[Aztlan] Only 50/year sacrificed at Tenochtitlan?

[J. L. Baker]

Related to this discussion are two articles by Barry Isaac from 1983 on Aztec warfare (see references below) in which he reviewed the accounts on the number of captives taken in battle. His results, including the Flowery War battles were that relatively few individuals were actually taken as captives in warfare. Its been a while since I have read the articles, so I don't recall the exact numbers any more, but I want to say that most battles resulted in less than a 100 captives, with the larger numbers around 300 or so captives. With clear evidence that many war captives were sold into slavery, this substantially reduces the number of captives available for sacrifice as well, which fits in well with the argument presented by Baron.


Isaac, Barry
1983 Aztec Warfare: Goals and Battlefield Comportment. Ethnology 22: 121-131.

1983 The Aztec "Flowery War": A Geopolitical Explanation. Journal of Anthropological Research 39: 415-432.

Thanks,

Jeff Baker