How certain are we that what was destroyed was inferior? Who were these people who came out on the beach and swam to bring presents to Columbus and his crew, who watched Cortes and Pizarro ride through their countryside? What did people in Spain get out of all that death and brutality visited on the Indians of the Americas?
From the story here in National Geographic:
The layer of mud found during excavations may provide a clue, say the researchers, who suggest it was the result of severe rain and flooding on the generally arid coastline, and probably associated with a climate event related to El-Niño. ...
Haagen Klaus, a professor of anthropology at George Mason University, has excavated some of the earliest evidence for child sacrifice in the region, at the 10th- to 12th-century site of Cerro Cerillos in the Lambayeque Valley, north of Huanchaco. The bioarchaeologist, who is not a member of the Las Llamas project, suggests that societies along the northern Peruvian coast may have turned to the sacrifice of children when the sacrifice of adults wasn't enough to fend off the repeated disruptions wrought by El Niño.
"People sacrifice that which is of most and greatest value to them," he explains. "They may have seen that [adult sacrifice] was ineffective. The rains kept coming. Maybe there was a need for a new type of sacrificial victim."
Meanwhile, "ancient" ain't what it used to be (anything before 476 AD, the fall of the Western Roman Empire), perhaps because the arc of human barbarism keeps interfering with that other one bending toward justice somebody recently immortalized.
Meanwhile, "ancient" ain't what it used to be (anything before 476 AD, the fall of the Western Roman Empire), perhaps because the arc of human barbarism keeps interfering with that other one bending toward justice somebody recently immortalized.
