Oh, yeah, no shit. I was reading an article in a newspaper about this movie and some fancypants intellectual was trying to justify their practice of human sacrifice by saying that, “It was their belief that the gods needed blood to survive.” I’m all like, “Dude, as if that makes it any better. Did anything you just said mean that they didn’t pick out innocent people semirandomly and murder them for no good reason?”
Compare this to the human sacrifice practiced in Europe and (gasp) the United States, then. What was the inquisition, after all? What were the Salem Witch Trials? Does this give people fair lisence to show Europeans as savage brutes?
I’m sorry, you’re saying that the Salem witch trials and the Inquisition are exemplars of human sacrifice?
That’s a bizarre definition of the term. Killing people in the name of God (however wrongly) != human sacrifice, else you’d better include the Crusades as well.
The Mayans are responsible for all the wars in the world.
Are they not both examples of killing humans to please a god?
For a more interesting look at the film’s inaccuracies, this is a good article. He doesn’t try to defend human sacrifice, he just states that there’s no archaeological evidence to support most of the film’s claims.
You’re overly generalizing human sacrifice. From the wellspring of all human knowledge, Wikipedia:
ritual sacrifice involves offering human lives to deities as payment for favorable interventions in an event of special importance, to forestall unfavorable events, or to purchase disclosures about the physical world.
Neither the witch trials nor the Inquisiton involved any sort of bargain with deity, which is one of the key motivators of human sacrifice. Both of the above efforts were concerned primarily with identifying and killing those who were considered blasphemers and heretics, thus protecting their souls (and the surviving members of the faith) from said heresy.
Human sacrifice as practiced involves “giving” something to a deity (blood and souls for my lord Arioch or whatever) to get something in return. Note that in the Old Testament, JHVH specifically forbids human sacrifice, as seen in the story of Abraham and Isaac. I’m pretty sure this event has significance for Jews and Muslims as well, given that it’s the reason for the Dome of the Rock.
I’m by no means a defender of Christianity, European culture, or whatever, but if you decide to take a random “look at me, I’m smart enough to know that everyone practiced human sacrifice” drive-by, at least get your facts right.
No, it was a joke, obv.
But it may not be a coincidence that Gibson chose to work on these projects.
I remind you that Dubya is practising human sacrifice as we speak in Iraq…
Considering the last movie I saw about this time and place was some Herzog movie, I’m pretty excited about seeing this. Even if it ends up like the Last Samurai or something, it still should be entertaining. It may be enough to get me to play some Mictlan in an upcoming Dominions 3 game.
Aguirre: The Wrath of God?
Putting fuck in the subtitles made it worth watching alone.
Mate, I watched Braveheart with my family and we giggled the whole way through it. Especially at the part where Alun Armstrong gets smacked in the face - mainly because he went to my mum’s school and was an ugly bugger then too.
I turned The Patriot off somewhere around the church burning scene because I pretty much thought I could see where that one was going.
Thing is though, I’m not exactly sure why Mel hates us so much, what did we ever do to him?
The Myans didn’t. That’s the thing.
Are you English, sugartits?
There are some who attribute Mel’s Anglo-bashing to his Irish ancestry. I suspect it has a lot more to do with the influence of his kooky dad and his, er, unconventional beliefs.
They did, though. They may not have gone at it with the same gusto as the Aztecs, but there’s no question that it was a part of Mayan religious practices. Not that this says much about the film one way or the other.
The tour guide showed us the sacrifice pits at Uxmal, so that’s gotta count for something.
What gave it away honey?
I have an instinct for detection! For example, when I first saw Prince of Thieves I said, “That Robin Hood… I don’t think he’s really English.”