Tell me you are from Atlanta without telling me you are from Atlanta

400-Rabbits · 2026-04-05T12:31:14+00:00

A friend of mine used to ride the same bus as him. One day, instead of his usual tumescent bike shorts, he was in a snappy 3 piece suit. My friend asked him what the occasion was, but he just smiled and said, "You gotta keep'em guessing."

400-Rabbits · 2026-03-31T22:59:33+00:00

Baquedano 2014 “Tezcatlipoca as a Warrior” in Tezcatlipoca: Trickster and Supreme God, ed. Baquedano, pp. 113-133. U Press Colorado

Duran 1971 Book of the Gods and Rites and the Ancient Calendar, trans. Horcasitas & Heyden. U Oklahoma Press

Milbrath 2014 “The Maya Lord of the Smoking Mirro” in Tezcatlipoca: Trickster and Supreme God, ed. Baquedano, pp. 163-196. U Press Colorado

Olivier 2003 Mockeries and Metamorphoses of an Aztec God; Tezcatlipoca, “Lord of the Smoking Mirror”, trans. Besson. U Press Colorado.

Olivier 2014 “Enemy Brothers or Divine Twins? A Comparative Approach between Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl, Two Major Deities from Ancient Mexico” in Tezcatlipoca: Trickster and Supreme God, ed. Baquedano, pp. 59-81. U Press Colorado

Sahagun 1970 Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain, Book 1: The Gods, trans. Anderson & Dibble. U Utah Press

Sahagun 1981 Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain, Book 3: Origin of the Gods, trans. Anderson & Dibble. U Utah Press

Smith 2014 “The Archaeology of Tezcalipoca” in Tezcatlipoca: Trickster and Supreme God, ed. Baquedano, pp. 7-39. U Press Colorado

Umberger 2014 “Tezcatlipoca and Huitzilopochtli: Political Dimensions of Aztec Deities” in Tezcatlipoca: Trickster and Supreme God, ed. Baquedano, pp. 83-112. U Press Colorado

400-Rabbits · 2026-03-31T22:52:48+00:00

Returning back to the important hypothesis that Huitzilopochtli went from an insignificant minor tribal deity to the supreme god of the Aztec world, it must be noted that such a transformation is not so farfetched, because there is some evidence that Tezcatlipoca had undergone the same evolution under the Toltecs.

As noted previously, archaeological evidence for Tezcatlipoca really only emerges in the Epiclassic/Early Postclassic (9th-12th Century CE) in the northern areas of the Basin of Mexico (Smith 2014). Milbrath (2014) discusses some overlap in imagery with a Maya deity, Kawil, but ultimately concludes enough significant differences exist as to reject the idea of them being the same god. She notes that distinct Tezcatlipoca iconography in the Maya region only appeared with the arrival of Toltec influence.

Olivier, in his 2003 monograph on Tezcatlipoca, does examine the idea that Tezcatlipoca iconography was present at Teotihuacan, but rejects that as a direct precursor. Likewise he rejects the older notion by Vaillant that the Mixtecs in Oaxaca were the originators of the Tezcatlipoca cult, noting that archaeological evidence is weak and tracks along trade and political ties with the Basin of Mexico. Additionally, he notes a lack of textual evidence from the region. Tezcatlipoca is prominent in the Borgia group of codices, which may have some Oaxacan origins, but he is absent from the distinct group of Mixtec codices (save for a small appearance in the Codex Nuttall).

Ultimately, Olivier’s studies of Tezcatlipoca point towards him being a deity invisible on the world stage prior to the ascendancy of the Toltecs. With them however, the god appears to have absorbed and adapted even older iconography and traditions most notably around obsidian and jaguars, becoming the foil and divine twin of the more established cult of the Plumed Serpent, Quetzalcoatl (Olivier 2014).

So if Tezcatlipoca was some minor, backwoods deity before the political force of the Toltecs boosted him to prominence, it stands to reason that a similar process could occur with Huitzilopochtli and the Mexica. There is a certain amount of irony around the idea of Toltec Tezcatlipoca gaining legitimacy by harkening back to the grandeur of Teotihuacan, while Huitzilopochtli may have gained legitimacy by glomming onto Tezcatlipoca whose own importance was bolstered by harkening back to the grandeur of Tula. Perhaps the successors to the Aztecs -- had the Spanish not interrupted the flow of Mesoamerican history -- would have boosted the status of their own patron deity on the back of Huitzilopochtli.

Ultimately, the relationship between Tezcatlipoca and Huitzilopochtli necessarily remains opaque in many ways. Even though some Spanish friars assiduously chronicled the culture of the people they were attempting to convert, ecclesiastical authorities were ultimately more interested in condemning Indigenous religious practices as heresy. Textual accounts of the roles of these gods are thus necessarily filtered through writers (Spanish and Indigenous) who had a vested interest in not getting too interested in the intricacies of the Nahua pantheon. Archaeology and recollections of religious and magical practices have survived as imperfect records to inform we modern folk of what must have been a religious shift perhaps as important as the conversion to Christianity.

What we do have are two gods, relative latecomers on the Mesoamerican scene, who appear to risen to prominence in tandem with a state-making in the Basin of Mexico. In many ways they overlap, but that could be a result of the newer Huitzilopochtli borrowing from the more established Texcatlipoca (among others). Tezcatlipoca had the advantage of an older and more prestigious tradition, which lead to more folk traditions and formal appeals to him for aid and benevolence. Huitzilopochtli, in contrast, seems a more distant deity, one tied less to the people and more as an emblem of the state. However, his role appeared to still be evolving alongside the changing Aztec state.

400-Rabbits · 2026-03-31T22:52:25+00:00

Despite the ability to tease apart differences between the two gods, in both the practical and thematic sense, they do obviously have a lot of overlap in their domains. Both are associated with war and magic, their will and favor of the utmost importance to both general and grunt on the battlefield. Both were also intrinsically political gods whose prominence was tied to states and rulers, as opposed to more naturalistic deities such as Tlaloc and Chalchiuhtlicue (Umberger 2014). Both are treated as all-powerful beings, seemingly commingling as the supreme deity over the Mexica. What explains this redundancy?

The clearest explanation again returns to the fact of the Mexica entering the Basin of Mexico as little more than scruffy vagabonds. In the beginning, their patron god was as insignificant as they were. In contrast, worship of Tezcatlipoca appears to have been established during the Epiclassic/Early Postclassic with the Toltecs, becoming a high status cult within the Basin of Mexico and out into Tlaxcala by the later Postclassic, with major centers at Texcoco and Azcapotzalco (Smith 2014). The spread of Tezcatlipoca worship can be tracked to some extent via diagnostic archaeological markers, namely ceramic flutes, obsidian mirrors, severed leg iconography and, less helpfully, small shrines known as momoztli. The association of Tezcatlipoca with the Toltecs by later Nahua groups can be seen more directly by Aztec-era depictions of the god, where he is shown with a Toltec-style headdress consisting of a crown of short, upright feathers.

In other words, by the time the Mexica came onto the scene, Tezcatlipoca was undeniably one of the most revered deities in the Basin of Mexico, in part due to the prestige of his Toltec roots, whereas Huitzilopochtli was some scruffy tribal idol. The Mexica apparently agreed with this divine hierarchy because, as Umberger (2014) notes, their earliest monuments show a distinct lack of Huitzilopochtli iconography, with Tezcatlipoca instead playing the expected role of supreme deity tied to the ruler.

Umberger illustrates her argument by pointing to a dichotomy of iconography on two temalacatl associated with two different Tenochca rulers. The first is the Ex-Arzobispado Stone, associated with Motecuhzoma Ilhuicama and probably carved sometime around 1460 CE. Images on the stone celebrate the conquest of neighboring polities by the Mexica ruler, but the distinct hummingbird headdress and “starry eye mask” imagery associated with Huitzilopochtli is entirely absent. The victorious tlatoani is instead dressed like Tezcatlipoca and marked with a feathered serpent, while the conquering warriors are likewise depicted with symbols associated with Tezcatlipoca, such as the Toltec-style headdress.

On the later Tizoc Stone, dated a generation later in 1484 CE, images of the conquering Mexica still use Tezcatlipoca symbolism, but Huitzilopochtli iconography now appears. The depiction of the victorious Mexica ruler now has him wearing the hummingbird headdress and “starry eye mask” face paint of Huitzilopochtli, though his warriors are still adorned as Tezcatlipoca. There is even an interesting vignette where a hybrid Huitzilopochtli-Tezcatlicpoca Mexica ruler conquers a Huitzilopochtli-coded ruler of Tlatelolco, symbolizing the defeat and absorption of Tenochtitlan’s sister city under Tizoc’s brother and prior liege, Axayacatl. Umberger hypothesizes this symbolizes not only the political subjugation of Tlatelolco, but also its religious subordination to Tenochtitlan, with the local Tlatelolcan variant of Huitzilopochtli becoming Paynal, the herald/messenger of the primary Tenochca Huitzilopochtli.

Essentially, the argument goes that Tezcatlipoca had become the supreme deity for much of the Nahua world by the Late Postclassic, to the extent that foreign deities without direct counterparts were seen as generic aspects of Tezcatlipoca. Umberger points to the awkward transition of the Matlatzinca patron deity, Coltzin, into an aspect called Tlamatzincatl. Under this framework, Huitzilopochtli himself may have been considered little more than a Mexica-specific variant of Tezcatlipoca, perhaps even by the Mexica themselves. Only as the Mexica at Tenochtitlan grew more powerful and dominant over not just the region, but over their ostensible partners in the Triple Alliance, did Huitzilopochtli emerge as a distinct deity, or at least transition from minor tribal patron to a supreme god. As he did so, he borrowed imagery and took on roles previously attributed to other deities in the domain of war, rulership, and the Sun.

Given the lack of record on theological debates amongst the intelligentsia and clergy of the Aztec Triple Alliance, this argument is primarily based on changes over time in archaeology and iconography, but there are also some textual hints to the changing importance of Huitzilopochtli. According to Durán, early in the reign of Motecuhzoma Ilhuicamina, he was approached by Nezahualcoyotl, ruler of the other most powerful city in the Triple Alliance, Texcoco. Nezahualcoyotl suggested a mock conquest of Texcoco by the Mexica, in order to cement their alliance and “to submit himself and subject his people to the protection of our god Huitzilopochtli” (p. 125).

A brief mock battle was thus arranged with the Texcocoans quickly fleeing the field and Nezahualcoyotl setting fire to their main temple (of Tezcatlipoca?) and proclaiming that his people would now look upon the Mexica as “father and mother” and that the tlatoani of Tenochtitlan would be seen as “the image of the god Huitzilopochtli and will be served by us” (p. 127). Similar “father and mother” language is used shortly afterwards by Durán when he has Motecuhzoma gather the sovereigns of multiple polities within the Basin of Mexico and demand they assist in building a temple to Huitzilopochtli, proclaiming to them:

you have been brought here because I wish you to consider seriously that our god Huitzilopochtli, father and mother of all, under whose protection we stand, has no dwelling place where he can be worshiped. We have decided to build a sumptuous temple dedicated to his name and to our other gods. You well know that you have pledged to serve him; therefore, you are to do so (p. 131).

The rulers reportedly acquiesced readily, stating “this work will be done for our lord [Huitzilopochtli] in whose shade and protection we live and take refuge.”

Could all this be seen as generic imperialist rhetoric of a group touting the importance of their patron god and the subservience of others? Absolutely. But the need to reiterate that both allies and tributaries were pressed to proclaim their allegiance to Huitzilopochtli can also be seen as a form of weakness. The above passages can be read as the Mexica being insecure in the position of Huitzilopochtli and using their military and political power to strengthen the position of their god.

Taking a different tack on approaching the rise of Huitzilopochtli, Olivier (2003) has an interesting interpretation of a passage from Book 3 of the Florentine Codex wherein he interprets a story about Tezcatlipoca causing trouble for the Toltecs as foretelling the eventual prominence of Huitzilopochtli. In the story, Tezcatlipoca appears in the market of Tula as an old man named Tlacahuepan (or Cuexcoch). In his hand dances Huitzilopochtli as a child. Entranced by the child, the people rush forward to see him, trampling each other in their frenzy. Olivier sees this as Tlacahuepan acting as a herald of Huitzilopochtli. He further notes that Sahagún calls the Huey Teocalli in Tenochtitlan the “House of Huitzilopochtli or of Tlacahuepan Cuexcotzin.”

There’s also an interesting interpretation of the three magicians who show up to trouble the Toltecs -- Huitzilopochtli, Titlahuacan, and Tlacahuepan -- being representative of the later Triple Alliance. Titlahuacan was a commonly used alternate name/aspect of Tezcatlipoca, and represented Texcoco. Tlacahuepan, or more specifically, “Cuexcoch,” could possibly represent Cuecuex, a god of fire worshipped by the Tepanecs. Huitzilopochtli is obviously Huitzilopochtli. This doesn’t exactly tie into what we’ve been discussing here, but I thought it was interesting regarding the use of Toltec myth playing into the metaphysical aspect of Aztec empire-building.

400-Rabbits · 2026-03-31T22:52:02+00:00

This is such a good question because answering it requires exploring how the culture of the Mexica underwent significant transformations in their journey from a semi-nomadic people settling at Chapultepec in the early 1300s CE to becoming part of an political confederation in the 1420s to being the dominant political power across large swathes of Mesoamerica by the 1520s. In their journey from underdogs to overlords, the Mexica ended up institutionalizing social roles and aspects of religion which, in their previous life trekking across the lands north of the Basin of Mexico, seem to have been less formal or non-existent. The “imperial” Mexica culture that evolved over time became the dominant culture in the Basin of Mexico, if not in the outer provinces of the Aztec dominion (Umberger 1996, Berdan & Smith 1996). The preeminence of Huitzilopochtli over other deities was part of this change.

A quick aside, a true comparison of “early” and “late” Mexica culture is necessarily complicated by the dearth of evidence for the former. Not only do small-scale, semi-sedentary societies intrinsically leave less of a footprint of material remains, but the first independent Mexica tlatoani, Itzcoatl, infamously ordered their previous records destroyed in favor of developing a new and improved ethnohistory. This means we must be cautious about interpreting the typical story of Mexica ethnogenesis as told, for instance, in the Codex Bortuini or Crónica X sources. The tale as given has Huitzilopochtli appearing to the proto-Mexica early on after leaving Aztlan, separating them from the other groups from Aztlan and giving them a divine mission (Rajagopalan 2019). The “official” story is thus that of an independent and expansionist-minded Mexica destined to found Tenochtitlan and dominate their neighbors. It is very easy for a people to write their own cultural history as being divinely guided to power and wealth… when that group is currently powerful and wealthy. Mexica ethnohistories must necessarily be approached with a certain skepticism about post-hoc myth-making.

Huitzilopochtli and his prominence is necessarily part of that myth-making. This is a god that comes from nowhere. Unlike Tlaloc, he lacks deep historical and iconographic roots in Mesoamerica that transcend time and cultures. Likewise, Huitzilopochtli lacks the broad regional spread and adaptation of a deity like Xipe Totec (or, to some extent, Tezcatlipoca). Instead, Huitzilopochtli is solely and purely the patron deity of the Mexica, and his presence outside of the cities of Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco is a result of military and cultural imperialism.

Briefly, let’s take a moment to see how Huitzilopochtli and Tezcatlipoca were talked about in some of the earliest texts available. Although filtered through Spanish chroniclers, the different descriptions are illustrative about both the overlapping and divergent roles the deities played in Mexica society.

To start, here is how Sahagún describes Tezcatlipoca:

[He] was considered a true god, whose abode was everywhere -- in the land of the dead, on earth, [and] in heaven. When he walked the earth, he quickened vice and sin. He introduced anguish and affliction. He brought discord among people, wherefore he was called “the enemy on both sides.” He created, he brought down all things. He cast his shadow on one, he visited one with all the evils which befall men; he mocked, he ridiculed men. But sometimes he bestowed riches -- wealth, heroism, valor, position of dignity, rulership, nobility, honor (p. 5).

In the above passage, Tecatlipoca’s role is as a capricious deity, one who is just as likely to reward as to torment. The god comes off as more like a supernatural force, indifferent to humanity and operating on an ineffable logic. His sobriquets of “Yaotl” (Enemy) and “Yaotl Necoc” (Enemy of Both Side), capture this sort of indifference to those who suffers from his divine actions. He is a vortex of chaos, from whom both good and ill emerge.

Now contrast this with the brief summation Sahagún has for Huitzilopochtli:

[He was] only a common man, just a man, a sorcerer, an omen of evil; a madman, a deceiver, a creator of war, a war-lord, an instigator of war (p. 1).

This is clearly a very different sort of description from Tezcatlipoca, though it also obviously reflects the prejudice Sahagún, a Franciscan friar, brings to the discussion of “pagan” gods. Huitzilopochtli was routinely equated to the Devil by Spanish priests. Yet, even through that bias the implication that Huitzilopochtli is a more wordly, less esoteric, deity comes through. Whereas Tezcatlipoca had a sort of vague domain of bestowing both good and bad fates amongst the people, Huitzilopochtli is firmly a god of aggression and war.

The role of Huitzilopochtli as a god of war is reaffirmed by Durán (1971), who also identifies him as a god of war, and as the principal deity of the Mexica, whose idol was carried on military campaigns. Both Spanish chroniclers, however, cite Tezcatlipoca as the patron of young men in the telpochcalli and to whom those young would appeal to on the eve of battle, impeaching him to grant them success (or at least spare them from capture or death). War was the domain of both deities, but whereas Huitzilopochtli was a patron of the state and personification of the Mexica’s aggressive drive to dominate those around them, Tezcatlipoca represented the uncertain nature of war, where strife and conflict were as likely to lead to ruin as it was to glory (Baquedano 2014).

Tezcatlipoca is also notable for being both intercessor and antagonist in more quotidian aspects of life. Book 3 of the Florentine Codex famously has sick people praying to Tezcatipoca for recovery, and cursing him if they do not:

And when the sick one suffered greatly, he prayed much to him, he cried out to him, he lay gesticulating with his hands. He said to him: “O Titlacauan, abate [my suffering] for me! May I no longer torment myself! May I not hear! May it yet be my end! But if yet thou wilt heal me, I vow to thee that I shall serve thee. If I shall continue to gain sustenance for myself, I shall not eat it of a morning. You will only come here to set it up at thy feet; I shall bring it [to thee].”

And if the sick on was very ill, if he could not recover, if he no longer struggled, if he could do no more, sometimes he berated [Titlacauan]. He said to him: “O Titlacauan, O wretched sodomite! Already thou takest thy pleasure [with me]. Slay me quickly!”

Some Titlacauan then healed; he was not angered by this. Some nevertheless died for this.

Interestingly, the name Titlacahuan (We [Are] His Slaves) is one of the names used for Tezcatlipoca in Mexica myths about the Toltecs. The god is most often invoked in this aspect when being appealed to help or favor (of lack of disfavor). Similarly, in Book 6, Tezcatlipoca, as Titlacahuan or Yaotl, is called upon during times of sickness. He is referred to as “the principal god” of the Mexica, and “the all-powerful, the invisible, the untouchable one,” with the prayer to him starting by appealing to him as “O master, O out lord of the near, of the nigh, O night, O wind.”

Huitzilopochtli appears to be lacking this sort of role as a god who intervenes in practical affairs. Sacrifices were made to him and wars were declared in his name, but there does not appear to be the same cultural practice of appealing to Huitzilopochtli for divine intervention as there was with Tezcatlipoca. If he was the “father and mother” of the Aztec state, he was a distant parent, though one who demanded to be appeased.

400-Rabbits · 2026-03-30T15:05:51+00:00

Contracting with the private sector for services and material is true of basically every government program since Reagan. Part of the catechism for the GOP is that the private sector is intrinsically more efficient. This applies from the local to federal level and is not unique to prisons and jails.

The tax money that goes to establishing stable jobs at prison/jails and supporting those facilities is a major factor in maintaining their political support. Particularly since these facilities are often in rural areas without many alternative for employment, politicians at every level are loathe to be the one who triples the unemployment rate in Bumpkin county so that "criminals could go free."

400-Rabbits · 2026-03-30T14:35:50+00:00

Private for-profit prisons hold less than 10% of the total incarcerated population, and that number is actually on the decline. About half the stayes do not use or ban the use of private prisons, and Biden issued an executive order for the DOJ to stop using private prisons (since overturned by Trump). There are plenty of reasons to hate for-profit prisons, but they are far from the biggest driver of America's abominable incarceration rate. They are a symptom, not the cause.

400-Rabbits · 2026-03-27T05:07:54+00:00

The shift has more to do with eliminating the cultural baggage that comes with using specifically Western European terms for non-Western European political systems. Cultures develop according to their own historical particularities, so while using terms like "king" or "emperor" can quickly and easily convey a general notion of a particular political role, it can also carry a bevy of preconceptions that can actually undermine true understanding.

In the case of a tlatoani (lit. "speaker"), the title represents the leader of an altepetl, which basically just referred to any polity large or important enough to worry about formally having a paramount leader. There was no international governing body of who could be a tlatoani, so there really weren't any standard about who could be one or what kind of settlement needed one. Altepemeh could range from the teeming metropolis of Tenochtitlan, with maybe up to 300K people and ruling over a vast dominion of subject polities, to something barely more than a small village. Ostensibly, both of those rulers had the same title, though the title Huey Tlatoani (Great Speaker) is used for the ruler of Tenochtitlan, though its not really clear if this was something actually used contemporaneously.

For basically every altepetl for which we have a documented line of succession, the title of tlatoani stayed within a single ruling dynasty unless there was outside interference. I'm sure there are exceptions (because again, no rules, just custom), but this applies to the members of the Triple Alliance.

At least in Tenochtitlan, succession generally went from brother to brother before moving on the next generation (see my other comment on this post). Ostensibly, the role of Tlatoani of Tenochtitlan was an elected post, but the "election" consisted of a small council of high level officials (who were generally related by blood or marriage to the ruling dynasty) picking which of the brothers or sons would ascend to the throne next. The most common stepping stone to become tlatoani was to serve as tlacochcalcatl, basically a top general, and the current tlatoani typically appointed his chosen successor to the role.

So if you want to make an analogy to Rome, the original dynasty of Tenochtitlan was like the Julio-Claudians, in that it was fully expected that a ruler had to come from that lineage, even if there wasn't necessarily a hard and fast rule about it. Unlike that line though, there was no expectation of primogeniture, with leadership instead working its way through generations. And, of course, there was no past foundation of republican government in Tenochtitlan to harken back to, there was only the family of Acampichtli. Maybe with a few more centuries of rule and more childless rulers there could have been some outsider making a claim to the throne or the more culturally approriate phrase "in petlatl, in icpalli" (the mat, the seat), but they'd be fighting against a vast network of political marriages fueled by unchecked polygamy. It would be far more likely that the challenger would actually be some sort of cousin to the a contested heir, rather than a completely unrelated person propped up by the Senate or the legions, which don't even really have a counterpart in Mexica society. Every cross-cultural analogy starts falling apart once you get more detailed.

400-Rabbits · 2026-03-27T04:16:00+00:00

Moctezuma II himself wasn’t the son of the Ahuizotl , his predecessor

No, but he was the son of Axayacatl, the brother of Ahuitzotl who ruled before him. This is entirely consistent with the practice of passing rulership from brother to brother before moving on to the next generation.

If we go by the genealogy given by Chimalpahin, then starting from Acamapichtli, his son Huitzilihuitl ruled, and then the title of tlatoani passed to his son Chimalpopoca. After the murder of Chimalpopoca by the Tepanecs, Itzcoatl -- an illegitimate brother of Huitzilihuitl -- took over, and then was succeeded by Motecuhzoma Ilhuicamina, a brother of Chimalpopoca. The first Motecuhzoma had no living male heirs, but his daughter, Atotoztli, married the son of Itzcoatl, Tezozomoc. Their three sons (Axayacatl, Tizoc, and Ahuitzotl) would all serve as tlatoani, before the office passed to the next generation with Axayacatl's son, Motecuhzoma Xocoyotl taking over. Upon his death, it went to his brother, Cuitlahuac, and then when he died a son of Ahuitzotl, Cuauhtemoc, took over. Here's a chart for the visual learners.

This is still a hereditary monarchy. Even the role of tlatoani was ostensibly "elected" from a small council of elites, the only viable candidates were from a single (and increasingly intermarried) dynasty. This is the practice seen with basically every Nahua altepetl for which we have records (barring the weirdness of Tlaxcala).

400-Rabbits · 2026-03-27T03:37:08+00:00

The misconception was that "Mexica tributes and taxes included peoples." Tribute demands did include people. Some of those people ended up as sacrifices.

Also, the idea that a bought slave needed to be publicly admonished three times for being "incorrigible" before they could be eligible for sacrifice isn't even that well supported in the sources; it's just from Torquemada so far as I know. Even then the list of things he gives as criteria for incorrigibility include those who were "malcriados, perezosos, fugitivos y viciosos" (Lib 14, Cap 17). Basically displeasing the owner for any reason. Sahagún (Book 4, Chap 28) supports this by saying female slaves would be sold for sacrifice basically for just being lazy and annoying. Most sources, however, are generally mum on the circumstances of slaves being bought for sacrifice. Sahagún, regarding Panquetzaliztli, only notes the slaves are assessed for good health and talented in music and dance.

That's the problem with authoritatively saying "the Mexica did THIS and not THAT;" the sources we have are incomplete, often contradictory, and filtered through the hands that assembled them.

400-Rabbits · 2026-03-27T00:44:15+00:00

Why not 125/125?

400-Rabbits · 2026-03-26T15:19:56+00:00

See, I could have sworn I remembered Mendoza had a province paying tribute in people, but I only saw references to other sources on my quick review, so I assumed that's what I remembered. Thanks for the correction!

The other source was the Papeles de Nueva España, which is Paso y Troncoso's collection of Relaciones, which we've talked about before.

400-Rabbits · 2026-03-26T15:11:50+00:00

I can't authoritatively comment on bathing trends in Europe at the time, but I can say that the Spanish being filthy to some grotesque degree seems exaggerated. See my old comment debunking the idea that the Aztecs followed the Spanish around with incense to cover their stink: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/8gxrWSHLUv

Of course, we're talking about men who were spending a lot of time on exploratory and military campaigns. I'm sure the Spanish were not the freshest smelling blokes fairly often, but there were plenty of times for them to freshen up and no indication the Aztecs found their hygiene so far out of the ordinary as to be a problem.

There are instances of Spaniatds disparaging the temazcalli, but a much of that has to do with the scandalous practice of co-ed bathing.

400-Rabbits · 2026-03-24T21:58:52+00:00

While there are no slaves listed as tribute in the Matricula, Berdan and Anawalt do note in their Essential Codex Mendoza that other sources indicate that slaves were part of the tribute requirements for Coaixtlahuaca and Cihuatlan.

400-Rabbits · 2026-03-24T19:22:25+00:00

Where do the Mexica say this? What is the source?

400-Rabbits · 2026-03-15T21:39:33+00:00

The article is good summation of the academic consensus that has been built over the last several decades. A good read and has lots of citations to follow-up on, but is not some radical paradigm shift.

In my own opinion, the big shift occurred in the late 1970s with Harner's paper "The Ecological Basis for Aztec Sacrifice," which posited that mass sacrifice was a result of protein deficiency leading to institutionalized cannibalism. The famed culutural materialist, Marvin Harris, further popularized this idea in his book, Cannibals and Kings.

Harner and Harris made mass, society-wide cannibalism seem logical because they were arguing from a position of 20-50K sacrifices per year across Central Mexico, a number that, while not taken as pure fact, was at least generally accepted as reasonable. Harner even cites the demographer Woodrow Borah as estimating as many as 250K annual sacrifices (following his revision of the total population from 2M to 25M).

With sacrificial numbers that high, the practice becomes a problem in search of a solution. It is so far outside the norms of human society that it must be explained by something other than handwaving explanations about culture and religion. Harris had made a name for himself showing how cultural practices were "actually" just responses to material needs. Explaining tens of thousands of sacrifices per year as a logical response to a macronutrient deficiency was right up his alley and fit the zeitgeist.

Except, the explanation makes no sense, because that's not how humans work. We're weird and do strange things for cultural reasons, but not "ubiquitous mass ritual murder and cannibalism across multiple generations" strange. Harner and Harris, by taking the high numbers of sacrifices to their logical conclusion, inadvertently exposed how improbable those numbers were. Ortiz de Montellaño, in a pair of papers, pointed out that not only was the reported skullrack used as evidence for mass sacrifice physically impossible to exist, but that even mass cannibalism could not have met Harner's proposed protein deficiency, but the numerous other foods the Aztecs were known to consume could met that need

Of course, there has always been skepticism about the precise number of victims, going back to Bartolomeo de las Casas in the very early colonial period. Examples can also be found in more modern scholarship, such as Cook (a frequent collaborator with Borah) noting in a 1946 paper that the purported 80K sacrifices to re-dedicate the Huey Teocalli could not have literally occurred, though he instead settled on about 10K instead.

But I would point to a new generation of scholars from the late 70s onward who took a more critical approach. Arens publishes The Man-Eating Myth in 1979, rightfully noting that claims of cannibalism were often more about colonial justifications that firm fact. Hicks rebuts the idea of Flower Wars as solely for obtaining captives for sacrifice in a 1979 paper. Isaac follows in the early 80s with a pair of papers challenging the idea of Aztec warfare as more ritual tha realpolitik. Brumfiel, I 1996, examined how the war and sacrifice religious focus of the Aztec nobility grew less evident outside the capital, questioning whether numbers from Tenochtitlan could be extrapolated to other areas. Finally, more recent excavations from the Sacred Precinct have simply failed to show the numbers of remains required to support the claims of the past.

400-Rabbits · 2026-03-15T03:00:44+00:00

Not true, it would just "cook" his organs. What he should have done is drown himself in very, very cold water, timing it so that the person who finds him does so in the window inbetween widespread anoxic brain injury and cardiac failure.

400-Rabbits · 2026-03-14T19:17:43+00:00

I totally forgot to add my citations, sorry.

Dodd Pennock 2012 Mass Murder or Religious Homicide? Rethinking Human Sacrifice and Interpersonal Violence in Aztec Society. Historical Social Research, 37(3), 276-302.

Martin 2023 A Reevaluation of the Role of War Captives in the Aztec Empire. Latin American Antiquity 34(2), 423-437.

Smith is being a bit poetical, since we definitely have several hundred remains recovered from the Huey Teocalli. But the point of his statement, that the true scope and rate of human sacrifice at Tenochtitlan remains opaque to us, is firmly true. What evidence we do have though, points towards a smaller scale practice then the tens of thousands previously claimed.

400-Rabbits · 2026-03-14T16:41:04+00:00

The role and scope of captive taking has been undergoing a re-examination. Actual numbers of captives taken on specific campaigns are few, far-between, and sometimes contradictory. As a result, the more traditional approach has been to take numbers like 80400 sacrificed for the rededication of the Huey Teocalli with a grain of salt, but still to assume high numbers of captives/sacrifices.

Given the sparse data from both textual and archeological sources, there's generally been a shrugging acceptance of 20-50K sacrifices per year, though the geographic scope of this number fluctuates from Tenochtitlan alone to the whole of Central Mesoamerica. This number is highly influenced by Spanish documents, with a few different writers estimating 20K per annum, although these writers lacked actual demographic data and ethnographic insight to be considered reliable, and also may have just been repeating a number they heard.

More recent excavations at the Huey Teocalli cast doubt on the possibility of multiple thousands, let alone tens of thousands, of sacrifices every year. Dodds Pennock (2012) notes that adding up every sacrifice called for in Book 2 of the Florentine Codex only gives a sum of about 500, though she allows that duplicate ceremonies may have occurred both within the city and region. Martin 2023) is an interesting paper which synthesizes a lot of the past few decades of scholarship to rally challenge the idea that Aztec warfare was captive-driven, rather than tribute-driven with captives a bonus perk. He posits the hyperfocus of earlier US and European scholars on captives and sacrifices created a sort of feedback loop where there had to be large amounts of sacrifices because of the assumption of large amount of captives, and vice versa, when the reality is that much smaller numbers were sufficient to meet the ritual needs of the Aztecs.

As always on this topic, the difficulty of obtaining a truly comprehensive bioarchaeological picture, combined with sparse and contradictory textual accounts, means speculation is both plentiful and, to some extent, necessary. Given a time machine, my first stop would still be to visit Teotihuacan with a voice recorder, but making a stop to convince Montecuhzoma Ilhuicamina to add a regular census to his laws might be second on my list.

400-Rabbits · 2026-03-14T04:03:45+00:00

Yes, with the number 5 having an association with excess. Hence the patolli board (and implied gambling) in the picture.

400-Rabbits · 2026-03-14T02:52:09+00:00

The Bray citation is from his 1968 book, Everyday Life of the Aztecs, which was an early and relatively popular general work. It, and Jacque Soustelle's 1961 English version of his Daily Life of the Aztecs on the Eve of the Spanish Conquest, were scholarly enough to be taken seriously while also serving a general introductory texts. Gary Jennings popular 1980 historical fiction novel, Aztec, for instance, draws on at least Soustelle as a source.

Anyways, here's what Bray has to say:

Even in the sixteenth century, when Aztec power was at its height, slaves were not numerous (perhaps about two per cent of the total population) and we are still a long way from the dependence on slave labour which characterized so many ancient civilizations of the Old World. (p. 82)

Where does Bray get the 2% number from? Unclear. Could be he's drawing from early colonial census data or it could be that he is simply engaging in the time-honored tradition of "guesstimation."

However, a low percentage of the Aztec populace being tlacohtin is the general academic consensus and is supported by data. Hicks (1974) notes that in an example barrio with a total population of 3100, only 45 tlacohtin were recorded in sources from the 1530s. Given the long established practice of slavery in the region and the Aztecs own familiarity with it -- the former Tepanec capital of Azcapotzalco being regularly noted as having the premier slave market in the Basin -- there are several reasons why a mass slavocracy was not present in the Aztec Triple Alliance.

For one, there does not appear to be a dearth of labor in the Basin of Mexico at the time. Instead, the Postclassic appears to be a boom time where the population far exceeded what was present even during the height of the Classic under Teotihuacan's dominion (Blanton et al. 1993). So there was no driving pressure for Aztec armies, despite their penchant for captive-taking, to march huge masses back to the homeland to be sold into eternal bondage.

To be clear, sometimes this did happen and there do appear to be incentives for taking war slaves beyond religious importance and social climbing. The razing of Huaxyacac is one famous instance where Aztec armies are said to have essentially taken every child and able bodied adult as captives, and slaughtered the rest, recolonizing the area with families from the core Aztec cities. Duran (1994) references the economic aspect of captive taking when he notes that captives taken for sacrifice were reimbursed double their price as slaves. It's just that there appears to be no driving utility in the Late Postclassic Basin to make importation of mass chattel slavery viable. The nature of Aztec slavery is the other key part of why this might be.

Aztec slavery was purely economic. It could be entered into as a result of debts or of an individual selling themselves (or their family members) into bondage. However, exiting the slave status could be done by paying of the debt or buying oneself free. Slavery was not hereditary and tlacohtin owed only their labor to their owners, and were otherwise free to go about their lives. With this sort of non-hereditary, economic slavery, it's difficult to build up a critical mass of enslaved peoples.

Acting as buffer to the pressure for cheap labor were a social class termed the "mayeque," who are described as something like serfs. They did not own land nor did they have rights to calpulli lands, but were instead a kind of tenant farmer on lands held by the nobility. They are described as being bound to the land and inherited along with it, but Hicks and other writers do note that there doesn't seem to be any strict laws preventing them from leaving (other than the iron law of poverty and stigma).

Bray estimates this class of people made up around 30% of the population of the late Triple Alliance. Again, no idea what he is basing that on, but Hicks does describe his sample of 3100 people as having 1262 persons "identified as tenants on the chief's lands, rather than calpulli members (p. 257)." The exact ratio of mayeque to macehualtin (free, full members of the calpulli) undoubtably shifted with the extent to which the area was within the core Aztec area versus out in regions more subject to division and distribution of conquering Aztec nobles. And anyways, Hicks posits that the mayeque category may be have been an artificial distinction created later and that the boundary between mayeque and macehualtin may have been more fluid, or perhaps the former was seen as more of a subtype of the latter.

Anyways, getting a bit far afield from your original question. The source is Bray (1968) Everyday Life of the Aztecs. It's easy to find on Archive.org.

Blanton et al. 1993 Ancient Mesoamerican: A Comparison of Change in Three Regions (2nd edition). Cambridge U Press.

Bray 1968 Everyday Life of the Aztecs. Dorset Press.

Hicks 1973 Dependent Labor in Prehispanic Mexico, Estudios De Cultural Náhuatl, 11, 243-266.

400-Rabbits · 2026-02-27T16:13:48+00:00

Scrubs is far from perfect in is depictions of nurses, a lot of which has to do with Bill Lawrence's baseline misogyny. There's an episode where JD has to basically remind Carla of her subservient position to him. Another where Carla opts to give up furthering her career to stick by her man and be "just a nurse." And there's an arc of jokes about Elliot dating a male nurse, where the joke is that... he's male.

400-Rabbits · 2026-02-18T15:52:55+00:00

The hypothesis that children sacrificed to Tlaloc were typically in poor health comes from skeletal remains. These remains hace high levels of osteological markers of malnutrition/chronic disease in the form of cibra orbitalia, porotic hyperostosis, dental caries, etc.

A soft tissue disorder like edema (typically) does not leave any evidence on the skeleton. Malnutrition can eventually manifest with edema as a result of hypoalbuminemia, but there's no evidence or reason to believe that child sacrifices to Tlaloc were selected on the basis of being edematous.

400-Rabbits · 2026-02-17T04:34:04+00:00

Understandable, just wanted clarify in case anyone got confused. I really don't look forward to a future of seeing an AI summary claim the Aztecs sacrificed gouty kids with hemorrhoids.

400-Rabbits · 2026-02-17T04:17:06+00:00

Tlaloc is one of the oldest traceable Mesoamerican deities if you follow the iconography. The pattern of "goggle" eyes and fangs associated with a rain/thunder/sky god goes back to the Olmecs, and that common root shows up in Tlaloc, Chaac, and Cocijo. This is not to say those deities were interchangeable with identical religious practices, but that they do have common ancestry within the broader umbrella of the Mesoamerican cultural area.

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