

A different time, and a different culture, but with a huge amount of
similarities too.

Perhaps people viewed it as their sacred duty to be sacrificed?

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watwut
The Spanish might be unreliable narrators. Perhaps we cant trust their
assessment of situation and even less their reports. They could have been
wrong in many ways.

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mariojv
At Chichen Itza, tour guides there will tell you that people there actually
competed in pelota (ball) games for the honor of being sacrificed. According
to them, it was something the competitors actively sought out. Unsurprisingly,
it seems as though this is false. The losers of the game were the ones
sacrificed during certain periods in Mayan history. [0]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_ballgame#Human_sa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_ballgame#Human_sacrifice)

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mobilemidget
The list of cookie using parties on the economist.com is longer then the
article...(?)

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softbuilder
*Whom

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stan_rogers
_Hwæm_ , actually, if you really feel a need to attach yourself to obsolete
words. Language changes, and the dropping of _whom_ should not bother you
anymore than does _here_ having entirely supplanted _hither_ or the near
absence of _whence_ in everyday conversation.

~~~
enriquto
In that case using the correct word would render the title unambiguous and
comprehensible to everybody. As it is written I read it as "who was
responsible for the act known as the _Maya Sacrifice_?". As a non-native
English speaker who learnt the language in a rather formal way, interpreting
the word "sacrifice" as a verb is ungrammatical to me.

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qwsxyh
As a native speaker, sacrifice is a verb.

~~~
enriquto
It can be a noun or a verb, depending on the context [0]. In this sentence it
seems to be a noun, which is qualified by the adjective "mayan", written
simply as a noun in apposition "Maya". If "sacrifice" is a verb, the sentence
has no object, thus it is ungrammatical, because "who" cannot be the object,
only the subject. Or so I was told when learning this damn language!

[0]
[https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/sacrifice](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/sacrifice)

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dmix
I was hoping it would dig into how they got all the bones and stuff out of the
sinkhole but it glossed over this point.

Anyone know if the source material is better?

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tptacek
"Sate their lust for blood"?

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whatshisface
"Bloodlust" is a common phrase that refers to a desire to kill.

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tptacek
Even denuded of its emotive connotations like that, a culture's willingness to
commit human sacrifice doesn't logically indicate desire; indeed, the evidence
suggests most cultures that practiced sacrifice (in Europe, Africa, Asia, and
the Americas) believed they obtained some utility from the act.

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BurningFrog
I'm more inclined to think the utility is a pretext.

If you do human sacrifice, it's probably because you _want_ to do human
sacrifice. Smart people can always come up with a pretext.

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swagasaurus-rex
Perhaps they are linked. Perhaps at a certain time there was a need for it;
the utility became apparent.

I could imagine a collapse in the food supply necessitating either sacrifice,
or cannibalism.

It may have become fashionable to do for various religious and ritualistic
reasons, even during good times.

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whatshisface
> _I could imagine a collapse in the food supply necessitating either
> sacrifice, or cannibalism._

That's not possible because (as every European famine ever has shown) if you
choose "none of the above" then people will starve naturally until the famine
is over. Not every hard situation is a trolley problem.

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Xylakant
Which may result in more death than necessary. You observe a failed harvest.
Your foodstock is sufficient for a thousand days for one person. You expect
the next food to be available in 100 days. Your population is 100 people. If
you feed all people for just 5 days, 5 people might survive. If you pick 10 at
the beginning and sacrifice 90, 10 people can survive.

Whatever you choose makes a difference in how many people die. It’s still kind
of a trolley problem.

~~~
dondawest
Such a good point. It IS a trolley problem. Cannibalism would have saved so
many European societies during so many famines. I am unironically
#TeamCannibal.

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elpakal
Not sure i can agree with using the word “sacrifice” here. This could have
been a voluntary trek into “some other world” - we simply don’t know what it
was. When i hear sacrifice i think heads rolling.

