Hacking and stabbing is the image, but it seems to be incorrect. One objection to the impossibility of the large number of sacrifices was the time it took to cut out the heart. People assumed the Aztecs cut through the ribs and sternum to get to the heart and this would take a long time. However, one researcher, I can’t recall his name, showed it was possible if the Aztecs went below the sternum. A simple slice there and one could go in, grab the heart and cut off the arteries and veins in about a minute.
The OP questioned the willingness to slaughter and be slaughtered for an extinct religion. I posted 2 examples of similar behaviour for existing religions, one past one current. I’m not really seeing your objection.
We currently have suicide bombers willing to die for their religion in gruesome manners. I don’t suppose the mentality between being a willing sacrifice and suicide bomber is that different.
The point had already been made in the post before yours. While it is a valid observation, I just don’t want to see this thread veer off into a hijack about modern suicide bombers.
Please see my previous post in this thread. The point about modern suicide bombers has been made three times now; we don’t need to keep reiterating it.
Will a human heart actually keep beating once it’s traumatically excised from the body? If it does keep beating, why? Wouldn’t severing the nerve connections remove the electric impulse that signals the muscle to contract?
The heart produces its own rhythmic impulses originating in the sinoatrial node and atrioventricular nodes (the natural pacemakers) Unless these nodes are severed from the rest of the heart (difficult to do, as they are internal to the heart), the heat will continue to spontaneously beat outside the body for a short time.
Yes, for a brief period of time. In fact, excising the heart and holding it up, still beating, to the sun was a feature of many Aztec sacrifices.
Nope. The heart contains it’s own, self-contained pacing system, called a “pacemaker”, that coordinates the contraction and relaxation from within the heart itself. (Failure of the natural pacemaker necessitates the implantation of an artificial one, which has become quite routine these days).
In fact, an isolated heart cell will continue to beat for a brief time, and two such that make contact will start beating in unison. Although the brain and other body signals can affect the heart rate and rhythm, the heart’s basic beating comes from within the heart itself.
This, by the way, is why transplanted hearts, which have all nerve connections to a body severed, function after being implanted into their donors. The transplanted heart still self-generates a heartbeat.
On a related note, is there a correlation with the Spanish Conquistadors (esp. Cortes) being linked to Quetzalcoatl, one of the few gods that (iirc) was said to dislike human sacrifice?
