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Aztec Human Sacrifice
John Roach
Mentor: Steven Topik
The purpose of my UROP project is to explore the Aztec’s use of human sacrifice from 1428 to
1521 when the sacrificial cult increased dramatically in size and scope in Mesoamerica. In fact, the
massive scale of human offerings during the Aztec’s 93 years of dominance is unique in the history
of man, and for this reason it is necessary to attempt to explain the role that Aztec human sacrifice
played in the Aztec’s ideology and empire. Using a combination of written and archaeological data as
primary sources, my research has taken me to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. and to
Mexico City, where I analyzed and took photos of the excavation of the Templo Mayor and Aztec
art at the Museo Nacional de Antropología. I discovered that human sacrifice was incorporated into
the Aztec’s ideology deliberately by the Aztec military leadership to serve concrete and abstract goals;
human sacrifice was used in order to create a social hierarchy based on warfare as a basis for
expansion, to provoke fear in enemies and potential enemies by the projection of power in mass
scale human sacrifices, and to offer debt payment to the Aztec pantheon. Human sacrifice made it
possible for the Aztecs to fuse religion and warfare into one belief system.