Everything you thought you knew about the Aztecs is wrong. Or, as Camilla Townsend more tactfully puts it at the start of her wonderful new book: ‘The Aztecs would never recognize themselves in the picture of their world that exists in the books and movies we have made.’
The picture to which Townsend refers is perhaps best symbolised for British readers by the image on the cover of the original Angry Aztecs volume in Terry Deary’s Horrible Histories series (1997): a cartoon depicts an Aztec warrior holding a fresh human heart, saying ‘His heart was in the right place’ (covers of other editions show variations on this theme, save for a 2014 edition depicting a rat in Aztec warrior garb). The joke works because the association of the Aztecs with the practice of human sacrifice runs deep and wide: most people who know only one thing about the Aztecs know that they are famous for sacrificing people to their gods; and those who are more familiar with the Aztecs – including those who, for example, teach in schools or universities – tend to think of Aztec culture as one in which bloodthirsty rituals and exotic superstitions played central roles.
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