That verse from the Songs of Solomon is cool, it mentions that Solomon had dreadlocks, so cool. The first Rastafari
What good was the Inca or Aztec religions?
- Thread starter John J. Bannan
- Start date
These civilizations serve as an example of why you shouldn't let religion and superstition run day-to-day operations...
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Thank you! We're talking about a civilization that was still in the Bronze Age, about 2500 years behind ours. Remember that the aboriginal Americans got a late start because they didn't even arrive here until around 15000BCE. Our ancestors lived in Eurasia for about 60,000 years before they got around to inventing civilization, so I think the Incas and the Olmec/Maya/Aztecs did themselves proud. I get pretty impatient with Christians who criticize the Amerinds but conveniently ignore the atrocities their own people were engaged in during the same era. You don't even have to go back that far: During my own lifetime one of Europe's proudest Christian nations made a concerted effort to kill off every single Jew they could get their hands on, in particularly gruesome ways that would surely have impressed the Aztecs.
You're taking a Eurocentric perspective and talking about our astrology. Astronomy was arguably the first science. It was invented independently in many regions and quickly put to work promoting or explaining their religions. Astronomy and its dark side, astrology, not only predates written language, which one might reasonably assume is essential to science, but it even predates civilization itself. Look at Stonehenge.
We don't need to look at someone else's civilization to see religion for what it is: a force holding back civilization. Look at Europe during the period when the Christian church had unrivaled power in all aspects of life: the millennium of ignorance and squalor known as the Dark Ages. They actually preached that bathing was a sin!
Every religion is a collection of metaphors. It is the stories a people tells about themselves, their history and their world. Religion is the oldest form of literature and it tells us much about the lives of our distant ancestors: their philosophy, their dreams, their children's fairytales, their social customs, even their politics and economics.
When the Christian armies obliterated the Aztec and Inca civilizations, including the written works in the Aztec libraries and most of the art in both nations, they destroyed a precious and irreplaceable trove of ideas. For a civilized people like we claim to be, there can be no greater "sin" than the destruction of an entire civilization, much less two of them. Christianity will forever be irredeemable and unforgivable. As will Islam, for having done the same thing to the civilization of Egypt.
The Aztecs had essentially no large animal sources of protein. So the fact that they ate their sacrificed enemies is worht noting.
The priests got dibs, naturally.
But compared with the persecution of, say, Dutch heretics by the Roman Church (the one that always got me was the technique of tying peoples' heads between their knees and drowning them at night in barrels of water - the Church was squeamish about blood ). the Aztecs were humane about their religious needs for slaughter.
I mean, stay away from religions on the warpath, but which would you rather?
The priests got dibs, naturally.
But compared with the persecution of, say, Dutch heretics by the Roman Church (the one that always got me was the technique of tying peoples' heads between their knees and drowning them at night in barrels of water - the Church was squeamish about blood ). the Aztecs were humane about their religious needs for slaughter.
I mean, stay away from religions on the warpath, but which would you rather?
I don't think many people deny that religion in the West has a bloodythirsty history, one as violent as anything practised by the Incas and Aztecs.
What I do object to is how some people portray the West - Americas relationship. As if big bad whitey stomped in and abused the poor innocent Incas and Aztecs. When one realizes that these people subjugated and slaughtered rivalling civilizations and nomads (why do you think so many of the natives allied themselves with the Spanish?), and used them as human sacrifices, it becomes clear that what goes around, comes around.
What I do object to is how some people portray the West - Americas relationship. As if big bad whitey stomped in and abused the poor innocent Incas and Aztecs. When one realizes that these people subjugated and slaughtered rivalling civilizations and nomads (why do you think so many of the natives allied themselves with the Spanish?), and used them as human sacrifices, it becomes clear that what goes around, comes around.
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when something bad happened and people didn't know why, they thought the gods were punishing them. they drew the conclusion that gods are evil and they want to kill people. so they thought that if they sacrificed people, gods would be pleased and wouldn't feel the need to kill people.
see, my brain would never make that leap. At least not the way they did it.
I can see giving your most valuable items (food, animals, virgins) to a volcano, but the ripping out hearts thing...no.
John J. Bannan
Registered Senior Member
Fraggle Rocker. Blaming Islam for the downfall of Egypt is fiction. The Greeks and Romans destroyed Egypt. Also, blaming Christianity for the fall of the Incas and Aztecs is simply ignoring the role of the Spanish King in the destruction of those civilizations brought about mainly to fuel the Spanish Empire with gold. Where do you get your unsupported assertions anyway?
they had very small brains back then.
a volcano can do much worse things than ripping out hearts.
No they didn't. They were smart.
only a few were smart. and those people were much smarter than we are today. but the others were much more stupid than we are today. the smart taught the stupid...
John J. Bannan
Registered Senior Member
Why make tortillas when you can buy them at the Super Wal-Mart, which by the way was the invention of a desendant of Europeans.
...which is a stupid invention.
Wal-Mart.
you can if you have the knowledge. knowledge is not intelligence. educated people are often not smarter than parrots.
if the incas were not more stupid than us, does it mean that parrots are not more stupid than us either? they're just educated differently?
each generation of humans is smarter than the last. intelligence evolves.
you have lost your mind.
We build bigger badder deadlier weapons every year. Doesn't make us smarter.
Because hand-made things are more personal, and of better quality than commercialized, standardized, and industrialized crap products.
And you speak of Wal-Mart is if were a good thing.
The point Orleander made still stands: we have the same potential for intellect. We are just are educated in different manners in accordance to our cultural specialities. Indo-Europeans, Altaics, and East Asians concentrated on critical-thinking and other things in their education because their geographical locations allowed for them vast natural resources and farming lands, meaning they didn't have to worry about scrounging a hunter-gatherer existence.
People in Africa and South America were largely cut off due to geography, that is why they did not have the same technology as the invaders. And it is because of geography that their education concentrated on survival in the wild scrublands and rainforests of their continent.
You really should read "Guns, Germs, and Steel".
Being bad at killing is no virtue. If you could go back in time and hand the Aztecs automatic weapons to defend themselves with, do you think they'd turn them down? Of course not.
They were bloody handed savages. The Conquistadors were also savages by modern standards, but were better at it.