Wednesday, May 8, 2019

Presentism and Human Sacrifice in the Aztec Empire Essay

Presentism and Human Sacrifice in the Aztec Empire - Essay ExampleAmong many other distinguishing features, the come of merciful leave is a custom that the Aztecs ar known for. The sacrifices, which were made for ritualistic and religious purposes confound assumed centrality in many contemporary academic debates. It is thus pertinent to discuss and analyze whether it is and then accurate to judge the practices of the Mesoamerican period using the parameters of contemporary moralities. In Discovering the international Past, the authors Wiesner, Wheeler, Doeringer and Curtis seek to charter the Aztec culture from the perspective of the European colonizers as well as those of the indigenous Aztec people. The historical and ethnographic accounts of Bernardino de Sahagun are particularly important in this regard. In the section titled Aztec accounts of temples, palaces, and games related to Bernadino de Sahagun, the work shows how the Aztec ritual of human sacrifice had a complex logic of its own, and was not a practice of meaningless violence as it is often portrayed to be (Wiesner). The Aztecs believed that human life was sustained by a continuous sacrifice made by the gods. They used the term tonacayotl for this purpose, which roughly translates into the necessary spiritual bodily sacrifice on earth. ... Sahaguns accounts show that the lofty temple-pyramids of the Aztecs served as the site for these sacrifices. Unbiased historical research has also shown that it is incorrect to assume that the only the common folk were victimized as a result of this practice. Such a claim can be refuted at many levels, the primary being the fact that slaves in the Aztec empire, who conventional the majority of those who were offered for sacrifice, were not determined by birth. Rather, they could be people from any social rank who had act anything unlawful. In fact, there is evidence to believe that the people embraced and incorporated the custom in their lives quite wil lingly. diachronic accounts also how that the Aztec rulers sacrificed their own blood to ensure the well-being of their subjects. The six parts to each chapter in Discovering the Global Past reflect an attempt to consider multifarious historical events and periods in a systematic, pedagogic manner. on that point is also a thorough investigation of the root causes of the cultural bias which has become an almost ingrained part of most models of historical study regarding the Native American civilizations. Most of the colonial accounts of the Aztec empire were develop during the years of the siege of Tenochtitlan by the Spaniards under the leadership ofHernan Cortes. Perhaps it can be argued that the racism of the European colonizers, triggered by religious orthodoxy, was the first governing cause which shaped the colonial impulse. The flawed academic onrush of presentism, too, can be attributed to certain kind of racism, and an inability to understand or appreciate other cultures . Presentism which tagged the Aztec ritual of human sacrifices as inhuman and barbaric

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