The joys of human sacrifice

August's talk came from Dr Tim Eyre, who chose to fill us in on the Aztecs. We learned a little about their history and technology, their love of cleanliness and education, and their great delight in war. But mostly we focused on their deities, and four gods in particular. The essence here seems to be precisely how you go about enacting a human sacrifice to each god. Human sacrifice was a big deal to the Aztecs, and their main purpose in war seems to have been capturing enemy warriors to sacrifice. This was seen as an honour and the victims went willingly to the altar. In same cases the chosen men were treated like kings or gods for a year, then sacrificed—a popular method being to split open the victim's chest with an obsidian blade and to rip out the still-beating heart. What larks. Many thanks to Tim for an informative and well-presented talk.

You can see a video of the talk on our YouTube channel and find photographs from the evening in an album on our Flickr account.