Word: tlaloc
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...curse of human sacrifice. That ritual, in which a priest bent over the recumbent victim and cut out his throbbing heart with an obsidian knife, was central to the Aztecs' religion. The war god Huitzilopochtli required blood as the price of Aztec victory and the rain god Tlaloc required it as the price of the harvest; if these gods remained unpropitiated, the world would end. Exactly how many victims were thus sacrificed (and later eaten) remains uncertain, but it is believed that 20,000 prisoners were offered up on the altar of the Great Temple when it was officially...
...corner of the world. In the center of this cosmos was a complex of temples, the heart and soul of Aztec life. The largest, some 15 stories high, as tall as many European cathedrals, was a stepped pyramid topped by two shrines-one dedicated to the rain god Tlaloc, the other to Huitzilopochtli. This Great Temple, or El Templo Mayor, as the Spaniards called it, was the site of human sacrifice. Victims ascended the stairs, priests tore out then" hearts and the eviscerated bodies were tossed back down. As part of the rite, the Aztecs consumed some of the flesh...
...archaeologists have sliced into seven major levels, plus several minor ones. The best-preserved is the second, completed in 1390, a date derived from a plaque inscribed with carvings from the 52-year Aztec calendar. Even the bases of the shrines to Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc remain intact, including a strikingly modern motif of parallel lines that may represent rain. By contrast, the large Coyolxauhqui stone was made about a century later, during the reign of Moctezuma I, grandfather of Cortés' victim...