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The unexpected success of Mel Gibson's film Apocalypto has been explained away by surprised Hollywood executives in quite a few ways - as proof of the durable virtues of the old-fashioned cliff-hanger or as evidence of an unexpected taste for the exotic. But so far as I know nobody's made much of one of its less obvious pleasures, which is that of civilisational smugness.

Western audiences - used to thinking of themselves as superior to all other cultures but increasingly aware that this position may not actually be sustainable - could at least relax here, when presented with the religious practices of the Mayan baddies. The viewer could look on as the corpses tumbled down the pyramid steps and reflect with satisfaction that at least we don't do that anymore - trading human lives for an abstraction.

In truth there's barely a society on the planet that doesn't still practice human sacrifice in one way or another, and the UK is no exception. They only difference is that the sacrifice is rarely ceremonial and almost never explicitly connected to the gods it serves. If you're sceptical about this just recall last week's brief debate about Tim Yeo's proposal that the clocks should be moved forward by an hour, to save energy and lives. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents suggested that there might be 450 fewer road deaths and serious injuries following such a change - and Stephen Ladyman, the Road Safety Minister appeared to accept that prediction: "I am prepared to accept that approximately 100 lives would be saved, "he said, "and 400 people killed or seriously injured would be spared that fate."

Nonetheless the Government wasn't minded to make the change. So, taking the minister's words at face value around 100 victims are out there right now, waiting their turn to be sacrificed for... well, what exactly? Governmental expedience? Scottish voters?

And the sacrifice can be to a greater good. Anyone opposed to the Government's plans for pre-emptive crime prevention, for example (as I am) should honestly acknowledge that their opposition doesn't come without human cost. If you cleave to the principle that punishment should follow a crime rather than precede it - then you necessarily accept that dangerous individuals may have to conclusively prove their danger to society before they are restrained. The cost to their victim may well be huge, but even so you might argue that it is worth paying. Something similar happens when motorists resist attempts to lower the speed limit or even enforce the existing ones - future deaths are being traded for a present convenience.

The question isn't whether human sacrifice still occurs, then, but what we're sacrificing humans to. It surely needs to be something worthwhile - even if it is as debatably worthwhile as cutting five minutes off your journey time. And thinking about the Government's most recent proposal for large-scale sacrifice I'm at a loss to find any social upside whatsoever. The changed rules on gambling will unquestionably ruin lives - even if the overall death toll is likely to be low. Despite its denials the Government must know this to be true. And though they've invoked that modern minor deity of "personal leisure" that's a surely just a cover for a bigger, more powerful god - money. The casino owners will get rich and the Government gets a cut. At least the Mayans sincerely believed that everyone would benefit.
Source.

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Posts: 2198 | Registered: Jun 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by SuWeDi:

Nope...

BLACK JAGUAR



BLACK PANTHER



look similar but...

just Google it.

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Oh! So Jaguars are just like leopards in that they too come in all black coats!-- (black panthers are just leopards whose coats are all black instead of spotted)

Thankyou Suwedi for this enlightment. I did not know this!

Whatbox, so I take it your favorite animal is the jaguar(?)

Posts: 26252 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Djehuti:
Although it would have been better if they used a spotted leopard instead of a black panther. The resemblance would be alot closer to the jaguar which is also spotted. Jaguars were considered sacred

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Originally posted by Supercar:
^At the least, what is the physical difference here?

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Originally posted by Willing Thinker:
No, I may have heard of them or seen them, but I'm sure I would have bought one, atleast picked one up if it was in stores when I used to buy comics if I had the money.

Every time I thought of suggesting/making my own comic with an animal-based hero, I thought of a Jaguar man

I was very into Spiderman and Marvel in general.

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Originally posted by Djehuti:
Oh! So Jaguars are just like leopards in that they too come in all black coats!-- (black panthers are just leopards whose coats are all black instead of spotted)

Thankyou Suwedi for this enlightment. I did not know this!

Whatbox, so I take it your favorite animal is the jaguar(?)

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Dude you didn't know about melanistic cats?

Melanistic Serval

Melanistic Bobcat

Melanistic Tiger

Of course Jaguars and Leopards are the most common.


Leopards do not have the same face as a jaguar.
You can look at that face and immediately tell that Apocalpto was a leopard.
http://www.ifilm.com/video/2806197

Posts: 88 | Registered: Apr 2007  |  IP: Logged | 

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Yeah, I caught the melanistic thing too.

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Originally posted by Djehuti:
Although it would have been better if they used a spotted leopard instead of a black panther. The resemblance would be alot closer to the jaguar which is also spotted. Jaguars were considered sacred

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Originally posted by legeonas:
Hardly, the spots are different.

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Originally posted by Supercar:
^At the least, what is the physical difference here?

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Shorter limbs, much stronger jaw, leopard is much more of aman killer.

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Originally posted by Willing Thinker:
[qb] No, I may have heard of them or seen them, but I'm sure I would have bought one, atleast picked one up if it was in stores when I used to buy comics if I had the money.

Every time I thought of suggesting/making my own comic with an animal-based hero, I thought of a Jaguar man

I was very into Spiderman and Marvel in general.

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Interesting. You should try Ayahuasca. You might find Otorongo is your soul guide as well.

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Thanks, I will write that down.

Do you live in South America? I'm not assuming you have been to a farm there, but I've heard Jaguars like to harass farmers there!

Posts: 5555 | From: Tha 5th Dimension. | Registered: Apr 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Djehuti:
^Sorry, I didn't mean to sound like an expert on cats. I knew that leopards can be melanistic-- all black, but I didn't know jaguars or other big cats were the same way.

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By the way Legonas, I find it utterly ironic as well as humorous that YOU of all people are using the term 'melanistic'... and, well look at the results in all thos big cats. LOL

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Originally posted by Technical Anomal (What Box?:
True, Jaguars spots appear braoder. At times they cluster together, giving off a broader look

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Jaguar rosettes have a middle spot that leopards do not have.

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This doesn't mean that the Jaguar's always shorter, just more built and muscular, stalkier.

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You really think leopards are more killer like?

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Thanks, I will write that down.

Do you live in South America? I'm not assuming you have been to a farm there, but I've heard Jaguars like to harass farmers there!

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Posts: 88 | Registered: Apr 2007  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by ARROW99:

Djehuti, It is a good thing the europeans came alsong and rescued the heathens you speak of. These were some of the bloodiest, most barbaricc people that history reveals. How anyone would think that the Spanish conquest was not an overwhelming positive is beyond civil thinking people. Its not a matter of their race, its a matter of almost total evil. The Spanish could not match them on their worst day times two.

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Again Arrow A.K.A Horemheb, demonstrates Eurocentric doctrine #8 IF IT WAS NOT WHITE, AND ITS GREATNESS IS UNDENIABLE, THEN IT MUST BE DEPRECATED IN SOME WAY.

Now, I know Arrow no longer posts in this section of the forum (but he may still lurk here, as he posts in the political section), but I forgot to address his address his claims above before, so I will now just for the educational purpose of this board.

How true are Arrow's claims that the Mayan's were so evil, cruel, and savage-- more so than Europeans?

Well for starters, the rulers of Mayan city-states did not raid or attack simple villages where they sold the women off to slavery and take the men to sacrifice while abandoning the children as was shown in the movie. Much like the ancient Greeks Mesopotamia, there was intermittent warfare between the various Mayan city-states where one king would try to conquer another city-state. It was the elite warriors (those of noble status) of the defeated city-state that would be chosen for ritual torture or sacrifice. All the other warriors of common status who were taken as prisoners of war were enslaved as well as their families. Slave women were not considered sexual property as they were depicted in the movie but retained their rights. The inaccurate way they portrayed the status of women in Mayan culture was another thing I did not like about the movie! Slaves Mayan society were very much like servants and they could even buy their own freedom. The defeated city-state would just be incorporated in the conquereing king's domain.

Mayan sacrifices were usually not as gruesome as in the movie, with the heart taking ritual only performed on special occasions. Blood-letting was an important ritual in Mayan spiritual beliefs. The greatest gift to the gods was a sacrifice of one's blood. Everyone from commoners to the Mayan king and queen were expected to give a little blood almost everyday. The king for example sometimes make an incesion on his penis using a sting ray barb and collect blood from their, while the queen would pass a small rope of thorns through the lips of her vagina and collect blood. The blood would be collected on leaves or bark and burned. The taking of the heart was an actual ritual and just like the movie depicted those chosen for this sacrifice were painted in the sacred color of blue and then (well the process as shown in the movie was about right). Once the victims were beheaded their bodies were rolled down the temples 365 steps which represent the days of the month.

Now, what about Europeans or their ancestors, particularly the Spanish?? We all know that the lives of slaves in ancient Greek or Roman society (which included Latinized Iberia) was very miserable, especially for women. Slaves had little to no rights and women (as well as men) were the sexual property of their masters! If I you had to be a slave in either Greco-Roman society or Mayan society, the latter would be the preferred choice.

It is also a well established fact that sacrifice was also a ritual held in common by the various Celtic and Nordic tribes who were the ancestors of almost all Northwest Europeans. The Celts were notorious for their various sacrifical rites. There were three main deities that were constantl sacrificed to. To the god Teutates, victims were drowned in peat; to the god Taranis, victims were hacked to death; and to the god Esus, victims were tied to trees and skinned alive!! There is also a ritual described by the Romans in which men as well as domestic animals were stuffed inside a large hollow effigy of a man woven from twigs and then burned alive. This ritual was called the 'Wicker man' from which classic movie was based on and then the recent re-make.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celts_and_human_sacrifice

From Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars:

[The Gauls] believe that unless a man's life is paid for by another man's, the majesty of the immortal gods cannot be appeased. They use figures of immense size, whose limbs, woven out of twigs, they fill them with living men and set on fire, and the men perish in a sheet of flame. They believe that the execution of those who have been caught in the act of theft or robbery is more pleasing to the immortal gods; but when the supply of victims fails they resort to the execution even of the innocent..

Archeological findings:

In the British Isles, human remains have been found bearing marks of being sacrificed. They have dated from the Neolithic era to far into the Roman times.

At Woodhenge, a three-year-old child had its head sliced open with an axe and was buried in the center of the structure.] This appears to be a foundation sacrifice, and similar bodies are found throughout the archeological records. There are also graves that contain several bodies, often one of an aged man, and several younger individuals, who bear marks of having been killed; these appear to be sacrifices to the dead man.

In Havránok, Slovakia, seven people were beaten to death and quartered. Parts of their bodies were subsequently thrown into a pit in the middle of a shrine, either to ensure a good harvest or as an offering to the deities of the Underworld (1st century BCE).

Ritualised decapitation survives in the archaeological record such as the example of 12 headless corpses at the French late Iron Age sanctuary of Gournay-sur-Aronde.

Lindow man may be an example of a human sacrifice from the 1st or 2nd century, preserved in a peat bog in near perfect condition. The case for his sacrifice hinges on the three separate injuries he suffered. He was throttled, clubbed around the head and had his throat slit. This dovetails with the threefold death detailed in medieval texts. Tollund Man has also been suggested as a bog sacrifice although both men may also have been executed criminals.

Iron Age societies may have developed highly ritualised judicial killings in order to both satisfy their gods and punish wrongdoers at the same time.

Oh and the ancient Lusitanians of Iberia up to Roman times also sacrificed their prisoners-- stabbing him in the stomach and trying to make predictions from the way he falls and dies, to the way his entrails look!!

The Germanic or Norse peoples were no different.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norse_paganism

A unique eye-witness account of Germanic human sacrifice survives in Ibn Fadlan's account of a Rus ship burial, where a slave-girl had volunteered to accompany her lord to the next world. More indirect accounts are given by Tacitus, Saxo Grammaticus and Adam von Bremen. The Heimskringla tells of Swedish King Aun who sacrificed nine of his sons in an effort to prolong his life until his subjects stopped him from killing his last son Egil. According to Adam of Bremen, the Swedish kings sacrificed male slaves every ninth year during the Yule sacrifices at the Temple at Uppsala. The Swedes had the right not only to elect kings but also to depose them, and both king Domalde and king Olof Trätälja are said to have been sacrificed after years of famine. Odin was associated with death by hanging, and a possible practice of Odinic sacrifice by strangling has some archeological support in the existence of bodies perfectly preserved by the acid of the Jutland (later taken over by the Daner people) peatbogs, into which they were cast after having been strangled. An example is Tollund Man. However, we possess no written accounts that explicitly interpret the cause of these stranglings, which could obviously have other explanations.

And of course there is the infamous Norse form of torture-execution called the "blood eagle". It was performed by cutting the ribs of the victim by the spine, breaking the ribs so they resembled blood-stained wings, and pulling the lungs out. Salt was even sprinkled on the wounds!! Definitely more gruesome than the Mayan 'taking of the heart'!

Now one could argue that all of this savagery was in the distant past and that all of these European peoples changed when they were Christianized, but how much?

The movie Apocalypto falsely depicted the Maya as being so obsessed with sacrifice that they were genocidally wiping out large segments of the population! Of course there is no evidence of such an event!! On the contrary we do have evidence of Europeans even during Christians times, committing acts of genocide. Frankish king Charlemagne tryint to annihilate the Saxons and various other Germanic kings on campaigns to wipe out other tribes. And what of Christian kindness and charity? Apparently that must have gotten lost somewhere especially in Spain during the Inquistion that sought to purge the country of all non-Christian/non-Catholic presence. People from Muslims to Jews to even Catholics who spoke out against the Church or members thereof were imprisoned and horrendously tortured and executed, especially inoccent women!

Here is just a sample of torture methods used by the Spaniards during the inquistion:

http://www.the-night.net/torture/torture.htm#Mastectomy

http://www.the-night.net/torture/torture2.htm

http://www.the-night.net/torture/torture3.htm

And here are some torture devices:

http://www.occasionalhell.com/infdevice/


^^ Now even on their "worst day" I don't think the Mayans would be able to match the "good Christian" Spaniards and other Europeans on that level of sick degeneracy!! The Mayans may have taken hearts from elite warriors and offered them as gifts to their gods, but I don't think you could compare those actual sacrifices to the pure hatred and sexual depravity of the Spanish and other European men who utilised the methods and tools above!!

Now, Arrow claimed it was a blessing that the Europeans came along and "rescued" the heathen Mayans and other Native Americans. But how true is that statement??

Well, back in highschool my Spanish teacher gave my fellow students and I copies of official Spanish records she got from the Library of Congress. These records show the real story of Columbus and the Spaniards and their true exploits. To make a long story short, Columbus obtained a couple of Natives (kind of like specimens) to bring back to Spain as well as samples of gold from the gold bearing Caribe Natives. When he returned to the Caribe, he read an official document from the King of Spain telling them to either convert to Christianity or be conquered by the Spanish army. Of course the chieftain does not know a word of Spanish, and Columbus took his nonanswer as consent to conquer the native people. Columbus and boatloads of mighty Spanish conquistadors began to sack and pillage the villages of the innocent Natives, taking all of their gold valuables, capturing and enslaving the populace as well as the random rape of women. The Spaniards soon set up plantations where the natives were made to do hard labor in less than humane conditions. There were other side incidences like the Spanish releasing some men and hunting them down like animals for sport, or the Spaniards testing the sharpness of their knives on small children, or feeding the babies to their dogs!! And there were ship logs of men keeping the women as their sex-slaves and beating and torturing them for not complying to their perverted sexual demands, etc. etc. ( Looks like those Spaniards brought their 'Inquisitive' ways) Those natives who did not die from the actual slave labor did not survive the diseases that the Spaniards 'introduced' and became pandemic to the region. And from there the rest is "history" so to speak when it comes to Latin America and rest of American history in general. But with all of these disgusting acts by Columbus and his men is it all a wonder why some folks, especially those from the Caribbean region protest??

As to Hore's and other Eurocentric comments about Europeans being a Godsend to the Americas,... well Native Americans and everyone else with sense don't think so.

So who was really more wicked, cruel, and savage?? Native Americans or Europeans? Judging by all the evidence, it seems to be the latter.

Posts: 26252 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Djehuti:
I would like to post more in the thread about the more recent movie 300, but unfortunately I still haven't seen it yet. Practically everyone I know has, but I will soon (if Finals doesn't kill me first)!

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Posts: 7079 | From: Fallbrook, CA | Registered: Mar 2004  |  IP: Logged | 

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Whoa, I missed this.

A bit late but good rebuttal nevertheless, Dje.

As to whore's comments, I forgot about them. I must have missed him or (more probably) grown too tired of him and too busy to care.

He had made NUMEROUS, like as in a MYRIAD of ignorant comments talking of history reveals while you were out. And you know how much play he got...

Anyway, about your rebuttal:

• Good point about Mayan slavery
• I actually didn't/don't know too much about about Iberia, and didn't know anything about a Iberian relationship with / to latin Greece.
• Good point again on the European burning-man sacrifice to the god's thingies. I don't remember knowing they had any relation to 'the gods'.
• LMBA off @ 'the blood eagle'! It sound funny, but I'm sure it wasn't.

Posts: 5555 | From: Tha 5th Dimension. | Registered: Apr 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Tyrannosaurus:

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Originally posted by Djehuti:
I would like to post more in the thread about the more recent movie 300, but unfortunately I still haven't seen it yet. Practically everyone I know has, but I will soon (if Finals doesn't kill me first)!

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I saw it, and I felt the slow-motion ruined what would have been an ass-whooping movie. The historical inaccuracy, though blatant and clearly intentional, didn't bother me, though I did wonder why so many of the Persian characters with speaking roles were black.

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Posts: 1219 | From: North Carolina, USA | Registered: Jul 2004  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Tyrannosaurus:
BTW, how can one calendar system be more advanced than another, Djehuti?

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Posts: 833 | From: Austin, TX | Registered: Jan 2007  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Djehuti:
^Exactly. Their calendar is by far the most accurate one to date.

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Posts: 7079 | From: Fallbrook, CA | Registered: Mar 2004  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Supercar:

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Originally posted by Djehuti:

However, I can't help but get the feeling that Gibson whether wittingly or not is using this movie to deomonize this ancient culture. As a way of somehow saying, "It's a good thing the Europeans came and converted these heathens!" I don't know. We probably wouldn't know who he'll demonize unless he's drunk, and definitley if they're Jewish! LOL

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...in which case, it would be interesting to produce a movie of Europeans, particularly the Northern ones, that places time at about when the Mayan complex came about. Producers certainly wouldn't want to use Greco-Roman sources as a guidance, for a movie about 'contemporaneous' Europeans to their north.

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Posts: 5555 | From: Tha 5th Dimension. | Registered: Apr 2006  |  IP: Logged |