I just got around to watching Apocalypto. During the sacrifice scenes what I took as the ruler or emperor, as he is watching the captives being killed, looks very dazed. Was this to imply he was in a state of religious mania, chemical euphoria or maybe a genetically challenged figurehead of state? And on an historical consideration, I have read debates on what caused the downfall of the Incan civilization. Could part of the theory be that bringing in tribes from around the countryside to sacrifice have brought in diseases that were isolated to the smaller tribes until they were rounded up and brought into the larger cities? And what about having so many rotting corpses? I have read where thousands were sacrificed in a day. That would be a health nightmare on its own. And one silly “I saw it in the movies” question. In film or on TV it always looks so easy to rip out someone’s heart. I would think getting into the chest cavity, gabbing an attached organ and pulling it out in one piece would be very hard or next to impossible. So, how hard is it to rip out an organ with just your hands?
Well, both times I tried it, the biggest problem was how slippery they are.
Well, never having done it myself, so just a WAG here, but I would think after performing it a few hundred times, you would get to be pretty proficient at it. You would know where the weak attachment points are, know the best places to grab on to were, etc.
Mayan. There is no argument about what brought down the Incas - Spanish soldiers ( and numerous native auxiliaries of course ) + their diseases.
The problem here, and it is one that the film has been criticized for, is that there is a lot of conflation of different periods and peoples from Mesoamerica. The Mayans practiced human sacrifice, but the industrial killing-floor-type approach was an Aztec innovation ( the whole line of prisoners, extract the heart, dump the body down the stairs thing was taken directly from an account of one type of Aztec sacrifice ). There wouldn’t have been thousands of corpses to be disposed of by the Mayans and there is zero evidence of mass open graves of sacrificed victims near population centers. There isn’t even much evidence for mass slavery. Scenes like those ( or the pyramid itself, which dates back to a centuries earlier culture ) were added for visceral and visual impact, not historical verisimilitude.
With the Aztecs, apparently the guts were often used as animal feed, there may have been a very minor amount of ritual cannibalism, the rest disposed of in various ways including bleached trophies for display, burnt up, etc.
These folks would have been practiced at it and using sharp flint or obsidian blades. Sever a few major vessels and I think you’re pretty much done. I doubt it was a brute strength affair.
As for this part: I took his expression as “jaded/bored”. After the first seven hundred human sacrifices, they all sorta blur together.
He was probably thinking of all the sacrifices he makes for his job…
Yeah, his routine is very disheartening.
The heart removing thing…
A few years back, I saw something on History or Discovery about this. They had two guys using a stone (I think) knife to see how fast they could remove a heart. I think they were using pigs, like Mythbusters sometimes does. Anyway, there were two theories on how thousands of hearts could be removed in a few days. Basically, what is the procedure, shortest amount of time, etc? One thought was to cut through the sternum, right above the heart. The other was to cut the muscles just below the sternum, then reach up and cut out the heart. Below the sternum proved to be much quicker and more efficient.
I see what you did there.
And the award for best pun of the thread goes to…
I thought his expression denoted that he was unhappy about sharing power with the priest, but baffled by the priest’s “magic” powers and his ability to manipulate the crowd.