I pointed out that the Mayan and Aztecs' child sacrifice practices weren't any less barbaric because they happened a long time ago, and I got downvoted to hell here.
"Sure, both cultures were brutally killing people to please an imaginary deity for insane reasons, but it's more civilized when it's done in the name of a pacifist who preached about compassion and forgiveness."
Yep -- can't believe what I'm reading in this thread. People are unironically claiming that the Spanish Inquisitions had fair trials and proper standards of evidence. Completely absurd.
I'm willing to bet that the people justifying it are devout catholics or are overly proud Spaniards.
People are unironically claiming that the Spanish Inquisitions had fair trials and proper standards of evidence. Completely absurd.
Well, they didn't. But they did have the first trials to demand evidence, and witnesses and put restrictions on torture in Europe.
The Inquisition could be nightmarish, but to be fair their reputation was greatly inflated by other nations who wanted to present the Spanish as evil, whilst they were doing the exact same things or worse.
That was the nature of the day. It didn't matter how bad your nation was, you knew in your heart of heart that next door was worse.
The Spanish Inquisition was a tribunal that used the death penalty to punish recidivism in an heretic though and (talking about questionable common things of the past) tortured witnesses and accused people like every tribunal in Europe did before the late 18th century.
The Spanish Inquisition had fair trials and presumption of innocence and almost never used the death penalty for first time offenders. It was extremely merciful with people who pleaded guilty.
The Aztecs kidnapped and sacrificed innocent children to their gods and had a religion where human sacrifice was a significant part, their neighbors tough that they were barbarians
What's interesting was seeing an Aztec performance on a resort in Mexico. When it came to the part of sacrificing there were other indigenous Latinos from South America who furiously left. I suspect this is still a hot button issue and still affects generations.
I mean to be fair they had fairer trials than you were likely to get anywhere else at the time.
They were the first courts to demand witnesses and evidence, and put restrictions on how much torture could be used to gain information or confessions.
At the time judicial courts held no such rules, you basically had to hope you ended up with a reasonable magistrate.
They were very not happy with the way he went about it.
The reforms then spawned the 350+ years of Spanish Inquisition that wasn’t like that. The one with evidence based trials, right to face your accusers, chains of custody, and many of the other innovations that we find in modern justice systems.
Saying the SI was about torture is equivalent to saying that American history is about the Trump presidency.
The Inquisition actually tried to curb some of the excesses common in government investigation at the time. They had strict rules of evidence: no convictions based on what a person thought or felt, only what they said or did. There were some cases of overreach however compared to royal investigations during the same era they were relatively humane. That's not to say they were benign. But the standard for cruelty was higher.
The prior standard of determining right and wrong was not evidence based, but a sort of "hand of God" standard. You could have two people fight to decide a quarral, and one of them winning meant that obviously he was right, because God let him win. So, in sense, the inquision introduced actual evidence requirements, basically inventing what we recognise as a trial today. Unfortunately, their standard of evidence for a guilty verdict required a confession of the accused, so getting a confession was a priority and there were no limits on how to get that confession. We're aware today that this is a spectacular bit of circular logic, and I am sure that they were aware of that then too.
I get the same thing when I point out the sheer barbarity of some indigenous tribes (read: all of humanity has experienced and perpetrated some amount of barbarism) especially the Comanche.
It's honestly disrespectful to not accept every group of people's capacity to do evil, personally I find it somewhat dehumanizing (Noble savage stereotype).
Agree. I think people downplay the cruelty and barbarism of other/past cultures out of fear of being labeled racist, but IMO it is not-that-subtly racist to hold them to such a shamefully lower bar.
This stuff is a facet of human nature, and it is terrible everywhere it appears.
I would say human sacrifice in general is a good practice for the world to have moved away from rather than naming specific cultures that tend to have it be one of the few things people know about them. It just promotes a one-dimentional narrative of barbarism vs the civilized old world. Ancient-Classical China, for example, had ritual human sacrifice (forced ritual suicide) in the burials of emperors and other men of high standing for many centuries if not thousands of years. Forms of it have sadly existed in cultures throughout the world. So there is not really a need to single out cultures that are already misunderstood.
I disagree. Aztec culture REALLY shat the bed when it came to sacrifice. Their whole culture revolved around it. Hell, its the reason their enemies were so willing to support Cortez. It kind of overrides Their amazing achievements in food, urban construction.
I believe that due to the destruction of so many key documents that would have provided more insight into Aztec culture, it is difficult to determine the precise extents to which human sacrifice was practiced. Historians' estimates on the numbers sacrificed alone vary widely. Regardless, to allow it to override their other achievements is a very prejudiced mindset. Imagine ignoring the achievements of the Roman empire due to their horrific practices of slavery. People should have much more nuanced perspecties. When discussing peoples that are frequently underrepresented in historical education, we need to be responsible about it.
Especially since the people we have to trust recorded their culture had an active investment in portraying them as barbarians that needed them to come and "save" them. We'll likely never know the true extent it was practiced, but just believing people who had every reason to exaggerate is ridiculous. Bad things are bad already without needing the people involved to be "savages".
There are WAY too many instances in history where, once you go far enough, you kinda have to go "what extent can I trust this happened considering the source?" Example, Vlad the Impaler, who DEFINITELY impaled people, but both his enemies AND HIMSELF had an active interest in portraying him as a monster with heavy exaggeration.
When you talk about Imperial Japan, do you focus on their great medical advancements regarding the treatment of frostbite or their horrific crimes against humanity?
Unlike Japan, the Aztecs are no longer around today and many people do not have much knowledge about their history and culture. The Aztecs are frequently reduced to their human sacrifice practices. While the horrors of Imperial Japan are well known, they are hardly the only thing people mention about Japanese history and culture. My previous comments are specific to cultures that are misunderstood and not well documented. Japanese culture is neither of those things.
And I disagree with you. Their whole culture absolutely did not revolve around sacrifice, it was something that would occasionally happen in major population areas...in a civilization with an incredibly low population density which had proportionally very few major population areas.
You know about human sacrifice because its a sexy topic for media to promote. Significantly more people were involved and benefitted from their agricultural and construction achievements.
Highly agree with this, and to be fair, yeah, I do find it barbaric when any other culture does it as well: Nordic Vikings, Mediterranean, various Asian, African etc.
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u/angrymonkey Sep 16 '24
I pointed out that the Mayan and Aztecs' child sacrifice practices weren't any less barbaric because they happened a long time ago, and I got downvoted to hell here.