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Aztec Sacrifice

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The Aztecs’ main god was the sun or Huitzilopochtli. They believed that the sun needed constant replenishment so that it could move across the earth everyday and prevent the world from ending. However, the only way to keep this from happening, and provide mobility for the sun was to offer human sacrifices; he needed human flesh and blood. This accounts for the human sacrifices that the Aztecs had as well as the many festivals, which their ultimate goal to sacrifice humans for Huitzilopochtli and other gods as well. It is important to point that the Aztecs believed that they were living in the 5th and last era, but that they needed to keep the world from ending. Since the Aztecs were obsessed with preventing the world from ending, they used …show more content…

Consequently, they had a warrior society and fought continuously in order to expand their empire and to fulfill their destiny as the superiors of the land, the descendants of the Toltecs, and the followers of Huitzilopochtli. For the most part, they fought societies that resided outside of Tenochtitlan, but that were culturally similar to them. The majority of the sacrificial victims were captured during these wars or were brought in as part of tributes brought from their governing territories. Despite, most people coming from outside of Tenochtitlan, in the majority of cases, people would willingly participate in their deaths. This is the case because they were psychologically conditioned to believing that it was a honor to die this way and that the fact that they were chosen for this, was a godly choice and they needed to fulfill their role. Finally, the Aztecs claimed that they settled in Tenochtitlan because this was their sacred land and they had help the Chichimecs save their city. Their god, Huitzilopochtli, had told them they would know that they had arrived at this sacred land when they saw an eagle eating a snake, while perched on a nopal cactus. The island on lake Texcoco (Tenochtitlan) was that place, and that’s where their people settled and built their

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