When the Aztec’s did human sacrifice they cut out the heart of their victim and held it up. Did they do this while the victim was still alive? Was the victim conscious during this or knocked out first? What was their “standard operating procedure” for human sacrifice beginning to end?
Reading the Wikipedia article it infers the sacrifice was done while conscious.
That article says they sacrificed thousands of people a day. I can’t imagine how sadistic the priest must have had to be to live with themselves. I mean their victims screams and crys all day long, thousands of victims. Can you say PST? That makes those Mexican cartel beheading videos look tame. Are you sure they didnt club them over the head first?
I’ve never heard that. Depictions often show assistants holding the victim’s arms and legs, indicating that he or she was quite conscious.
This video describes the process. According to it, the heat was not cut out but ripped out instead.
How did they sleep at night ? I would think they would get post traumatic stress syndrome.
You’d think they would eventually run out of people, too.
Apparently, they got kudos for performing the sacrifice so rapidly, the victim could see their heart before they died. :eek:
They believed that what they did was necessary to nourish the sun and keep the Universe in existence.
Besides, they got a lot of time off between sacrifices and the benefits were good.
They probably stayed drunk or high.
You really don’t have to go all the way back to the Aztecs to wonder though.
Some say the decline of the Aztec empire began when their underwriters decided the Deliberate Death and Dismemberment coverage was just too risky to include in the annual benefits package anymore.
I asked my brother, who is a doctor (urologist), and my dad (cardiologist) if you can actually get a heart out easily and in short time. They said even with today’s technology, no. The heart is securely in place not by the arteries and veins that feed it but also by supporting tissue. But, even before that, getting through the rib cage would be no easy task as that requires a bone saw to get through the ribs or sternum. Going underneath through the diaphragm is also no easy matter as that is a strong muscle which would be convulsing as you spasm (for breath in total panic) and then you have to make your way up to the heart, cut the massive veins and arteries, cut the connecting tissue, entirely by touch.
I guess you could do something ala Mythbuster style and use a dead pig and see how long it would take to get to the heart and remove it. With the massive blood loss I’d imagine you’d have a scant minute or two before they either pass out or die. The true test would be to use tools of the time. Which, if they had access to a volcano, would be a knife made from obsidian. That would help greatly else they’d be stuck with flint? stone?
I really doubt this could ever happen - loss of consciousness occurs very rapidly when blood pressure to the brain drops, and it doesn’t drop any faster than with traumatic aortic and pulmonary rupture.
However, they had a lot of practice, and probably came up with some efficient procedure that a modern cardiologist possibly wouldn’t think about (since his job doesn’t involve removing hearts as quickly as possible).
Pretty sure - the skulls of victims usually don’t show any signs of head trauma. Knocking someone over the head hard enough to knock them out usually does leave a mark. Also, it was very important to their theology that the beating heart be offered to the god(s). They wouldn’t want to risk accidentally killing their victims prior to cutting their hearts out.
Oh, and it’s also suspected that the meat from their victims was consumed. Yeah, they were cannibals, too.
It’s wasn’t just ripping hearts out, though - there were all sorts of other ways of sacrificing human beings. Flaying. Killing children - which had to be crying at the time of sacrifice. More.
Not really people I’d want as neighbors.
Yeah, but it’s not like they kept score by asking the victim “Hey, did you see your beating heart?” afterwards. They just have to pull it out fast enough that observers might imagine that that happened to get the kudos.
They didn’t see what they did as evil, they saw it as good. It was necessary to keep the universe in existence. In their civilization they were the good guys. They probably slept just fine.
They did not go through the rib cage. Part of the reason for the posture of the victim, spread over a stone and bent backward, was to tilt the ribcage for a more favorable angle going up through the diaphragm.
Also, don’t suppose every sacrifice was in a panic - in some circumstances it was a great honor to be sacrifice, it was absolute insurance of a wonderful afterlife. Some walked up the pyramid and laid down on the stone of their own free will.
Of course, lots of others went struggling and screaming.
Doesn’t matter if the victim passes out or dies (the latter was sort of the point of human sacrifice), what mattered was that the heart still beat. Which is will do outside of the body for a short time.
They certainly did have obsidian. Also, don’t discount the effectiveness of flint tools. Flint can achieve a razor sharp edge. Metal is easier to resharpen, but until you get to decent iron and steel stone blades can be superior to copper and bronze in some applications. The Aztecs had gold and silver, but not harder metals. Their cutting tools were stone and volcanic glass.
Are you one of those people who lacks pain receptors in their nerves?
I can think of no other reason you might think some sacrifice victims weren’t in a panic.
A man was digging their heart out with a knife.
One of the main reasons Aztecs went to war was to obtain sacrificial victims. So no, they weren’t just stepping up to be killed. The crowning of a new King was one of these situations. He would lead them on a war to show he could kick ass and to collect a lot of enemy prisioners whose sacrifice would honor and legitimise his reign.
Your physician relatives are wrong, or you are misquoting them.
I could easily get a heart out in less than 15 seconds with a modern knife and a few volunteers on which to practice.
I’m not sure if you are implying it didn’t actually happen, or didn’t happen rapidly enough for the victim to retain consciousness…
It actually happened, of course, and I think a competent operator with experience should be able to get a heart out of a properly restrained donor within 30-60 seconds, even with a relatively crude stone blade.
It is incorrect that much of anything (“supporting tissue,” e.g.) besides the great vessels keep the heart “securely in place.” It flops around freely inside its pericardium, and in fact needs to do so in order to properly function. Of the great vessels, only the aorta and the pulmonary artery are very tough. Either of those would still easily tear away given a strong grip and a good yank by a hand grabbing the heart where they attach.
The approach is sub-diaphragmatic. A deep gouge and rip to open up the abdominal cavity; a slice through the diagphragm and pericardial sac (which are both quite thin); reach in to grab the heart, wrenching it away from the great vessels at the cephalad end. Perhaps another gouge to sever the aortic root.
We’re not talking thoracic surgery here, with intent to repair after we’re done cutting.
As to the mythbuster pig idea:
Somehow (based on my very limited work experience with pigs (summer on a farm), and fondness for chicharon) I suspect a pig has a tougher abdominal wall. I am prepared to be corrected on that point.
A little bit on the “Flower Wars” the Aztecs engaged in with their neighbors, the Tlaxcalans. It seems like the Tlaxcalans agreed (under duress) to participate in these limited battles, which were conducted only to capture sufficient prisoners for sacrifice. I suspect the Tlaxcalan “willingness” was a case of Finlandization – where a weaker country modifies its own policies to conform to the desires of a militarily stronger neighbor, in order to avoid provoking that neighbor into conquest. Although they participated in the Flower Wars, apparently willingly, while there was no other choice, as soon as the Spanish Conquistadors showed up, after some hard fights that showed the Tlaxcalans just how formidable the Spanish were, the Tlaxcalans allied with them to bring down the Aztec Empire (it’s doubtful Hernán Cortés could have succeeded without Tlaxcalan troops and aid.)
Contrary to what one might expect, the Spanish more-or-less honored their treaty with the Tlaxcalans for 300 years, so it looks like the Tlaxcalans made the best choice available.
Could some of the victims have been high on some ceremonial libation?
Pregnancy is hardly a concern at that point. I don’t think I would have put in my diaphragm.