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Cannibalism in the Americas has been practiced in many places throughout much of the history of North America and South America. The modern term " cannibal " is derived from the name of the Island Caribs (Kalinago), who were encountered by Christopher Columbus in The Bahamas .
Sacrifice was a common theme in the Aztec culture. In the Aztec "Legend of the Five Suns", all the gods sacrificed themselves so that mankind could live.Some years after the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, a body of the Franciscans confronted the remaining Aztec priesthood and demanded, under threat of death, that they desist from this traditional practice.
According to Bernardino de Sahagún, the Aztecs believed that, if sacrifices were not given to Tlaloc, the rain would not come and their crops would not grow. Archaeologists have found the remains of 42 children sacrificed to Tlaloc (and a few to Ehecátl Quetzalcóatl) in the offerings of the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan .
The Aztecs [a] (/ ˈ æ z t ɛ k s / AZ-teks) were a Mesoamerican civilization that flourished in central Mexico in the post-classic period from 1300 to 1521. The Aztec people included different ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica from the 14th to the 16th centuries.
Important rituals such as the dedication of major building projects or the enthronement of a new ruler required a human sacrificial offering. The sacrifice of an enemy king was the most prized offering, and such a sacrifice involved the decapitation of the captive ruler in a ritual reenactment of the decapitation of the Maya maize god by the Maya death gods. [1]
The Aztecs were conquered by Spain in 1521 after a long siege of the capital, Tenochtitlan, where much of the population died from hunger and smallpox. Cortés, with 508 Spaniards, did not fight alone but with as many as 150,000 or 200,000 allies from Tlaxcala , and eventually other Aztec tributary states.
Photos of cannibals around the world: In India, exiled Aghori monks of Varanasi drink from human skulls and eat human flesh as part of their rituals to find spiritual enlightenment.
Coatlicue statue, unknown Aztec artist, 1439 or 1491, Andesite, National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City, Mexico. Cōālīcue, or "Snakes-Her-Skirt", is an Aztec earth goddess who is known as the "mother of the gods". [15] As her name suggests, the main iconographic trait of Cōālīcue is her skirt made of interwoven snakes.