On Meso-American History

A brilliant podcast on Aztec and Mesoamerican history featuring Luke Caverns raises two interesting questions:

1. To what extent the images of human sacrifice among Aztecs are authentic, and how prevalent they were. Closer to home, we know that cases like Sati, child marriage, and caste discrimination have been heavily exaggerated by colonial accounts. Could this be the case with human sacrifice among the Aztecs too?

2. The Aztec language is part of a larger language family, the Ute-Aztecan family, which spreads from parts of western and southern USA all the way down to northern South America. In their own myth, the Aztecs migrated to Mexico from further north. But among everything we hear about them, they are never called “invaders.” The land they settled in (Mexico) is the land we know them by. Compare this to the Aryan frenzy in India, where thousands of years later we still battle with divisiveness over invader vs. indigenous!