Talk:Cannibalism in the Americas

Zultepec/Tecoaque bad source

The Zultepec/Tecoaque section lists this article as the source.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/mexican-archaeologists-reveal-story-cannibalism-and-conquest-180976805/

This article cites an AP article and a Mexico News Daily article, and all three are reporting on a (Monday) January 18, 2021 article posted by the INAH. Here is an archive of the original INAH article.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210119103716/https://www.inah.gob.mx/boletines/9646-revelan-como-fue-la-destruccion-de-zultepec-tecoaque-hace-500-anos-por-revancha-de-hernan-cortes

A copy of this article is also hosted on the gob.mx page here

https://www.gob.mx/cultura/prensa/revelan-como-fue-la-destruccion-de-zultepec-tecoaque-hace-500-anos-por-revancha-de-hernan-cortes

and here are the AP and the Mexico News Daily articles

https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/spaniards-massacred-women-children-in-reprisal-for-sacrifices-cannibalism/

https://apnews.com/article/mexico-city-mexico-a40e8f35ef781e0a2fe44fb6641ed8c9

If you compare these articles with each other, you'll notice that the Smithsonian, AP, and Mexico News Daily articles say one thing while the INAH article says entirely different stuff.

Since the INAH article is only in Spanish I'll write up a summary.

The INAH article details the archeological findings of the people who fell victim to Cortes' revenge. It goes into detail describing how the city was fortified before the attack, that remains indicate the people were fleeing, that women's remains were found seemingly trying to protect toddlers, that women and children who sheltered in place were mutilated (indicated by severed bones recovered on the floors of their rooms), the temples were burned, sculptures of gods were decapitated, that some warriors managed to flee and women and children were the main victims of the massacre. The article only briefly mentions the 450 sacrificed captives at the beginning to explain why Cortes sought revenge and to give an estimate of 5,000 people in the city (the population increasing due to people arriving from Tenochtitlan to participate in the sacrifices). The article also says that after becoming aware of Gonzalo de Sandoval's siege the people hid everything related to the sacrifices in the cisterns of the city (of which 22 had been explored at the time of the article's writing). These items included bones from the sacrificed captives that had been modified into trophies, livestock remains (cows, goats, pigs), pack animals, sculptures of deities, and a wide variety of the captives personal belongings. The article also says that there were vestiges that indicate coexistence between the Acolhuas of Zultepec and the captives who were even their guests as is demonstrated by a series of modifications that they made to their homes to accommodate the captives including additional walls and European-style ovens as some of the elements that indicate a cultural exchange.

The INAH article does NOT mention, hint at, or talk about cannibalism. The only mention of the captives bones is with regard to the bones modified into trophies found in the cisterns. It does talk about the ethnic diversity of the captives and it says that it is probable that on these dates the captives were sacrificed over 8 "agonizing" (agónicos) months (the precise wording is a little ambiguous, so I'm not sure if it means the dates are probable or that the 8 months of sacrifices are probable). The INAH article does not mention skull racks, does not mention anything about the women being pregnant, or any details regarding the sacrifices. It does not mention the captives being held in "door-less cells", it does not mention the horses being eaten, or many other things in the AP, Smithsonian, or Mexico News Daily articles.

All of the details about cannibalism, cannibalism, sacrifices, bones being having cut marks, and analysis of the bones of the captives in general are unsourced claims simply added to the AP, Smithsonian, and Mexico News Daily articles to add context and attract clicks. There are other issues with the sources as well, for instance, the Smithsonian article claims the AP spoke to Enrique Martínez Vargas but it actually just cited his statements from the INAH article.

More generally, what I'm seeing in Mexican sources is that the bones had cut marks and that Cortes changed the name to Tecoaque. However, the argument that the cut marks indicate cannibalism is speculation put forward by some researchers (often in non-peer reviewed sources like pop-science books and interviews). The cut marks and other processing on the bones are consistent with what we know about religious sacrifice and the modification of bones into trophies. All of the articles surrounding this topic (and several other related topics) are riddled with bad non-peer reviewed secondary sources that contain many unsourced claims like this and it would be good if someone took the time to actually sift through them to replace them with proper sources. 107.190.75.201 (talk) 14:44, 26 July 2025 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with the details and so can't comment on them, but Smithsonian Magazine is generally considered a reliable source. Also it's worth mentioning that the mentioned article mentions cannibalism only in passing, as it's chiefly about the massacre that followed. It's cited as source for only one paragraph in this article, so it's overly not very important here. Gawaon (talk) 15:37, 26 July 2025 (UTC)

The purpose of the paragraph is to make the argument that there was cannibalism, however this is something that is stated in the Smithsonian article but not in the INAH article. In general, significant parts of the paragraph cite unsourced material. The following excerpt from the Smithsonian is one of the elements that are not part of the INAH material that it is reporting on.

Remains from these rituals show that the heads of both male and female prisoners were strung up on skull racks, or towers. Bone analysis shows that the women treated in this way were pregnant—a fact that may have qualified them for treatment as “warriors.” Per the AP, the archaeologists also found a woman’s body that was cut in half and left near the remains of a dismembered 3- or 4-year-old child. — Smithsonian

Here is the paragraph in the article.

Documentation of Aztec cannibalism mainly dates from the period after the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire (1519-1521). For instance, a convoy ordered by Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar was cannibalized by the Aztecs in Zultépec-Tecoaque in 1520. In the Nahuatl language, the name "Tecoaque" translates into "the place where they ate them." For eight months, the convoy was ritually sacrificed, and their heads were put up on skull racks. Both men and women were sacrificed, including pregnant women. At least one 3-or-4-year-old child was also sacrificed during the ritual, and the town's population swelled to 5,000 as people arrived for the ceremonies. In 1521, Hernán Cortés and his forces arrived and, in an act of revenge, massacred the town's inhabitants, who were mostly women and children.

All of that said, what I'm really trying to bring more attention to is that this is a systematic issue where poorly researched material that has not undergone any peer review is being cited and presented with insufficient scrutiny -- often presenting speculations as fact or claiming things that aren't in the actual primary source. Smithsonian Magazine is, at the end of the day, just an online pop-science news site, and this article is merely reporting on other news articles (which themselves are reporting on an actual government INAH publication) and adding their own additional content to it. Smithsonian Magazine is not a journal article but there are actual peer reviewed journal articles that discuss this topic.

For instance, refer to this article published in January-February 2013:

Martínez Vargas, Enrique, Ana María Jarquín Pacheco, “El sacrificio de negros al inicio de la conquista de México”, Arqueología Mexicana, núm. 119, pp. 28-35.

https://arqueologiamexicana.mx/mexico-antiguo/una-mulata-sacrificada

The article discusses the forensic study of a burial at Tecoaque containing a sacrificed person believed to be a Black woman. I've chosen to cite some relevant quotes (my translation):

During the cleaning of the cranium, evidence of heat exposure was observed in different places, and it was concluded that it corresponded to a person who was sacrificed and then defleshed.

The marks and indentations from perimortem cuts in the facial region, especially in the region of the nose, support he hypothesis that the cranium had been previously cooked to detach the soft tissue.

The study also confirmed the hypothesis of sacrifice and defleshing of the individuals entombed in that plaza.

Arquelogia Mexicana is a journal co-edited by INAH, it has a wiki page.

(English) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arqueolog%C3%ADa_Mexicana

(Spanish) https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arqueolog%C3%ADa_Mexicana 107.190.75.201 (talk) 16:06, 26 July 2025 (UTC)

If you think that our article contains factual errors, feel free to correct them. So far I don't see any. For example, our article says that a young child was sacrificed, and so says the INAH. Gawaon (talk) 17:32, 26 July 2025 (UTC)

The INAH article does not actually mention a "young child". It has a short paragraph near the beginning of the article where it says "it is probable that" and mentions the sacrifices, and name of the place as background including mentioning that "among the european men, women, and children there were found" and lists off a bunch of ethnic groups. The article is not trying to convey this section as factual nor is it what the article is about. Here us an Uno TV news article (in Spanish) titled "Aztecs didn't practice cannibalism en Zultepec: INAH" that criticizes The Guardian for misreprenting that exact INAH article in the exact same way.

https://www.unotv.com/nacional/aztecas-no-practicaron-canibalismo-en-zultepec-inah/

The far bigger issue is that I can't simply fix the section to bring it in-line with the citation because the primary source of the citation doesn't talk about, mention, nor confirm cannibalism.

The Tecoaque article is also full of crazy bad sources, like an article by the Independent that also includes the pseudohistorical claim:

Legend had taught them that one day a "white god" would descend among them and that they should be ready at all times to welcome him. The quandary for Montezuma was this: perhaps Cortez, with his pale European skin, was the returning white god and his arrival therefore a celestial gift.

All of the sources, dealing with cannibalism, on that article are are news sites that attempt to contextualize Enrique Martínez Vargas research or statements by introducing their own unsourced or "common knowledge" claims of cannibalism. Every single one.

I think the proper thing to do would be to completely rewrite both this paragraph and the entire Teocaque article to bring it in-line with the research published by the INAH and specifically by Enrique Martínez Vargas' team because he is the director of the archeological site and they've excavating there for over three decades. He also wrote his thesis (2005) on Teocaque and it is available online and includes many pictures. This thesis is the primary source for many of the news articles, and in general he seems to be the primary source for all of the news articles I've seen.

I looked through the thesis and he explicitly speculates (says "it is possible that") a few times that certain things could be an indication of ritual ingestion of some pieces of remains. It seems (my opinion based on how his thesis is built, various statements he makes at different points, and some of what he says in the conclusion) like he's trying to make the argument that certain remains must not be Triple Alliance (i.e., "Aztecs") remains because according to another scholar's research (which he cites) Triple Alliance members did not practice ritual ingestion on other members of the Triple Alliance and therefore they can be ruled out. Here is an excerpt from the thesis, in a section describing the buried bodies (page 304), where he speculates about ritual ingestion:

En general, y a pesar de que sólo pudo recuperase parte de la información de la ceremonias efectuadas en dicha celebración, la referida al sacrificio de los cautivos, fue posible integrar algunos datos que amplían posibles aspectos relacionados con dicha ceremonia, como pudiera ser la ingestión de la carne de los cautivos después de quemados y de extraído el corazón, tanto por los miembros importantes de dicha sociedad como de Jos dueños que llevaban algunas secciones del cuerpo del cautivo a su casa para compartirlo con algunas amistades y familiares. A lo anterior se suma el hecho de que, después de la ingestión de carne, los restos óseos fueron reintegrados al templo para ser inhumados en los vestigios de la hoguera según indicaban, probablemente, las normas ceremoniales religiosas, quizá esa fuera la causa de la recuperación de una cantidad importante de restos óseos separados y quizás los cuerpos completos fueron descarnados por personas conocedoras de tales técnicas, (posiblemente sacerdotes). También es importante indicár, que el Dios del Fuego estaba relacionado con el año y el tiempo, lo que hace plausible la relación del sacrificio de los cautivos con la conclusión de los primeros trece años del ciclo o la primera de las cuatro cañas del atado de los cincuenta y dos años.

He has other sections talking about certain religious festivals more generally as well as referring to other research on ritual ingestion (saying it's done for religious and political reasons and such). In the conclusion he briefly mentions that some (a few?) of the bones had teeth marks on the ends but I searched through the document and couldn't find any mention of said marks anywhere else. He does mention cut marks and other marks a TON of times though. This thesis is from 2006 so it's possible their assessment and theories of the site have evolved over the last 20 years as well so it would be good to look through all of that as well. 107.190.75.201 (talk) 19:29, 27 July 2025 (UTC)

Well, so it seems there may be no clear-cut archaeological evidence for cannibalism at that specific site (though cut marks, if they specifically point towards a butchering process, are often considered such), but there's in any case clearly historical evidence (Spanish accounts saying so)? And it's in general agreement with what else is known about Aztec sacrifices, hence (as Enrique Martínez Vargas himself writes) plausible enough, right? I don't think we say anywhere in this article that there's archaeological evidence there, the paragraph in question merely talks about "documentation". So I think we're good here. As for the Tecoaque article, I don't have much to do with it and so won't comment further. If you want to make any changes to it, I'd suggest to do it there or open the discussion on its talk page.

As long as sourced information is only replaced with better sourced information (say citing academic papers instead of newspapers as references), it shouldn't be a problem. Gawaon (talk) 20:23, 27 July 2025 (UTC)

There isn't really documentation other than the Spaniard's declaring that it must be renamed to that in Nahuatl (not in Spanish). There are many types of sacrifice practiced and defleshing is really only indicative of defleshing (for instance, consider the trophies made of bones found at the site or that tzompantli used skulls with the flesh removed or rituals that involved cremating bones which Enrique Martínez Vargas also writes about). Moreover, Enrique Martinez Vargas isn't himself making these claims but rather citing other works which one would have to look at, specifically Gonzalez Torres as it's not clear if they're speaking hypothetically (with relation to Nahua cosmological beliefs) or what. The Spaniard declaration is not sufficient for the same reason that archeologists and other researchers generally disregard Indigenous oral tradition (except as possible corroborating information). So, no, we are not good here, it is not sufficient to say "For instance, a convoy ordered by Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar was cannibalized by the Aztecs in Zultépec-Tecoaque in 1520." and justify it with saying it's "plausible enough, right?".

All we can really say about Teocaque, from what I have read so far (but it would be better to review more recent material by Enrique Martínez Vargas and INAH), is that: Captives from a Spanish convoy consisting of Europeans and people of other ethnic groups (determined by studying bone structure), including women and children, were sacrificed. Later, the Spanish sought revenge, killed everyone in the city (approximately 5,000 people), and destroyed it. Archeologists found everything related to the sacrifices in the cisterns of the city, including trophies made from bones, personal belongings of captives, and various other items. Martínez Vargas (the director of the Zultépec-Tecoaque archeological site) proposed that perhaps the people tried to hide everything in the cisterns due to the arriving Spaniards (however more recent burials have been discovered in the cisterns since then including a high-ranking Acolhua priest or ruler and Martínez Vargas writes that the cisterns represent the underworld). According to Martínez Vargas PhD thesis, the bones of the sacrificed captives showed combat trauma marks, cut marks, burn marks, and signs of cooking indicating defleshing. He notes that there is limited information regarding the ceremonies carried out and conjectures that perhaps after the captives were burned and their hearts were removed, the important members of society and the captors may have taken certain pieces of the remains home for ritual ingestion with friends and family and then returned them to the temple to be buried in the remains of the bonfire as this would explain the recovery of quantity of remains that were separated and perhaps the bodies were defleshed by those familiar with such techniques. He goes on to say that such ritual ingestion would not have cannibalistic or nutritional purposes but rather religious and political purposes. There is, however no conclusive evidence of canibalism at the site. 107.190.75.201 (talk) 23:24, 27 July 2025 (UTC)

First: All of history essentially consists of what people said what happened, so both written sources and oral testimonies matter a lot, of course. Not everything will be reliable and it's down to historians to (try to) separate the wheat from the chaff, but the idea that written and oral sources should be entirely disregarded is nonsense.

Secondly: So now you're saying there are cut marks, burn marks, and signs of cooking, and yet don't want to see that as evidence of cannibalism? Together, or even in isolation, these tend to be very tell-tale signs. For example, in the case of Jane, the remains of a girl found at Jamestown, the scientific consensus is that she was (partially) eaten, based on evidence that mostly seems to consist in cut marks.

Thirdly: Of course the cannibalism (human flesh eating) of the Aztecs had a religious meaning, and may well have served political purposes as well. That's essentially undisputed, as far as I can tell. It's still cannibalism (eating the flesh or internal organs of other humans). In Martínez Vargas' thesis you've linked above, he writes on pp. 328–329:

La antropofagia o teocualo, tuvo también un carácter sacro y político realizado con los cuerpos de los sacrificados, que significaba una manera de comerse a las imágenes de los dioses, en este caso mani restados en los prisioneros capturados, acto ritual que ,además del aspecto mítico de la transmisión de energía, no tuvo fines caníbales o alimenticios. Por el contrario, también fue una manifestación de poder que demostró que, al igual que a los enemigos indígenas, también podían disponer de sus restos después de sacrificarlos con profusos y ricos ceremoniales que se caracterizaban por su espectacularidad.

So roughly:

Anthropophagy or teocualo also had a sacred and political character, performed with the bodies of the sacrificed, which signified a way of consuming the images of the gods, in this case manifested in the captured prisoners. This ritual act, in addition to the mythical aspect of energy transmission, did not have cannibalistic or nutritional purposes. On the contrary, it was also a manifestation of power that demonstrated that, just as with indigenous enemies, they could also dispose of their remains after sacrificing them with lavish and rich ceremonies characterized by their spectacular nature.

So as far as I can tell, he accepts that anthropophagy or teocualo did indeed happen at Zultepec/Tecoaque, but points out that it had a sacred and political meaning rather than being a purely nutritional act. Fair enough, but of course this "anthropophagy" is still exactly "cannibalism" as the term is generally used, and as it's used in this article. He seems to have a narrower view of cannibalism as a purely nutritional act, but that's not how the term is usually understood, and not how we use it here. But he agrees with the Smithsonian that acts of anthropophagy happened at the site, and that's the relevant thing. Gawaon (talk) 07:39, 28 July 2025 (UTC)

1. I'm not saying oral histories should be disregarded, I'm saying that they are. The western scientific tradition and the Indigenous oral traditions are largely separate and Indigenous oral histories have generally been disregarded within the scientific tradition until they are corroborated (often with a lot of academic pushback) by archeological findings. Even basic oral traditions describing historical events have never been accepted in the scientific tradition on their face (to be clear, I don't believe this is a good thing but it is a result of western biases as well as part of how academic literature works). To accept the claims of the Spaniards on their face is essentially to make an exception for them.

2. This is not something I'm saying now. It is something I said from the very beginning. The point is that cut marks, burn marks, signs of cooking, and so on are used for defleshing and not necessarily indicative of cannibalism (I've said this several times now). The "consensus" you mention with regards to Jane is also a conjecture and it is disputed even at the very end of the article you linked. At the end of the day there are a lot of unanswered questions surrounding Jamestown and there are a lot of practices that involve dismemberment and defleshing across the Americas.

3. The section you're quoting is in the conclusion. In that section he's not saying it happened, just restating something he stated earlier (page 310-311):

Respecto a los rituales acaecidos después de la muerte de los sacrificados se comprobó la ingestión de su carne, lo que no se considera como una manifestación de dieta con tintes de antropofagia, sino como un constitutivo a un acto ritual en el que se ingería la carne de los que se habían convertido en dioses al ofrecer su sangre a los númenes. El acto de ingerir los restos del ofrendado llamado teocualo o comerse al dios, generalmente se daba en forma comunal, realizado por lo general en la vivienda del captor o del que lo había comprado para ofrecerlo en sacrificio, compartiéndolo con las personas más allegadas como una forma de socializar y refrendar su relación, además de adquirir su esencia en comunidad. Aunque existían limitaciones en relación a la ingestión de la carne de los sacrificados, al respecto señala González Torres (lbidem: 290) la imposibilidad de comer las víctimas con las que se tuvieran lazos de parentesco o que pertenecieran al mismo grupo o tribu, lo que permite inferir que los sacrificados en el sitio no eran acolhuas ni posiblemente miembros de la Triple Alianza, por consiguiente se suponen europeos, negroides e indígenas aliados de los hispanos de filiación tlaxcalteca, otomí, totonacos y de otros grupos fuera de la región. Por último resulta importante destacar que el acto de los indígenas habitantes del sitio, es decir, comerse a los miembros capturados de la caravana proveniente de la costa de Veracruz, fue un acto ritual religioso y político, en el que nada tuvo que ver algún tipo de venganza contra los hispanos y sus aliados.

Essentially he's citing González Torres, (which is why I said earlier that it is necessary to look at that specific citation as well) who describes this type of ritual and says it originates from the coast of Veracruz, and conjecturing that perhaps this ritual took place here as it would explain why some of the remains were separated and it would rule out those specific bones as belonging to the Triple Alliance. I posted another quote above describing the ritual in more detail -- in that quote he is clear that there is a lot of missing information about the ritual and he's trying to conjecture additional details about the sacrifice based on limited data and the work of González Torres.

If you read his words carefully, you'll notice that he mentions multiple times, when describing the cut/burn/cooking marks on the bones, that it's possible that these are indications of a piece of flesh being removed for the purposes of ritual ingestion but he does not say it is confirmation (e.g., he says things like "posiblemente con el fin ritual de ingerir su carne", key word being posiblemente/possibly). What he does do is make various observations about the bones, spends time talking about a religious festival in that period, discusses the academic literature on ritual ingestion of animals and humans due to religious and political beliefs, and, among other things (ritual ingestion is not the point of his thesis), puts forward the conjecture that "possibly" a certain ritual involving ritual ingestion of human flesh took place that would explain why some pieces of certain remains were separated.

3a. The distinction he's making with regards to the term cannibalism is that (in the ritual described by González Torres originating from the coast of Veracruz) the ritual ingestion is not a dietary thing, like they're not sitting down and eating a person for dinner. Rather, (in the ritual described by González Torres originating from the coast of Veracruz), certain specific people are allowed to take pieces back to share for political and religious reasons before returning the bones to the temple.

I know I'm being really redundant here but I've said a lot of this before and it really sounds like you're not reading it. 107.190.75.201 (talk) 12:14, 28 July 2025 (UTC)

So "ritual ingestion" happened (= human flesh was eaten), but it was "not a dietary thing". OK, that sounds plausible enough, but it's not all in disagreement with what our article currently says. Gawaon (talk) 15:08, 28 July 2025 (UTC)

It's nuanced. The cut marks, and such happened. However, the ritual ingestion is a historical reconstruction.

I looked through his publications on google scholar to verify that this position hasn't changed (since the thesis is from 2005) and found this document.

https://inah.gob.mx/images/suplementos/20211203_ChiquINAH_12.pdf

It's a cultural supplement for the site and the material is basically a summary of the history of the site and his thesis.

Pages 5, 6, and 7 refer to ingestion. Page 5 briefly describes two rituals that were practiced in the era, one of which refers to teocualo ("teotl eating") but in a very vague way. Page 6 describes the analysis of the bones and after describing the cuts it says "con la posible ingestión de su carne" ("with the possible ingestion of their flesh"). Page 7 says that by analyzing the context and some historical sources they created a reconstruction of the events of the sacrificed captives "A partir del análisis del contexto de la hoguera y de algunas fuentes históricas,fue posible reconstruir los eventos del sacrificio de los cautivos". Page 7 also includes a conclusion where it once again clarifies that this ingestion was not done for nutritional reasons nor was it associated to some social pathology but rather a result of their cosmology.

I want to clarify that teocualo is a much more general concept. In this case it refers to ingesting flesh but in general it can mean other things. To put it simply, the Nahua people (and other mesoamerican groups) were highly metaphorical in both their language and their cosmology. There were many rituals that involved a person or object becoming a deity (technically teotl but too convoluted to explain) and these functioned in different ways. Like in the toxcatl ritual, where a person embodied a Tezcatlipoca for a year (including being worshiped as such) until they were sacrificed and another person took the role. Such people or objects are called ixiptla. Teocualo refers to ingesting pieces of an ixiptla but since objects like tzoalli (an effigy made of amaranth dough mixed with maize and honey that was clothed, presented offerings, and later sacrificed ritually before being distributed and consumed) could also be ixiptla then it doesn't necessarily mean ingesting flesh in all contexts.

I'm not familiar with the ritual (involving teocualo) that they are referring to in their reconstruction, but based on what he says in the thesis regarding their reconstruction, the captives would've become ixiptla before being sacrificed.

While looking through his publications I also saw this article that talks about bones being removed to create trophies.

https://arqueologiamexicana.mx/mexico-antiguo/la-historia-no-escrita-de-zultepec-tecoaque-tlaxcala 107.190.75.201 (talk) 18:09, 28 July 2025 (UTC)