Me: Twenty Seconds to Immortality

[Mark David Morris]

F. Schwaller and all,


Luis Reyes at times questioned the accuracy of post-conquest descriptions
of sacrifice.  His main point was that Mesoamerican ideas of sacrifice
were highly symbolic and malleable making simple equations of the
sacrifice of a person and death problematic.  He cited, in particular, two
documents he had read. One related events of child sacrifice in the lower
Puebla-Mixteca region that struck him as curious because at one point it
stated that the children sacrificed the previous year were not sacrificed
the following year.  Another, I think from the same region, related the
sacrifice of a captive in a new fire ceremony.  In this case, the captive
who lent his chest for the ceremony unexpectedly died and restorative
damages had to be paid to his home community.  Similar circumstances can
be found in many communities across Mexico where people profess that
bridges and other works are built over "skulls and bones," in reference to
the labor invested in them.  He suggested that a close reading of
Tezozomoc's account of the massive sacrifices of captives at the Templo
Mayor gave a similar impression and that the three figures arriving there
in the Telleriano-Remensis might represent corps of laborers instead of
heart offerings.  He published an argument along these lines in an edited
volume whose citation escapes at the moment.  The Tlaxcalan chronicler,
Zapata y Mendoza who worked from older sources, however, plainly insists
that, among zapotecas, tlapanecas, huextzincas and tziuhcohuacas, 88,400
macehualli "died" at the 1487 dedication.  Regarding physiology, if the
heart can be removed in 20 seconds, in what time does a person sans heart
become brain dead?


best,
Mark Morris





















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La muerte tiene permiso a todo

MDM, PhD Candidate
Dept. of History, Indiana Univ.