1. HUMAN SACRIFICE
By : Matthew Price

2. Who are they sacrificing??

3. Human Sacrifice victims
 Ranging from:
 Elite Members of foreign polities
 Rulers
 Fellow elite members
 Peasant locals from surrounding area
 Captives
 Slaves
 Animals (Jaguar or Eagle)

4. How many forms are there?
 Child sacrifice
 War captive/ slave sacrifice
 War captives were used as a replacement for
other elites
 Only elite blood can be used for bloodletting, other
elite captives have same elite blood.
 Self-mutilation

5. More forms of Sacrifice
 Suicide
 Sub-types
1. those that commit suicide on their own free will
and die
2. Those individuals that, “offered blood, but did
not die because precautionary measures were
taken
3. Those that were forced to offer blood and were
denied the necessary aid

6. How many forms are there?
 Bloodletting:
 genitals
 Pulling a stingray barb lined rope through your
tongue
 Autosacrifice
 Axe/knife blow to the “Carotis triangle” [side of the
neck]
 supplies the blood to the outer facial areas, the latter
to the interior of the skull & the BRAIN!!
 If the wound is not compressed within 15 minutes
, damage to the brain could become irreversible, possibly
DEATH
 Even with appropriate compression on the wound survival
rate is ~ 5%

7. Who would DO THAT!!
 Nobles :
 Did this under Duress
 Waxaklahunu Bah K’awil , 13th ruler of Copan
 Pat Buts’ K’awil, of Seibal
 Own free will!!
 K’an Hok’ Kitam II , Palenque-ruler

8. Herb
 The ‘Milperos’ of Yucatan, Indigigenous maize
farmers
 Know of certain medical plants, which are highly
effective in closing wounds and stopping
hemorrages
 Such as:
 Ek‟ balam – which rapidly seals the damaged
blood vessel
 Bark of the „bakalche- tree‟ – closes wounds in
muscular tissue

9. Ek balam

10. Why Human Sacrifice?
 There are many theories behind human
sacrificial rituals
 “Contract of the gods”
 Installing
the belief that the gods themselves are not
immortal, constantly fluctuating between life and death
 EX: Aztec maize god , Centeitl
 lives within the maize that is consumed by the
population
 the maize that is eaten is seen as the flesh of Centeotl
himself, to which is restored via human sacrificing
 Ecological Hypothesis (Harner [1977a, 1977b])
 suggests that the unparalleled scope of Aztec human
sacrifice and cannibalism resulted from demographic-
ecological factors which created protein shortages and
population pressure.

11. More Theories!!!
 Ingham (1984)
 Suggested that the sacrifice of slaves and war
captives ensured the social production an
reproduction of internal and external relations of
domination.
 Harner
 hypothesize that cannibalism provided a
significant source of protein.
 Sincewarfare was a prominent in the maya culture,
they practiced……

12. Flower Wars
• Used as rituals to obtain sacrificial victims
• Consumption of human flesh was reserved for the elite & great warriors
• This purpose was supported by a hungry population which desired both
prestige and protein in the form of human flesh.

13. Teotihuacan
 Sugiyama (2005)
 describes the reasons of human sacrifice as an action
to, install spiritual significance to the structure, form a
contract with the gods
 Temple of the Feathered Serpent
 Built AD 200
 Found mass burial (200 victims) at base of structure
 Ingham (1984)
 Suggests that fixed and movable festivals in ancient Mexico
were occasions for human sacrifice.
 Such as, tribute to the sun , b/c of its vitality and that no life could
live without it.
 Similar with ritual cannibalism, apparently because it was
thought to facilitate communion with the gods.

14. Perspectives
 Religion perspective:
 In what way do Maya see death?
 Thosethat are sacrificed believe to go to the Eastern
Paradise
 Including:
 Warriors who were killed in combat
 Even the souls of enemy warriors
 Tonalli (found within Blood)
 What the Aztecs believe to be a basic life force in
the universe
 Many things can generate this:
 Hearth fire, flowing lava , thick
blanket, cloak, sunlight, living bodies.

15. More on Tonalli
 It related to the social identity
 The more cable a person is in the field, the
greater his/her Tonalli
 Some people had greater Tonalli just by birth
 The amount of internal Tonalli, the Aztecs
believed, was properly expressed in external
appearance.
 One could not wear jade, feathers or wear elegant
clothing, if Tonalli was not sufficient to match such
ornaments.
 The logic of human sacrifice and cannibalism,
rested on the exchange of Tonalli

16. Citations
 Duncan , William. Human Cremation in Mexico 3,000 year ago. Diss. Southern
Illinois University , 2008. The National Academy of Sciences , 2008. Web.
 Winkelman, Michael. Aztec Human Sacrifice: Cross-Cultural Assessments of the
Ecological Hypothesis . Diss. Arizona State University , Department of
Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh , 1998. Web.
 Harner, Michael. "the ecological basis of Aztec sacrifice." Michael Harner. 1975.
Web. 10 Sep 2012.
 Manzanilla, Linda. "Houses and Ancestors, Altars and Relics: Mortuary Patterns at
Teotihuacan, Central Mexico." 11.1 (2002): 55-65. Web. 10 Sep. 2012.
 Evans, Susan Toby. "Human Sacrifice, Militarism, and Rulership: Materialization of
State Ideology at the Feathered Serpent Pyramid, Teotihuacan: ." 108.3 (2006): 620-
621. Web. 10 Sep.
 Barrett, Jason W, and Andrew K Scherer. "STONES, BONES, and CROWDED
PLAZAS: Evidence for Terminal Classic Maya Warfare at Colha, Belize." Ancient
Mesoamerica, 16.1 (2005): 101-118.
 Sievert, April Kay. Maya Ceremonial Specialization: Lithic Tools from the Sacred
Cenote at Chichen Itza, Yucatan. n.p.: 1990.
 Spence, Michael W, and Grégory Pereira. "The Human Skeletal Remains of the
Moon Pyramid, Teotihuacan." Ancient Mesoamerica, 18.1 (2007): 147-157.