Archaeologists in Guatemala uncovered an ancient Mayan altar that was clearly used for child sacrifice, yet the Associated Press managed to find someone to claim the practice was “not … violent” but just “their way of connecting with the celestial bodies.”
Altar Haul
The AP story, published last week, recounts the discovery of an altar in Tikal National Park, about 325 miles north of Guatemala City. According to AP, “The enormous city-state of Tikal, whose towering temples still stand in the jungle, battled for centuries with the Kaanul dynasty for dominance of the Maya world.”
That Mayan world extended north into Mexico, where the city of Teotihuacan — “one of the largest in the world at its peak between 100 B.C. and A.D. 750,” wrote AP — stood. Teotihuacan, near present-day Mexico City, is famous for its Pyramid of the Sun and Pyramid of the Moon, both of which were used for human sacrifice.
The newly discovered altar, which is about one yard by two yards by one yard in size, is covered in limestone. It was found in a dwelling that featured “anthropomorphic figures with tassels in red tones, a detail from the Teotihuacan culture,” noted AP. Archaeologists spent a year and a half uncovering and analyzing it before the discovery was announced.
AP reported:
Edwin Román, who leads the South Tikal Archaeological Project within the park, said the discovery shows the sociopolitical and cultural interaction between the Maya of Tikal and Teotihuacan’s elite between 300 and 500 A.D.
Román said the discovery also reinforces the idea that Tikal was a cosmopolitan center at that time, a place where people visited from other cultures, affirming its importance as a center of cultural convergence.
Lead archaeologist Lorena Paiz told the AP:
The Teotihuacan were traders who traveled all over the country [Guatemala]. The Teotihuacan residential complexes were houses with rooms and in the center altars; that’s what the residence that was found is like, with an altar with the figure representing the Storm Goddess.
In short, it is a significant find that offers further historical insight into the Mayans.
Sacrifice Lie
It is also a disturbing find. Paiz told AP the altar “was believed to have been used for sacrifices, ‘especially of children.’”
“The remains of three children not older than four years were found on three sides of the altar,” she said.
Had AP left it at that, readers might have come away with the impression that Mayan religion was evil — perhaps even demonic. However, given the anti-Western, anti-Christian mindset of the present-day Left and its allies in the press, such an impression could not be allowed to stand. Thus, AP sought out someone who would put a good face on the ritual murder of toddlers:
María Belén Méndez, an archaeologist who was not involved with the project, said the discovery confirms “that there has been an interconnection between both cultures and what their relationships with their gods and celestial bodies was like.”
“We see how the issue of sacrifice exists in both cultures. It was a practice; it’s not that they were violent, it was their way of connecting with the celestial bodies,” she said.
Spin Skeptics
Not everyone bought AP’s spin on the subject.
“I guess that makes it OK,” Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger quipped on X. “Since they were connecting with their ‘celestial bodies,’ ‘it’s not that they were violent’ when they … slaughtered children.”
“First it was ‘nonviolent, peaceful rioting’ and now it’s ‘peaceful child sacrifices,’” posted Congressman Mike Collins (R-Ga.). “What planet did these people come from?”
RedState contributor Bonchie called AP’s approach “a perfect example of the so-called ‘noble savage’ mythology that sits at the center of left-wing ideology.”
Bonchie contended:
What you need to understand about that type of misrepresentation is that it is vital to upholding leftwing dogma on “colonization” and the supposed evils of capitalism. In that telling, these tribes would have flowered into a peaceful utopia without Western intervention. Further, they were morally superior to the Spanish invaders despite sacrificing children to false gods, perpetuating the most brutal form of slavery in history, and murdering each other with reckless abandon.
If the left loses that framing, their entire worldview, which centers on Western cultures being the only ones capable of evil, collapses. [Emphasis in original.]
21st-century Child Sacrifice
This is the same Left, by the way, that considers abortion the height of self-actualization to the point that some progressives actually celebrate the fact that they have sacrificed their unborn children to the modern-day gods.
Observed LifeSiteNews:
While abortion is largely committed for utilitarian reasons, with no ritualistic significance attached by abortionists or seekers, its defenders do frame it as a necessary sacrifice for women’s lifestyle and career options, its political supporters place an importance on its availability that many have compared to a secular “sacrament,” and groups such as the Satanic Temple even commit what they describe as “abortion rituals.”
“It’s interesting that we sit around and call other ancient civilizations ‘heathen’ because of human sacrifice,” neurosurgeon and future Cabinet secretary Dr. Ben Carson said in 2014, “but aren’t we actually guilty of the same thing?”
Perhaps that sense of guilt is what led AP to attempt to whitewash the Mayans’ truly horrific religious rites. If people stop thinking of child sacrifice as evil, they’ll feel no compunction about snuffing out innocent life in the womb — or even out of it.
