Why the Incas offered up child sacrifices | Science | The Observer
[Kim MacQuarrie] The Incas thus built their empire within the Pacific's "ring of fire" where volcanoes periodically erupt. Because of the colliding plates, violent earthquakes are common, destroying cities and towns. In addition, the empire was beset by the climatic havoc wreaked by El Niños every seven years, resulting in savage floods that disrupted food supplies.
In response to such natural phenomena, the Incas resorted to religion.
....
The Incas did their best to fathom what, at the time, was unfathomable – the violent, unpredictable catastrophes of nature which, in some cases, had ended cultures that preceded them. To their credit, the Incas did their best to ensure the survival of their people and empire by paying close attention to nature and doing their best to use every means at their disposal, including human sacrifice, to gain control over it.
The irony is that, more than 500 years after the Spaniards put an end to perhaps the most spectacular empire in the New World, not only are Andean and worldwide glaciers shrinking at unprecedented rates as the Earth heats up, altering and damaging native ecosystems, but the new cultures that have replaced the Incas seem apathetic, at best, in making any kind of sacrifice in order to gain control over a potentially self-created environmental disaster.
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2 comments:
There is no real information content in her statements, except insofar as they reveal her complete ignorance of the Inca, who were a martial, tyrannous warrior society over the other tribes in the Andean region of South America. She even makes it sound like their human sacrifice was a good thing because the intention behind it was good environmental concern (it was not; it was inherited, bloody superstition that dismissed any essential human value, in the face of a capricious nature, misunderstood for thousands of years as the will of capricious and jealous gods. They didn't "turn to religion", they were raised in pagan religion, which demanded submission to bloody gods, and they were not one whit concerned about the "environment", because they were too busy tyrannizing the tribes subject to them. Like the similarly-tyrannous Aztecs in Mexico, they were hated by those they subjected, and knew that one day the white "god" who originally taught them civilized ways, or his fellows, would return one day and destroy their rotten society--which the Spaniards were happy to do. Anyone wanting to understand the Incas (actually, "Inca" was the title of their king) should read "The Secret of the Incas" (1996) by William Sullivan, (and for the larger ancient world picture, only my book, "The End of the Mystery" will provide the true context for the bloody beliefs of ancient man worldwide).
We should repeat DAILY to these obscurantist cannibals that they may be the first victims of the cannibalism they promote: Mayas-Aztecs-Incas DID NOT ESCAPE COLLAPSE!
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