The Briefing Room
General Category => Science, Technology and Knowledge => Archaeology => Topic started by: PeteS in CA on August 30, 2019, 07:58:34 pm
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Grisly Discovery Suggests The Inca Ritually Mounted 'Trophy Heads' as Display of Power (https://www.sciencealert.com/the-inca-mounted-trophy-heads-in-gruesome-display-of-power-skull-discovery-reveals)
It was the largest, most elaborate society the Americas had ever seen. And it was about to come to an abrupt end.
By the Late Horizon of the Inca Empire, the epic civilisation stretched all the way from Colombia in the north to Chile in the south. Imperial fortunes would soon change – violently, at the hands of Spanish conquistadors – but before the curtain fell, the kingdom was truly vast.
How did the Inca maintain their grip over such an expansive, disparate empire?
With force, and the gruesome threat of it, a new study suggests.
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Anthropologists Francisco Garrido and Catalina Morales analysed four severed and fragmented skulls dated to the Late Horizon era, which were buried in isolation among trash and without their bodies in CopiapoÌ Valley in northern Chile.
According to the researchers, these decapitated heads reveal modifications including orifices in the cranium vault and defleshing marks in the mandible. The team suggests these marks indicate the skulls were most likely mounted as "trophy heads, used in ritualistic displays of power over local subjects of the new imperial provinces".
The trophy heads were discovered in a prehispanic village called Iglesia Colorada, the largest settlement in CopiapoÌ Valley, a region the Inca mined for copper.
OK, the obligatory preemptive answer to the predictable objection: the Spanish were greedy, brutal conquerors. But what this illustrates is the much less emphasized fact that as brutal as the Spanish were, the societies they replaced were worse, even FAR worse. Of the three major societies the Spanish displaced - the Aztecs, Mayans, and Incas - all three practiced human sacrifice.
Don't glance over those words, but let them soak in: Human Sacrifice. The Aztecs ripped the beating hearts from their live victims' slashed-open chests. The Inca bound and drugged their victims and left them to die of exposure in isolated caves. And now, evidence that the Inca used trophy displays to intimidate those they conquered, much as the brutal Romans left dead bodies hung on crosses to intimidate the restive among their conquered subjects.
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It wasn't just human sacrifice as a once in while ceremony. It was daily. And they sacrificed dozens even hundreds of people per day. One of those tribes, don't remember which one, believed that if their God did not receive enough blood every day, the sun would not rise the next morning.
I have to wonder what could have been if they did not kill all those hundreds of thousands of slaves. I mean to say, that at least part of the reason they disappeared so suddenly may have been due to the fact that they were 'sacrificing' a significant percentage of their population.
Jeez man, let them live and build and and farm and reproduce. A dead slave is no good to anyone. Apparently they did not see things this way.
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Posters are on the mark!!!
Human sacrifice, marks the tribal cultures of Latin America as well as Africa and while such
behavior is passive now, it remains in their genetic make-op.
History records those cultures/societies that survived and thrived, through the centuries.
Despite their warts, those that prospered exhibited far more virtue than vice, while others
hardly understood the difference.
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This is impossible. Everybody knows North American indigenous peoples were all peaceful lovers of nature until Europeans showed up.
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There was a reason many of the indigenous peoples of Mexico supported the Spanish when the first arrived, and the reason was the Aztecs.
Mayan human sacrifice seems to have been different from Aztec, with the latter sacrificing war captives and slaves, and the former using at least in part willing victims: it was the winners of the Mayan sacred ball game who were sacrificed, not the losers.
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Posters are on the mark!!!
Human sacrifice, marks the tribal cultures of Latin America as well as Africa and while such
behavior is passive now, remains in their genetic make-op.
History records those cultures/societies that survived and thrived, through the centuries.
Despite their warts, those that prospered exhibited far more virtue than vice, while others
hardly understood the difference.
Passive? Say what???
According to WHO, every year in the world there are an estimated 40-50 million abortions. This corresponds to approximately 125,000 abortions per day.
https://www.worldometers.info/abortions/ (https://www.worldometers.info/abortions/)
In the USA, where nearly half of pregnancies are unintended and four in 10 of these are terminated by abortion [1] , there are over 3,000 abortions per day.
The sacrifices are still going on, they just catch them early and have changed the names of their gods.
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Passive? Say what???
https://www.worldometers.info/abortions/ (https://www.worldometers.info/abortions/)
The sacrifices are still going on, they just catch them early and have changed the names of their gods.
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Fair point, Smokin !
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The Spanish brought them horses which was as significant to them as Apollo was to US.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/Apollo_11_Launched_Via_Saturn_V_Rocket.jpg)
*King Phillip V sent my Family here in 1726 to protect his investment, didn't work out too well for him either.
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Was there ever any doubt?
It takes big government to make giant monuments...
And that only ever turns out one way... :whistle:
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This is impossible. Everybody knows North American indigenous peoples were all peaceful lovers of nature until Europeans showed up.
I suppose there are those who still believe such farcical notions.
Tribal groups warred with each other & made slaves of one another.
As the Bible notes: The heart is deceitfully wicked, who can know it.
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I suppose there are those who still believe such farcical notions.
Tribal groups warred with each other & made slaves of one another.
As the Bible notes: The heart is deceitfully wicked, who can know it.
Some tribes were known for their ability to torture captives, and for limited cannibalism as well.