A recently published research in the medical journal Nature celebrating the genetic analysis of a subterranean large burial site in the ceremonial centre of Chichén Itzá, Mexico, a renowned for individual sacrifice during the Mayan civilization, is being celebrated by corporate media and wealthy establishments like The New York Times, CBS, National Geographic, and Smithsonian Magazine. Our collectivist institutions are actually taking a different approach than to deny or underplay the existence of human sacrifice among aboriginal American peoples: recasting this conduct as appropriate and yet civilized.  ,
Even though such a rhetorical tack may be amazing, the fact that those who will fight these brutal societies are the same people who offer knee-jerk condemnations of European sins as firmly evil, despite of culture or context, makes it even more incoherent.
Leaders Say We Should n’t Justice the Culprits of Child Sacrifice
According to the new study, all identified buried patients in Chichén Itzá were female, and several of them were strongly related, including two pairs of twins. These findings relate to the important role that twins play in Mayan and broader Mesoamerican mythology, frequently resembling gods and heroes. The research was referred to as” a breakthrough” by Rodrigo Barquera, the lead author of the new paper, because the biological kinship and the victims ‘ similar ages suggest an intentional ritual practice, perhaps linked to a sacred Mayan text, the” Popol Vuh,” which describes the sacrifice of a pair of twins after they lose a ballgame.
In a Washington Post meeting on June 14th, Barquera acknowledged that learning that children were killed in a human surrender ritual were among the remains at Chichén Itzá may be a little unsettling. However, Barquera remarked that suicide is a totally different principle in Mesoamerican nations. ” Death is not seen as a negative thing. Of training, under our view, it’s bad. We ca n’t, therefore, judge what they did from our modern perspective because that is how they were doing it and according to their myths and beliefs.
Additionally, the Post claims that the results” contradict the general assumption that young women and girls made up the majority of those sacrificed at the page.” It unquestionably cites research co-author and professor of anthropology at Harvard University Christina Warinner, who stated that the results “turn that history on its head and reveals the profound links between ritual sacrifice and the processes of individual death and rebirth described in spiritual Maya texts.”
Can Cultural Relativism Ever Excuse Child Sacrifice?
One wonders how these recent genetic discoveries about ancient sacrificial victims in Mesoamerica, while intriguing, “turn our previous understanding of these events on its head.” After all, the Mayans still sacrificed children. Possibly, whatever sexually obscene portrayals about Mayan human sacrifice were once made up were untrue. Turning the historical record on its head implies a significant change, as if archaeologists and scientists discovered that the Mayans did n’t sacrifice people after all and that there are other less horrifying causes for children’s mass graves.
We must surely scoff at claims made by academics who claim that we must withhold judgment from those societies that practice human sacrifice in accordance with cultural relativism. When Barquera claims that modern distaste for Mayan behavior can all be explained away by different, equally valid cultural conceptions of death, Barquera, as quoted by the Post, egregiously misinterprets and deflects.
Yes, cultures can probably have different ways of understanding death, but are we really convinced that killing children is ever permitted, whether it be through some form of familial revenge, a mythic religious ritual, or some other means? Across many cultures, spanning thousands of years, children have been understood as innocent and vulnerable, and thus to be protected rather than exploited and abused. Civilizations that repudiate this basic truth— not only the Mayans, but also the Aztecs, Incas, Pawnee, Patawomeck, and Cahokia” Mound Peoples” of present- day Illinois — engage in an affront to one of the most basic, inherently appreciable tenets of human society.
Is It Incoherent to Condemn Other Evils Despite Excusing Human Sacrifice While Disclosing Other Human Sacrifice
Although it ought to be said, the Mayans and other indigenous American peoples should not ignore the fact that many other civilizations on many continents have done much the same. The “wicker man,” a human sacrifice practiced by Celtic pagans, including the “wicker man,” as described by Roman and Greek antiquity, is a representation of North African and Near Eastern cultures sacrificing people to deities like Baal and Moloch. According to a disturbing article in First Things from October 2023, archaeologists can be easily identified when they have discovered a brothel from the Roman Empire because the bones of male infant skeletons will always be discovered during excavations since these “businesses” were of little use to these “businesses.”
Killing anyone without just cause is morally reprehensible, but it is a special degree of evil to murder children. Most people, especially parents, are aware of this, which is why pro-abortion advocates work so hard to refute the notion that life in the womb is in some way not fully human and can therefore be justifiably destroyed. Any attempt to claim children are not worthy of society’s special protection, as multiculturalist academics and journalists seem to be attempting to do when it comes to the Mayans, is flatly contemptible.
It’s also patently incoherent. Our legacy elite institutions are overflowing with academics, journalists, and bureaucrats earning their living condemning Western civilization for exploiting other peoples through imperialism, slavery, and other such crimes against human freedom and flourishing. Why should we condemn those who engage in military conquest or slavery, according to multiculturalist logic? Are n’t these actions merely the product of alternative social structures and belief systems, no better or worse than anything else? Who are we to make judgments about militarily based societies that were built on brutal military conquest or slavery? Or do these deeds only become bad when people of European descent do them?
Perhaps it’s too much to ask for intellectual coherence from those who appear to be trying to demonize and destroy Western civilization from within, despite having financial advantages from it. No matter how” complex” the ritual is, showing no shame on us if we express anything other than disgust for those who make up claims with a straight face that we should show tolerance and acceptance for civilizations that murdered their own children in order to honor or appease some deity. For if we cannot condemn such obvious evils, how are we any different?
Casey Chalk is a senior contributor to The Federalist and a columnist for The New Oxford Review. He has a bachelor’s in history and master’s in teaching from the University of Virginia and a master’s in theology from Christendom College. The Persecuted: True Stories of Courageous Christians Living Their Faith in Muslim Lands is his book.
