Very interesting. I was watching a documentary about the Aztecs the other day and it talked about how there were accounts of these towers holding hundreds of skulls. The skulls were taken from prisoners in battle and Aztec battle tactics were less about killing the enemy but about taking prisoners for sacrifice.
cool! well, maybe not for the owners of those skulls. the main cathedral in mexico city was built from the stones of the aztec temples. the templo mayor is right next to the cathedral and you can tour it. definitely check it out if you ever go to mexico city. im guessing thats where they discovered the skull rack. i was there about 10 years ago and they were doing a lot of archeological digs around there. when the spanish conquered tenochtitlan they basically just razed everything and built mexico city on top of the aztec capital so all these temples were hiding just underground for centuries. they only discovered the templo mayor in the late 70's when the electric company was putting new lines in. aztecs were dicks to all their neighbors and thats the main reason why the spanish were able to conquer them. and rocketsjudoka is correct...aztecs didnt try to kill their enemies in battle...they wanted to take them prisoner to bring them back to tenochtitlan for sacrifice. they believed that the sun needed human blood in order to rise every day. they would march prisoners up to the top of the temple, four priests would hold down their arms and legs and stretch them out over a huge stone while the head priest cut their chest open with an obsidian blade and pulled out their still beating heart, just like in indiana jones and the temple of doom. they would then cut off the the head and roll the body down the temple steps. the aztecs would also often eat their victims and flay them and wear their skin during ceremonial dances. supposedly, when this temple was completed the aztecs christened it by sacrificing tens of thousands of people over the course of just 4 days. during the battle of tenochtitlan the aztecs actually captured cortez on more than one occasion and could have killed him on the spot, but they wanted to sacrifice him, but his soldiers were able to rescue him. the spanish could actually watch their captured comrades being sacrificed from their encampments outside the city each night. and the aztecs would taunt them during battle by rolling the heads of sacrificed spaniards towards them like bowling balls. aztecs were f***ing psychos.
ive had more than one trumper friend/relative tell me that he was going to take over mexico in order to put a stop to the cartels. hes still got a month!
Hot damn. Neil having a great night. He didn't want to stop playing. A perfect example of what you miss by not seeing the best live.
europoean diseases ended up wiping out about 90% of the native population so i would say it was pretty bad.
read a Sci-Fi book by Orson Scott Card called Pastwatch (spoilers) that postulated that Christopher Columbus was the turning point to the eventual end of the world, so the future people start mucking around with the past to try to prevent it, but at one point alternate futures screw things up, Europe exhausts it's resources in a prolonged war against the Muslim countries, and meanwhile the Aztecs keep developing and go through an industrial revolution and conquer Europe while still keeping their bloody religion. .
