Long before the arrival of the Spanish, the people of Teotihuacan rose up against the ruling class in part to end sacrifices. The temple has clear signs of being ransacked, with statues destroyed by axes, and no remains of sacrifice victims found from after this time.

After this, they seem to have set up a proto-communist society, particularly focusing on building large, luxurious apartments for all resident families. “Neighborhoods” of these apartments would elect representatives to the city council.

They also built what’s functionally a spite building to hide the temple. The temple originally would’ve been at the end of the main central boulevard, but a new building was put up in front of it to block the sight line because who wants to look at that ugly church where they used to kill people.

It’s more than hypocrisy of the Spanish conquerors to “disagree” with human sacrifices. Aren’t they just coming from the latest autodafe where they burned hundreds of heretics in the name of god? I think when witnessing the Aztecs’ human sacrifices they were more like: “Ah, right, this feels familiar.”

I saw some chuds doing colonialist apology by arguing pre-Columbus Americans were savages and already genociding each others.

I started to believe we must isolate Europe and Anglo-America from the rest of the world, so they can kill each other without bothering the rest.

excess labor power

Pre-Malthusian Malthusians

Reminding me to get around to making a macuahuitl

Good thing that the meme is muted. I wouldn’t want to know what it sounds like.

Early Aztec warfare was balanced around capturing opponents instead of killing them. Ritual sacrifice probably developed as a response to the dilemma of ‘do we just send enemy combatants back for them to do the same thing again?’