[Aztlan] Blood For the Gods - Some basic arithmetic

[J. L. Baker]

The question of how many people were sacrificed on a regular basis by the Aztecs has been discussed numerous times on Aztlan in the past. Searching the FAMSI archive provides the most recent discussion (almost exactly one year ago). The FAMSI archive only goes back to 2006 (when FAMSI took over the list). On linguistlist.org, they have an archive of FAMSI discussions going back to 1998: http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/aztlan.html   

Many of the arguments raised in the current discussion have been raised in the past.

The following is a post I had made on Jan. 3, 2000 (what is it with the holiday season that creates an interest in the issue of Aztec cannibalism?) regarding this issue (with one edit for purposes of clarity). The two articles cited by Barry Isaac are, in my opinion, two of the most significant articles written about Aztec warface and sacrifice, and should be read by all students of the Aztecs. I would say that if one had to make a choice, read these articles than Ross Hassig's excellent book on Aztec warfare (in reality, read both).


There are a number of points to be raised in regard to this
issue. As most people are aware, the whole issue of Aztec
cannibalism began with a paper by Michael Harner (1977), and
subsequent comments by Marvin Harris in some of his volumes
(1977, 1979). I do not have a copy of Harner's article, and
U of Az. library is closed for the holiday's, so I will have
to rely upon my memory here. As I recall, Harner based his
argument upon the number of sacrifices mentioned in the
Spanish chronicles and on the amount of animal protein consumed
by mid-20th century U.S. inhabitants.

Harner's article was immediately followed up by a series of
criticisms (the only references I can find are Ortiz de
Montellano [1978] and Price [1978]). In some of the criticisms
(again, I don't have any of these critiques readily available,
and am basing this discussion upon memory), it was noted that
the consumption of animal protein by mid-twentieth century
Americans was highly unusual, with most cultures consuming
considerably less animal protein than people in the U.S.
consume. Throughout most of history (and even in the 20th
century), the regular consumption of meat is limited to the
elites. For commoners, the addition of a meat to their food
usually implied a special occasion (e.g. important guests, or
an important festival).

Other criticisms focused upon the number of captives being
sacrificed, pointing out that some of the larger numbers
cited by the Spaniards would involve sacrificing one person
every 30 seconds. This seems to me like a fairly unrealistic
scenario.

It has also been noted that the cannibalistic acts of the
Aztecs (and I do not deny that the Aztecs did not consume some
of the sacrificial prisoners) was limited to the elite. The
average peasant attending one of these ceremonies had almost
no chance of receiving a morsel of human flesh, with many
of the human remains ending up being fed to animals in the
zoo. This does not support the contention made by Harris and
Harner that Aztec cannibalism was due to the protein shortage
in the Basin of Mexico. The elites already had access to a
fair share of the protein present in the Basin.

The descriptions of the skull racks also seem somewhat
unrealistic. Harris notes that the Spaniards counted 136,000
skulls on one skull rack. Aside from the monetony of counting
this many skulls, imagine the size of that skull rack!

The myth of the Aztec sacrifice also dovetails in nicely with
the idea that Aztec warfare was solely for the purpose of
capturing prisoner (or that only the Flower Wars served this
purpose). As Isaac (1983a, 1983b) notes, there is ample evidence
for the killing of combatants in both regular warfare and
the Flower Wars. Some of the battlefield accounts mention
"blood drenched the ground ... [The Aztecs] massacred them
without pity." (Isaac 1983a: 122) and "a great number of
warriors from Chalco were killed. (Isaac 1983a: 123) and
"the Tenochca ... 'wounded and killed all the people they
caught up with ... without sparing one' ". (Isaac 1983a: 124).
This is just a sample of the numerous descriptions provided
by Isaac.

In specific regard to the Flowery War, Isaac (1983b: 421)
notes that in a war in 1506, the Tenochca lost 8200 soldiers,
leaving the battlefield "covered with dead bodies).
The next year, following a protracted battle "there was so
much blood ... that it [the battlefield] looked like a flowing
river." (Isaac 1983b: 422).

If we look at battlefield captures, two types of situations
are present. One in which "half the combatants" are captured,
a phrase repeated so often, that it its accuracy must be
questioned. In the few cases where actual numbers are mentioned,
they are surprisingly small: Tezozomac lists 500 prisoners
captured in one battle, in the same battle Duran notes the
capture of 200 prisoners (cited in Isaac 1983a: 124). In other
battles, 40 prisoners were captured in a campaign against
the kingdom of Metztitlan (Isaac 1983a: 125), while 600 were
captured during a battle against Tototepec. In another battle
on this same campaign, only 140 were captured (Isaac 1983a: 127)

The Flowery War campaigns provide similar numbers: In 1506, 800
prisoners were captured in one battle and 400 in a second
battle later that year (Isaac 1983b: 421). Battlefield
casualties in these two battles topped 8000 for the Texcoco-
Cholula alliance.

These numbers hardly add up to the 15,000 to 20,000 people
that Harner (1977: 119) claims were being eaten by the Aztecs
each year (cited in Harris 1979: 334).

Further skepticism for this model comes from Soustelle's (1961:
78) discussion of slavery: "At the beginning of the sixteenth
century the number of tlatlacotin [slaves] seems to have been
increasing."

How are we to aline the small number of battlefield captives,
and the increasing number of slaves, with large scale sacrifice
of prisoners??

There are two other points on this issue that I would like to
make. First, much of the debate concerning Aztec warfare is
based upon a limited number of comments made by the Aztecs
during the initial encounter. These comments are often accepted
uncritically, like we would accept a televised comment today.
We should remember that the Spaniards did not speak Nahuatl
and the Tenochca and Tlaxcalans did not speak Spanish. The
Nahuatl was translated into Maya, which was then translated into
Spanish. How much was lost in this translation (could some of
the comments have been intentionally changed by one of the
translators?) How well did the Spanish sailor, who translated
the Maya into Spanish speak Maya? Questions that are impossible
to answer, but should provide caution for those wishing to take
the ethnohistoric sources at face value.

A second point to be made is that the Aztecs may have 'exaggerated the number of sacrifices they made in an attempt to intimidate the Spaniards' (I've edited this sentence on Jan. 7, 2010 for purposes of clarity). 

Enemy rulers were invited to the Aztec capital to witness some of the
more elaborate sacrifices at Tenochtitlan in an attempt to fill
their enemies with fear, and show the greatness of the Tenochca.
(Isaac 1983b: 419).

Would they have taken a different approach with the Aztecs?

(and opposite this is the Spaniards willingness/incentive
to embellish their claims, a point James Terry has already
made.

For those of you unfamiliar with the details of the cannibalism
/slavery connection, sometime around 1500, the Pope came out
with a papal bull stating that Native Americans were human, and
as humans they could not be enslaved, unless they were
cannibals. If the Spaniards wanted to make someone a slave, then
all they had to do was claim that they had been seen eating
other humans.

Jeff Baker

References

Harner, Michael, 1977, The ecological basis for Aztec sacrifice.
American Ethnologist 4: 117 - 35.

Harris, Marvin, 1977, Cannibals and Kings: The Origins of
Cultures. New York: Random House.

________, 1979, Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science
of Culture. New York: Vintage Books.

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

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

Ortiz de Montellano, Bernard, 1978, Aztec Cannibalism: An
Ecological Necessity? Science 200: 611-617.

Price, Barbara, 1978, Demystification, Enriddlement, and Aztec
Cannibalism: A Materialist Rejoinder to Harner. American
Ethnologist 5: 98-115.