Aztecs were more 'peaceful' than the Spanish?

[OgreBattle]

I remember reading on here that the sacrifice-your-heart-to-the-sun cultures of South America overall killed less people than what was going on in Europe because their style of warfare wound up with less people killed overall.

Anyone remember where that was posted or can back this up as fact?

[DSMatticus]

Aztec human sacrifice is definitely disgusting stuff, but it's not really different from any other kind of war. The Aztecs went to war using less lethal weapons, took their defeated opponents home, and then performed last rites for their victims before killing them. That's really fucked up, because obviously once you've defeated your opponents and taken them as prisoners you don't have to kill them at all. But it's not actually any worse than killing them on the battlefield. And it's certainly less bad than just running amok in a city murdering all the civilians you can catch after you've breached the walls.

Within the Aztec paradigm, taking someone prisoner and then ritually murdering them on sacred ground was more humane than giving someone a lethal wound and letting them die of bleeding and infection. It's an insane viewpoint, but it's less insane and vile than the Christian idea that it was more humane to burn someone to death slowly so they had the maximum chance of asking Jesus for forgiveness before they died.

Wars have historically involved a lot of mass murder. The Aztec method of mass murder during war was really weird, but that doesn't make it worse inherently than any other form of mass murder. They were at least trying to make their war murders be less bad.

-Username17

I found this, and it's the only thing I personally remember seeing about the topic. It's not quite what you remembered, more of a "ritual murder is fucking crazy. So is burning people at the stake. It's not like the Aztec's had a monopoly on the cruel and unusual murder of their prisoners."

For completeness, here the thread and page that's from. There's a little discussion surrounding it about old testament crazy and the like.

[Whipstitch]

You're not going to find a satisfying mic drop citation because the rate at which the Aztecs brutalized and sacrificed their tributaries is a highly debated figure.

[Ancient History]

Hell, we can't even agree on how many they ate.

[Chamomile]

I question the utility of the argument anyway. Both the Spanish and Aztec Empires are not especially relevant to any modern politics and anyone who claims otherwise is wrong regardless of whether or not they're on the right side of that 500-year old conflict. There's a potentially interesting discussion about how much human sacrifice or cannibalism the Aztecs would have to have engaged in before the Spanish conquest could be considered a good thing, but the question of whether or not the Aztecs actually engaged in that much human sacrifice or cannibalism can only be honestly answered by saying "Hell if we know," which is not very interesting.

[Occluded Sun]

The Aztecs were murdering murderous murderers. They weren't nearly as bad as the Spanish, who depopulated entire regions.

The Aztecs needed people to survive, as they were a resource. The Spanish worked people to death because ultimately they didn't need them once they'd outlived their usefulness. And when they died, they left behind all that land...

The Aztecs weren't 'peaceful' by any means. But it's been suggested that the Spanish didn't see the natives as human because they were outside their experience - in fairness, the same thing applied to the natives, who mistook the Spanish for gods.