[Aztlan] Aztlan Digest, Vol 50, Issue 6

Thu Jan 7 13:18:42 CST 2010

Just to supplement;

I published  an estimate of the size of the tzompantli needed to acommodate
the number of skulls claimed by Harner. The vertical poles would have had to
be 181 meters high, an obviously ridiculous number.

Ortiz de Montellano, B. R. 1983 "Counting Skulls: Comment on the Aztec
Cannibalism Theory of Harner-Harris," *American Anthropologist* 85(2):
403-406.

Bernard Ortiz de Montellano

> Date: Thu, 7 Jan 2010 09:25:31 -0800 (PST)
> From: "J. L. Baker" <sierradeagua at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [Aztlan] Blood For the Gods - Some basic arithmetic
> To: aztlan at lists.famsi.org
> Message-ID: <329909.85190.qm at web36808.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
>
> 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.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --**--**--**--**--**--**--**--**--**--**--**--**--**--**--**--**--**--**--**--**--**--**--**--**--**--**--**--**--**--**
>
> _______________________________________________
> Aztlan mailing list
> Click here to send a message Aztlan at lists.famsi.org
> http://www.famsi.org/mailman/listinfo/aztlan
>
>
> End of Aztlan Digest, Vol 50, Issue 6
> *************************************
>

-- 
Bernard Ortiz de Montellano