The Aztecs: Should Historians Emphasize Agriculture or Human Sacrifice?

The Aztecs: Should Historians Emphasize Agriculture or Human Sacrifice?

The Aztecs are remarkably intelligent, powerful, and complex people. Their society started in 1350 and it continued to be a thriving one until 1519, during these years the Aztecs manages to accomplished many extraordinary things like creating an agriculture system call chinampas and building a strong military. What was the thriving force behind such successful people? Perhaps it's their religion. The Aztec people worships 128 major deities, their main god is Huitzilopochtli the sun god. They believe that Huitzilopochtli's duties were to keep the night at bay and bring warmth to the earth. They also believed that they can provide him the strength he needs to complete his job with human blood and hearts. These beliefs led the Aztecs to the disturbing practice of human sacrifice. So should historians highlight the Aztecs agricultural successes or their practice of human sacrifice? In my opinion, historians should focus on human sacrifice because it was a significant part of Aztec culture, it was a massive event, and it's more misleading than agriculture.

Human sacrifice was a very important part of the Aztec people, royalties or peasants. Aztec warriors are known for being fierce and they usually obtain land through force. At its peak, the Aztec empire was about 80,000 square miles. But if you look at a map of the Aztec Empire you'll see some land spaces that are in Aztec territory but has not been conquer. Why would such a power hungry society leave easily acquire land alone? The answer relates to human sacrifice, these land spaces were deliberately put there as unoccupied lands for "flower wars". The Aztecs would use the people in there as for as a source of flowers (captured sacrifice victims).. From 1427 to 1520, Aztec had 6 different rulers. All of the six acquired more land during their reign but they still leave the flower wars land alone. This show how important human sacrifice was to the Aztec people, they are worry enough about not having sufficient amount victims to sacrifice that they leave land for them. This also shows that human sacrifice was not just an event done by superstitious peasants; it was endorsed by the Aztec government.

From pictures and stories you can see that human sacrifice was a massive event for the Aztec

people. The immensity of this event can be told through a book by Friar Diego Duran, a Spanish

priest who lived in Mexico. Diego Duran's book is one of the earliest Western accounts of the

Aztec people. His book gives us a clear idea of what happens during a human sacrifice

ceremony. "The sacrifice began at midday and end at nightfall. Two thousand three hundred

men were killed and their blood bathed the entire temple and stairway." Diego Duran also described the gruesome process of the ceremony which the priest slice open the tribute's chest, extract their heart then roll them down the temple steps. Looking at pictures of the temple where the men were sacrifice you can see that it's a colossal structure and just to imagine that whole temple painted red by blood is just absolutely astonishing. If they kill 2,300 men a year, it means that if they would kill at least 6 people a day if they do it daily. This is such a massive amount of bloodshed for just one god. From this you can see how important they thought satisfying Huitzilopochtli was.

Another reason that historians should focus