| From: | Martin Steffens <chimerae@***.IE> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Re: [OT] Aztech (Ok, it might be long, but from time to time it' |
| Date: | Tue, 12 Jan 1999 23:38:05 +0000 |
> Ok, I've got to come to the rescue of the Aztechs here. Ever here
> "Geography is Everything"? No? Prolly cause I just said it.
Nope, geography has been a mayor factor in many cultures and
influenced many historical events.
> Look at
> where the Aztechs lived, there were two ways to far: use the debris
> in the swamp (chinapas technique, I believe) or hack'n'slash'n'burn
> the forest and farm in the ashes.
[snip]
> Thus, you conquer a nearby city-state and make them pay a tribute
> (money and goods) to support your population. BUT, it wasn't just
> kill-kill-kill-kill. Most of the time, the ruler of the city-state
> would instruct his merchants to ask some subtle questions and help
> devise a plan to replace the current ruling body. So, one day, the
> populous would wake up with a new guy on the throne, who says, "We
> have you surrounded and some of your people in custody...So, pay
> tribute to us or we kill them and a lot of the rest of you."
> Sometimes the threat wasn't even needed.
Strange, if you have such a war glorifying culture it does not make
much sense to "rob" your armies of a chance to gain prestige. I would
imagine that a lot of the military weren't to happy about these
dishonourable tactics. I never heard of this before, could you give
me a source, I would like to know more.
> Actually, /everyone/ did. :)
I thought the priests were excempted, but you probably know more than
I do.
> Again, true. Little quirk: Males had to grow a really long ponytail
> off of their head until they caught a prisoner in battle. If you
> didn't ditch that soon, no girl would even look at you, unless it
> was to laugh.
Heh, IIRC they could catch one with a group of five kids or so, makes
the odds a little bit better if you barely have any experience.
> Again, true, but remember that a single battle could wipe out 5000
> people, easily. Their battles consisted of two club-wielding groups
> running at each other. And if yer paying tribute to someone, you can
> always try to shuffle off the mantle of 'punk'.
Which didn't happen very often because of the truly fearsome
reputation the Aztecs had with their neighbours. If you rebel they
would sacrifice the whole town, no exceptions. Plus their had an
excellent and large army, with elite units at the front and the rest
of the whole population ganging up behind them.
> >The cute bits start here: The poor POW's were marched up to the
> >temples, received open heart surgery, were kicked down the stairs,
> >and then chopped up and eaten by the capturing warrior's family.
> There's a bit more to it than that. To oversimply it like that is
> saying christians gnaw on bread and take a slug of alcohol.
Looked at it from the outside that's exactly how it looks. Only
difference is that being an outsider in these rituals made you look
puzzled in one case and scream in agony in the other :).
BTW, I didn't write all this to put the Aztecs in a bad daylight, the
idea was more to show why looking at the culture from the outside
they fit excellently in to the role of the bad guys FASA gave them.
Specially if you do it with a current set of morals and social
systems.
> That goes back to the belief of their responsibility to give
> strength to the gods in their fight against the darkness. As for you
> last statement, that almost sounds like body-piercing and tattooing.
> That may sound self-righteous, but maybe I'm just trying to get the
> Aztechs to be seen in a more impartial light.
The thing is, wouldn't you say now that Christians in medieval times
were wrong to burn witches? The people convicting those people firmly
believed that what they were doing was for the better of everyone,
including the victim. So my viewpoint is that the Aztecs might have
had a perfectly logical reason to sacrify all those thousands for
their gods, but that the methods to serve their gods were a little
brutal to say the least. And if some group of revivalists re-instated
this type of worship in the future, wouldn't it make them inhuman?
> True, but are any of today's nations a healthy, stable culture?
> Inter-faction warring, possible destruction of half the globe...all
> that fun stuff.
Quite a few of them are, excluding external threats. They would be
able to perpetuate themselves for a long time for they are not
reliant on a constant supply of new places to conquer, new enemies
to defeat, or fresh victims for the gods. I don't want to say that
modern nations are stable to the extreme, but the Aztecs had the
equivalent of a chain-letter principle culture going on, eventually
the chain would break.
> Ok, this I gotta nail: Conformists aren't ruled by fear, they are
> proud to serve their city-state any way they can.
City state yes, Aztec overlords, maybe not.
> They weren't willing to help out Spanish. They were bound by their
> heritage and religion to follow the "god" Cortes. Many didn't want
> to (you wouldn't believe how hard it was for Cortes to get a guide,
> and when he did, they took him on a trip over five times longer than
> it should have been).
If my sources are correct Cortez was brought to the city by Aztec
diplomats, and before that he used two guides, one Spanish guy who
had lived there for some time and a native girl.
> Not sure what you mean, but evil is in the eye of the beholder,
> sure. Anyone here not think Aztechnology is evil? *smirk*
The thing I was trying to say is that I don't like the way FASA
re-instated only the bad parts of the Aztec culture, thus turning it
into a "pure" evil organization. I rather see something a little bit
more balanced; revolting for westerners maybe, but with the good
parts added to it, so it would both attract and repulse at the same
time.
> The Aztechs, however, were /not/ evil. In some ways, their society
> was better than ours (yes, that is an opinion).
In some ways they were indeed more evolved than western cultures at
that time, I do grant you that.
Karina & Martin Steffens
chimerae@***.ie
