City of Sacrifice: Violence From the Aztec Empire to the Modern Americas
Sign in to keep track of books you’ve read and want to read.
At an excavation of the Great Aztec Temple in Mexico City, amid carvings of skulls and a dismembered warrior goddess, David Carrasco stood before a container filled with the decorated bones of infants and children. It was the site of a massive human sacrifice, and for Carrasco the center of fiercely provocative questions: If ritual violence against humans was a profound necessity for the Aztecs in their capital city, is it central to the construction of social order and the authority of city states? Is civilization built on violence?
Read more
In City of Sacrifice,Carrasco chronicles the fascinating story of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, investigating Aztec religious practices and demonstrating that religious violence was integral to urbanization; the city itself was a temple to the gods. That Mexico City, the largest city on earth, was built on the ruins of Tenochtitlan, is a point Carrasco poignantly considers in his comparison of urban life from antiquity to modernity.
Majestic in scope, City of Sacrificeilluminates not only the rich history of a major Meso american city but also the inseparability of two passionate human impulses: urbanization and religious engagement. It has much to tell us about many familiar events in our own time, from suicide bombings in Tel Aviv to rape and murder in the Balkans.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Liked City of Sacrifice: Violence From the Aztec Empire to the Modern Americas? Here’s where I’d start.
These suit anyone who liked City of Sacrifice: Violence From the Aztec Empire to the Modern Americas. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.
-
México: Lo que todo ciudadano quisiera (no) saber de su patria Shares Mexico, history, nonfiction -
The Wind That Swept Mexico: The History of the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1942 Shares Mexico, history, nonfiction -
Fifth Sun Shares Mexico, history -
Las Soldaderas: Women of the Mexican Revolution Shares Mexico, history
