The Aztecs believed their gods needed human blood.

Question

1. The Aztecs believed their gods needed human blood.

Answer 1

The topic of ritual sacrifice is not an easy one to understand. The Aztecs did indeed practice ritual human sacrifice - and so have many other people throughout time.

In fact, sacrificing animals to the gods had been almost a universal ritual in premodern cultures, though in many places, this became increasingly symbolized by other forms of sacrifice. So, in many cases, first an animal sacrifice might come to replace an original human sacrifice, and then later a symbolic token or plant food might come to replace the animal sacrifice. Cookies or biscuits baked into the shape of little men, for example, become the symbolic sacrifice. We still have little gingerbread men and similar during our ritual seasons. And Catholic Eucharist still symbolically drinks the blood and eats the flesh of the sacrificed son.

It is very easy to simply be horrified by practices like human sacrifice. The massive scale of Aztec victims is, truly, horrifying. However, I would suggest that before one can really judge such ancient practices, one should try to understand what they meant for our ancestors and why they were done. After all, in a general sense, our ancestors with their sacrifices took better care of the Earth than we are today. Perhaps their sacrifices to that Earth might have been related to that fact… We can’t know until we understand what those sacrifices really were and what function they really served. And that requires a much deeper study and consideration.