Barrel Strength

William H. Prescott’s “History of the Conquest of Mexico” chronicles perhaps the most startling interchange between any two human civilizations, the cannibalistic Aztecs and the deeply chivalrous Roman Catholic gold-seekers of Spain. After recounting the almost incredible military exploits of the Spanish, who were almost wiped out once, and who terminated the war with a Stalingrad-style street by street slaughter though the streets of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, against fanatical and unyielding Aztec resistance, Prescott summarizes the history of the Aztecs thus:

“The Aztecs not only did not advance the condition of their vasals, but, morally speaking, they did much to degrade it. How can a nation, where human sacrifices prevail, and especially when combined with cannibalism, further the march of civilization? How can the interestes of humanity be consulted, where man is levelled to the rank of the brutes that perish? The influence of the Aztecs introduced their gloomy superstition into lands before unacquainted with it, or where, at least, it was not established in any great strength. The example of the capital was contagious. As the latter increased in opulence, the religious celebrations were conducted with still more terrible magnificence; in the same manner, as the gladiatorial shows of the Romans increased in pomp with the increasing splendor of the capital. Men became familiar with scenes of horror and the most loathsome abominations. Women and children – the whole nation – became familiar with, and assisted at them. The heart was hardened, the manners were made ferocious, the feeble light of civilization, transmitted from a milder race, was growing fainter and fainter, as thousands and thousands of miserable victims throughout the empire, were yearly fattened in its cages, sacrificed on its altars, dressed and served on its banquets!  The whole land was converted into a vast human shambles! The Aztec empire did not fall before its time.”

An empire built on cannibalism and live human sacrifice? How can that be? At the level of nutrition, the Indians of North America had no beasts of burden and no domestic animals larger than a turkey. Jared Diamond suggests that, however inefficient as a food source, human cannibalism might have supplied the conquering tribes with badly needed protein. Feeding the sun god  with human hearts, and the rest of the population with sacrificed human beings, might have been a solution to the problem, as well as a religiously sanctioned form of terrorism .

Now, if you have the time, I refer you to the documentary of Peter Tetteroo and Raymond Feddema on North Korea. It describes a society as attached to its leadership as the Aztecs were to theirs. The significant difference, of course, is that the North Koreans have not yet gone to live human heart sacrifices to feed their gods, Kim Il-Sung and his son, Kim Jong-Il, and to relieve their protein deficiency. But these people have been isolated for only 55 years. The Aztecs were isolated from the rest of the world for 15,000, after the end of the last ice age disconnected Asia from the Americas. At the rate at which they are drawing apart from the rest of the human race, we will not have long to wait for live human sacrifices, which will be a way they can clean out their concentration camps.