[Aztlan] Hard evidence of Maya human sacrifice

[Jorge Pérez de Lara]

The need that many listeros appear to feel to "hide under the rug" the 
reality of human sacrifice among the Maya smacks me as an attempt to 
"sanitize" the Maya and their culture for modern Western consumption. 
Regardless of whether the volumes of sacrifices were large of small, it 
is clear from much evidence that the Maya (as indeed most if not all 
Mesoamerican peoples) regularly practiced it. Personally, this does not 
bother me one bit, as it in no way detracts from achievements such as 
their independent invention of writing, of zero and of positional 
notation or from their great advances in astronomy, mathematics and art. 
Human sacrifice was equally practiced among the ancient Chinese, the 
Egyptians, the Celts and among many other (if indeed not all) ancient 
civilizations. Didn't the Romans go through sprees of mass crucifixions?

So why has the West's fascination/revulsion towards the gory aspects of 
human sacrifice appears to have morbidly stuck with regard to 
Mesoamerican cultures? Could there be no more to this than the needs of 
cultural arrogance to assert a very debatable moral superiority? We 
should strive to comprehend what the belief contexts were in which 
certain practices happened and abstain from emitting moral judgments of 
them: we are far too removed in time and culture to apply our own 
criteria of what is acceptable or not based upon a poor and fragmentary 
understanding of the mores of people who lived in a radically different 
perception of reality. Ultimately, condemning or absolving an ancient 
civilization is an exercise in futility. What we owe them is an 
intellectually honest effort to try to understand them.

Sorry for the rant.

Jorge