USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Also, as hard as it is to imagine, many captured soldiers, slaves and Aztec citizens went willingly to the sacrificial altar. To give your heart to Huitzilopochtli was a tremendous honor and a guaranteed ticket to a blessed afterlife fighting in the sun god’s army against the forces of darkness.

Detailed explanation-2: -The most common form of human sacrifice was heart-extraction. The Aztec believed that the heart (tona) was both the seat of the individual and a fragment of the Sun’s heat (istli). The chacmool was a very important religious tool used during sacrifices. The cut was made in the abdomen and went through the diaphragm.

Detailed explanation-3: -During festivals of the Aztec calendar, sacrificial victims would be adorned to appear as a god. After they were decapitated, the bodies of the victims would be gifted to noblemen and important members of the community. 16th century illustrations show body parts being cooked in large pots.

Detailed explanation-4: -Woodrow Borah an authority on the demography of ancient Mexico at the University of California, Berkeley, has recently estimated that the Aztecs sacrificed 250, 000 people a year.

Detailed explanation-5: -The Spanish records relate mostly to the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, where sacrifices took place 18 times every year, with around 60 victims each time. A human sacrifice was dedicated to one of the gods, so the form of sacrifice varied accordingly.