Preview

human sacrafice

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
382 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
human sacrafice
At around the early 1400's and 1500's the Aztecs conquered the region of what is today Mexico. At this time religion and culture was at height. They controlled lives of more than 20 million people! Now historians are looking back at this time not knowing whether to emphasize agriculture or human sacrifice. Historians should emphasize human sacrifice and not agriculture.
The Aztecs had a great number of how many people were sacrificed. More than 2,300 prisoners were taken out of teuclepe for motecuhzonna and chihauacoalt to begin their sacrifice (Doc D). In result of their organization they had a special time to begin sacrificing. It would start midday and end at nightfall (Doc D). They would start by killing them while their blood was racing down the temples stairway. Every time the priest cut out their heart he would roll their dead bloody body down the stairs (Doc D). The Aztecs thought of human sacrifice as a major part of religion. They thought of their gods as the most important part of their life that they even had people dress up as gods (Doc.C)! Before they start the sacrifice the person chosen is usually dressed up as a deity (Doc E). The Aztecs treat him as a god for his last year alive (Doc E). The villagers treat him as a royal family member. They would also shower him in complete luxury from the noble’s house including food, teachers, and clothes (Doc E.) when it is time for sacrifice all the women of the village feel terrible sadness when he is taken away.(Doc E).
The Aztecs thought that the sacrifice also represented human kind as well. Many people think human sacrifice is a horrific brutal matter, but at the time it was a great fascination. It showed respect that the men had to sacrifice themselves (Doc D). It is believed to many historians that those who volunteered were those who had a richer afterlife.
To conclude, Historians should emphasize human sacrifice because it clearly describes who the Aztecs really are. It describes the

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    One difference between the Aztec and Spanish was that the Aztec sacrificed people to nourish their gods.…

    • 510 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Broken Spears Quotes

    • 472 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Montezuma, who was the ruler of the Aztecs, had a funny feeling about them. Not too long after they arrived, the Aztecs realized that the Spanish could be killed just like their other enemies, so they went to war. They caught some of the Spanish, killed some of them, even ate some. The Spanish won out because of their preparation, and because they brought so many diseases with them, it killed some of the Aztecs as well. The Spanish came to the Aztecs land, and the Aztecs thought that this was the 'God' that they had been waiting for. They treated the Spanish with riches and lavish food, as they would a God. They only treated them to the finest of treasures because they were sure this was what they were looking for. The Spanish reported that they 'were sickened by the people's shocking routines', which was mentioning toward the sacrifice they saw. Then, when the Spanish tried to take advantage of what the Aztecs had given them, they realized they weren’t the Gods they thought they were looking for. So they cut them off. Conversely, the Spaniards had the horses, firearms, and they had most of the people of the Aztec society on their side. With that being said, the Spaniards didn’t like how the Aztec land was being run. With these people and the Spanish's knowledge expansions, they overthrew the Aztec Empire. After the Aztecs were conquered by the Spaniards, they were turned into…

    • 472 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    My second reason on why historians should emphasize agriculture is because the Aztecs farmed every single day. The main crop the Aztecs grew was corn. The…

    • 519 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Why Did Montezuma Fall

    • 1079 Words
    • 5 Pages

    First, killing thousands of people, the loss of people in a loss that can't be calculated (war). Although the Aztecs certainly weren't the first people ever to sacrifice humans, the fact that they did and the incredible number they sacrificed led to the hatred of some of the surrounding peoples. The powerful city-state of Tlaxcala was one of these. Many of their own had been sacrificed, and in the end they joined the Spaniards to fight the Aztecs. It may be that the Spanish simply was an excuse to start what was already an inevitable civil…

    • 1079 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Religion conferred a substantial portion of the battle within the two groups. In the Aztecs religion, they believed that a human sacrifice was essential to be made so they could keep the gods pleased. They believed that the gods could be satisfied through animals, objects, and humans. Huitzilopochtli, the god of sun and war was mostly offered the human heart, which belonged to the Aztecs enemies and prisoners during these sacrifices. So when the Spanish arrived at the land of Tenochtitlan, the Aztecs considered that these Spaniards were exceptional for the human sacrifice. Though the emperor thought contrarily, Moctezuma believed that Cortes resembled their god Quetzalcoatl, including the magnificent coincidence regarding the arrival of Cortes and the…

    • 1005 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Their religious views of warfare inhibited their actions in certain ways. Preoccupations with human sacrifice caused them to seek captives rather than corpses. Also their liturgical traditions, which insisted that operations be prefaced by elaborate ceremonies only served to alert the Spaniards of attack. The Aztecs were perhaps weakened psychologically through their traditions, such as their fear of cavalry and gunfire.…

    • 614 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In this chapter I found a lot of it to be very interesting. The Aztecs have always grabbed my attention in the history of knowing who they were and reasons behind their human sacrifices and social classes. What fascinated me about the cosmic mission theory, also known as the human sacrifice, was how these once humans thought that killing another human would benefit them in a spiritual way. This theory was basically feed humans to the sun to maintain its heat, light and life. The sun, according to the Aztecs, was the life in the heavens and when it went “dim,” and grew dreary, the hearts from humans was the only life that would brighten the sun and energize it with life. It was on a daily routine…

    • 295 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Aztec DBQ Essay

    • 758 Words
    • 4 Pages

    There are many aspects of life that one can focus on for a certain population or in a country. Two main aspects of everyday life for the Aztecs were agriculture and human sacrifice. Of course both are highly important and part of the Aztecs society, but with an astonishing 10,000,000 people in the Aztec population, could one really put more emphasize one or the other? This is defiantly a tough question for historians to answer… or is it? To decide on great agriculture or brutal sacrifices, it would have made this decision much easier to choose from if we saw a first person document written by someone that was going to be sacrificed. For three important reasons, greater emphasis should be placed on agriculture: the enormous chinampas were out of this world, the amazing construction of the chinampas, and that it leads to be part of everyday life for the Aztec people.…

    • 758 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Aztec people were fiercely religious. Many of their practices were brutal and violent, such as their Tlacaxpieualiztli feast, where captives where captives were painfully put to death by priests as people danced and celebrated.…

    • 1029 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Agriculture Dbq

    • 1026 Words
    • 5 Pages

    We think that historians should focus on agriculture rather than human sacrifice. Historians should focus on the way the Aztecs farmed. We think that agriculture is more important than human sacrifice because if the historians focus on human sacrifice it only shows that the Aztecs slaughtered people to please the gods. But if the historians focus on agriculture you will see the way they lived and the way they farmed together.The Aztecs worked together instead of slaughtering people to death. This is why think that historians should focus on agriculture instead of human…

    • 1026 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    450). The ceremonies and rituals were done and modified sometimes to show the enemy their power as an empire and at the same time to express the American spiritual and polytheistic heritage. The Aztecs and the Incas had a religious culture, and for the culture different gods were important. Also both empires, following their religious culture, performed human sacrifices for the gods, mausoleums, and mummy burials. The Incas and Aztecs had tremendous creativity with art, expressing situations happening at the moment of their empire. Statues, paintings, manuscripts, music and several other small creations were made for decoration, for sounds, and for history.…

    • 699 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    And the human sacrifice was being performed by a god name Huehuetteotl. Huehuetteotl was the Aztec god of warmth, cold and lastly death. He was responsible for two things and they were food and light in the darkness. The people that were part of the Aztec religion, there were special sacrifices that held for Huehuetteotl. The first thing they did to the victim is throw them in the fire, and then pull them back out with hooks right before he was dead, so he can be tortured. While he was alive, they would take his heart and throw it in the fire while he was suffering.…

    • 822 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    He stated that there was a wide range of meat protein available, advances in agricultural techniques, plenty of stored food, and that the Aztecs had a good overall diet. Montellano also suggested other ideas as to why the “ecological hypothesis” was not true. The first was that the Aztecs were conquering new lands and areas for agriculture, which sometimes provided them with a new source of game to hunt, thus having a larger pool of meat to eat. His second was of the minor availability of the total human protein from sacrifice because the flesh was reserved for the elite, which included great warriors and priests. Montellano’s third was evidence that explained that the bulk of the Aztec’s sacrifices took part during the periods of time in the year when there were plenty of crops and plenty of food to easily sustain them. This means that instead of the Aztecs relying on human meat during the off-season, they practiced cannibalism regardless of their food…

    • 1596 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Sacrifice is a universal theme shared among every culture. All cultures believed that there was a higher power…

    • 1593 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Spanish had explored the city and had come upon the Aztec gods and the human sacrifices and skulls that were used to satisfy the gods. Cortes then ordered his men to destroy the temple, this occurrence made the priest furious and they demanded that Montezuma get rid of the Spaniards. The plan that Montezuma came up with was to offer the conquistadors more gifts of gold hoping that they would go away, however, Cortes and his men did not go away and instead arrested and held Montezuma captive because they thought that it would keep the Aztecs from attacking the palace. This did not work because the Spanish soldiers had killed some of the priest at a religious ceremony. In the chaos, Montezuma was killed and the conquistadores had fled from the…

    • 1296 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays