Me: Twenty Seconds to Immortality

Tue Apr 20 20:15:05 UTC 2004

Listeros,

It's also worthwhile to recall what R.C. Padden said about this almost
forty years ago in The Hummingbird and the Hawk, (Harper and Row, 1967;
n12, p.284).  In there he cites a study a study almost 60 years old by
Sherburne F. Cook.  Cook perhaps underestimated that it took two minutes to
extract a heart, but Padden also notes the variety of sacrificial
conditions and how the speed would have varied.

Also, does this rapid rate of extraction in the new study account for the
unruliness of living people, or the numbers of skilled extractors one would
have to have to keep up the pace (for example) for the 96 straight hours
that Duran's example requires?  Sahagun also says that, in at least some
sacrificial rituals, the bodies were rolled down the steps, carted away and
then divided up among certain recipients.  One might have been capable of
extracting a heart in 17-20 seconds, but then what?  There's more to this
than getting a heart out of an already lifeless body; one also has to do
something with that body.  And somebody has to do all that.

Moreover, has anyone considered the ecological issues in this?  Somewhere
many years ago, I heard somebody claim that the disposal of 80, 400 bodies
(the number Duran gives for that famous example), or even 11, 520 bodies
(the number Cook came up with) would have really messed up the delicate
ecology of the Basin of Mexico.  I.e., what did they do with all the
bodies?  Bernard Ortiz de Montellano suggests that only some people ate
only certain parts of those bodies (the thigh apparently was big); what
happened to the rest?  And, what did it do to the environment, if it really
happened?

I tend to agree with some of the other respondents to this, that it's good
to treat our sources with a very heavy dose of suspicion and caution.  Not
only because they themselves come from authors who presume certain
realities, but also because we ourselves come from situations that presume
certain realities.

My question, I guess, is why are we still concerned with the numbers of
sacrifice?  The sources are rich with a huge number of wonderful issues and
topics; why is this still a burning question at least 60 years later.  By
the way they burned and decapitated people, and shot people with arrows,
among other things too, why are we so hung up on the heart extractions?  Is
this really, really important for our understanding of Aztec sacrifice or,
more generally, of Aztec worldviews, or does the question itself say
something important about ourselves?

Just some food for thought.

Kay Read

At 05:30 PM 4/20/2004 +0000, zorrah at ATT.NET wrote:
>This message (below) was sent to the entire list, although it was
>addressed to "Colleagues."  So, I'm going to respond anyway even though
>some may not consider me "a colleague."
>
>Question:  Can you please operationalize what you mean by the "reality of
>the Mexica Aztec and
>other Mesoamerican civilizations" in your final sentence?  Are you trying
>to reconstruct what you think was the reality of the Mexica Aztec or what
>exactly do you mean?  Also, how does this "reality" connect with results
>from an experiment on a synthetic human cadever?  How can the results of
>this experiment and a citation from Francis Berdan - provide anyone with a
>credible representation of the "reality of the Mexica Aztec"?  What is
>this reality based on - theory?
>
>Thanks for your response,
>
>citlalin xochime
>Nahuatl Tlahtolkalli
>http://nahuatl.info/nahuatl.htm
>
>
>
> > Dear Colleagues,
> >
> >          I have just reviewed the Discovery video titled "Unsolved
> > History: Aztec Temple."   Among the conclusions drawn via
> > experimentation with a synthetic cadaver (of the sort created for
> > military experimentation to test the effects of minefield damage
> > to human tissue) is that it takes between 17 and 20 seconds to
> > extract a human heart from below the sternum with a flint knife.
> >
> >          A professor from the University of Cincinnati, Barry
> > Isaac, has estimated that it would take approximately 2 minutes
> > per sacrifice to position the captive, extract the heart, and
> > tumble the captive down the steps of the Templo Mayor.  By his
> > calculations, at 2 minutes per captive, 30 men or women could
> > have been sacrificed at each altar stone per hour.  He concludes
> > that in a 10 hour day 300 captives could be dispatched, and over
> > a four day period (as in the mass sacrifice of 1487) some 1,200
> > captives were dispatched at each temple or altar site.
> >
> >          Given the projected 19 altars used from throughout the
> > city of Tenochtitlan, Professor Isaac concludes that 1200
> > multiplied by 19 altars comes to about 22,800.  It is this figure
> > that approximates the 20,000 captive offerings that Francis
> > Berdan cites from the Codex Telleriano-Remensis.  Berdan, prior
> > to the experiments in question, in turn concluded that it would
> > not have been possible to excise a beating human heart in anything
> > under 5 minutes.  If, in fact, as the experiment demonstrated, one
> > attempts to cut through the sternum with a flint or chert knife,
> > then it is likely that the effort will fail.  On the other hand,
> > by slicing or cutting the area below the sternum from end to end,
> > one can in fact excise a still beating heart within the time frame
> > noted.
> >
> >          Ultimately, the experiment demonstrated that such an act
> > could have been performed in about 20 seconds...while of course,
> > a well experienced executioner may have performed the feat in
> > less time. Any thoughts on this matter would be appreciated,
> > particularly as I am currently in the throes of considering
> > perspectives that both advocate the idea that mass human
> > sacrifice was, or was not, the reality of the Mexica Aztec and
> > other Mesoamerican civilizations.
> >
> > Best Regards,
> >
> > Ruben G. Mendoza, Ph.D., Director
> > Institute for Archaeological Science, Technology and Visualization
> > Social and Behavioral Sciences
> > California State University Monterey Bay
> > 100 Campus Center
> > Seaside, California 93955-8001
> >
> > Email: archaeology_institute at csumb..edu
> > Voice: 831-582-3760
> > Fax: 831-582-3566
> > http://archaeology.csumb.edu
> > http://archaeology.csumb.edu/wireless/
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