[Aztlan] Hard evidence of Maya human sacrifice

[Stephen Whittington]

Jules,

What can I say? You can interpret the data as you like. That's the way
archaeology works. Most of people's behavior is not preserved for
archaeologists to find, and we have to go on the limited amounts of information
we recover. We have hard evidence of Maya human sacrifice from widely separated
sites over at least 1000 years. Does that prove the Maya sacrificed people
frequently and in great numbers? No. But taken with images from art, such as
Bonampak, Tonina, and Chichen Itza, it is suggestive. To put it in wider
context, there is lots of good evidence from the big pyramids at Teotihuacan of
human sacrifice, but if you look at the entire city, there is very little. We
have lots of ethnohistorical evidence of Aztec human sacrifice, but very little
bony evidence. In comparison, I would say the evidence of human sacrifice
archaeologists have found in Maya sites is pretty strong.

-- 
Stephen L. Whittington, Ph.D.
Director
Museum of Anthropology
Wake Forest University
P.O. Box 7267
Winston-Salem, NC 27109
336-758-5827 (voice)
336-758-5116 (fax)

Quoting Jules Siegel <jules_siegel at yahoo.com>:

> Stephen Whittington <whittisl at wfu.edu> wrote:
>
> > We have hard evidence of Maya human sacrifice. At
> the Late Postclassic site of Iximche, Guatemala, there
> were 50 decapitations in pits adjacent to small
> platforms that appear to have been altars [...and
> other examples].
>
> So are we talking about hundreds (or a few thousand,
> at most) of victims, perhaps, over several centuries?
>
> Is there enough evidence like this to conclude that
> human sacrifice was a generalized feature of Mayan
> culture?
>
> Or was it a special practice with limited frequency
> that varied by locality and time period?
>
>
>
>
>
>
____________________________________________________________________________________
> Have a burning question?
> Go to www.Answers.yahoo.com and get answers from real people who know.
>
>