Appalling extremes.

[**The following is in regards to ritual human sacrifice in pre-Columbian Central America, primarily the Aztec Empire of modern-day Mexico.**] >Notwithstanding the sense of ceremony and of obligation attending these religious matters, the Mexica had carried human sacrifice to appalling extremes. A much quoted example concerns the dedication of the great temple of Huitzilopochtli at the heart of Tenochtitlan. >When this ceremony took place in 1487 perhaps as many as 20,000 people were slaughtered over four days, the lines of victims converging on their place of extinction along the city’s four main causeways. Amongst the structures in the capital’s main plaza was a huge rack on which the skulls of the sacrificed were collected. A Spanish eyewitness claimed that it held 136,000. Even when allowances are made for the fact that this probably more than doubled the true figure, the scale of the practice becomes apparent. _______________________________ **Source:** Cocker, Mark. “The Kidnap.” *Rivers of Blood, Rivers of Gold: Europe's Conquest of Indigenous Peoples*. Grove Press, 2001. 46-7. Print. **Original Source Listed:** Thomas, *The Conquest of Mexico*, pp. 25-6. _______________________________ **Further Reading:** [Human sacrifice in Aztec culture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice_in_Aztec_culture)