Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings, and Mysteries - 42: Human Sacrifice: Dark Rituals Throughout History

Episode Date: November 9, 2023

Human sacrifice has been a part of many cultures throughout history. But why did they do it? And more importantly, what was it like for the person being sacrificed? In this episode, we dive into ritual sacrifice in places like the Aztec Empire and Cahokia. Subscribe on Patreon for bonus content and to become a member of our Rogue Detecting Society. Patrons have access to ad-free listening and bonus content. Follow on Tik Tok and Instagram for a daily dose of horror. We have a monthly newsletter now! Be sure to sign up for updates and more. Heart Starts Pounding is written and produced by Kaelyn Moore. 

I cracked the code on how to make sure my trips always make it out of the group chat and we actually book the flight or we hop in the car. I started sending my friends links to the Airbnb that I'm gonna book. Is that not brilliant? Also high. I'm Emily Durham. I'm the host of the Straight Shooter Recruiter Podcast. If I take two things seriously, one of them is advancing my career. And the second is just resting with the girls after I work so hard in my career. It's challenging. I deserve a little break. What can I say? And you know what else? I deserve, I deserve every woman in that house to have a bathroom of their own. I like my own space so I can decompress by myself at night. I like a pool. I like grass. I like to pick what my travel experience looks like, and I only do that with Airbnb

because it's a guarantee that I'm going to be situated in the area that I like. I'm going to have like a cool, vibey location. Plus, when I put all the links in the group chat, everyone gets to vote, we get to decide where we want to go. Suddenly, we're all riled up and ready for the next girls trip. So if you are ready for your next travel experience, hit up Airbnb. In the early 1960s, a group of construction workers gathered outside of St. Louis, Missouri. Technically, they were in Illinois, but at this point in time, the land was so flat and

empty, it was hard to tell where one state ended and one began. They were tasked with digging out the dirt for a freeway that was meant to run through this otherwise undisturbed rural area. The hardest part of the job was going to be raising these mounds that seemed to be concentrated here. This particular part of Illinois didn't have any hills. It was flat for miles, and yet, in this one area, a few square miles big, there were all of these mounds, around 8 feet high and 30 feet long.

The workers didn't have much time to think about that, however, because they were on a schedule. President Eisenhower had recently started a freeway initiative that was supposed to transform American commerce and travel the way that railroads did in the 1800s. And there was a lot of work to be done. So they started digging out the land for the road. And at first, the project went off without a hitch. But once they got to the mounds, everything changed. As the excavator cut into the mound and pulled the earth away, the contractors could not

believe what they saw. The mound was not just full of dirt, but evidence of an ancient civilization. There were materials for houses, bowls, cups, weapons, clothing, you name it. Archaeologists were called to the site and what they discovered was that this area, this rural little area outside of St. Louis, was the largest city in America a thousand years ago. Some of the mounds were built to hold massive buildings, and there was evidence that at one point there was a plaza of the size of 45 football fields used for sporting events and feasts.

One of the archaeologists called to the site is a man named Melvin Fowler, and he has his eye on one mound in particular, one that would go on to be called mound 72. It's smaller than some of the other mounds, and to Melvin, it seems like it had a different use than the other ones. So he starts digging in hopes that he'll find more clues as to how these people who once

inhabited the city lived. And he finds so much more than that. Mount 72 isn't full of building material. It's full of bones. Melvin is thinking he just found their burial pit. That's a huge deal. There's so much that can be learned from seeing how a society buried their dead. But he starts noticing strange things about the bones.

Some are full skeletons that are notably missing their heads. All of the skeletons that have not been beheaded are female, which also make up a large majority of the remains. And in the center, there was one body that was wrapped in a beaded blanket in the shape of a bird. Melvin knew what this meant. This wasn't a normal burial mound. No. These people had been ritually sacrificed. The discovery of the area, which became known as Cahokia,

changed a lot about the way historians viewed indigenous communities in America. They had believed that indigenous American tribes were all small, mostly nomadic, and didn't subscribe to the typical violent hierarchical systems found in other civilizations. Yet, here was a city that held 30,000 people, had some sort of leader, and practiced ritualistic human sacrifice.

It was a pretty heavy metal discovery. But what it further illustrated was that ritualistic human sacrifice was something that was practiced by many civilizations throughout the world over a large amount of human history. Whether we realized it or not, because the Cahokians didn't have a written language, we'll never exactly know what they were up to. But we have some ideas, and I'll get into those in a bit because today's episode is all about ritualistic sacrifice, baby, the where, the how, and the why. And as always, listener discretion is advised. It's that feeling when the energy and the room shifts, when the air gets sucked out of a moment, and everything starts to feel wrong.

It's the instinct between fight or flight. When your brain is trying to make sense of what it's seeing, it's when your heart starts pounding. Welcome to Heart Starts Pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings, and mysteries. I'm your host, Caitlin Moore. If you can't tell, this is a community for those with a dark curiosity. And I love episodes like this, ones that are a good dose of morbid history. Because at least at the end of indulging in our dark curiosity, we can all feel like we learned something.

If you're listening to the ad-supported version of Heart Starts Pounding, thank you so much. Our sponsors make the show possible. And if you're listening to the ad-free version on Patreon, you'll continue to get the ad-free version on top of your other perks, like bonus content and extra episodes. I also love hearing from you guys after episodes. One listener recently reached out to me to let me know that the picture of the devil from the Kodix Giggas, remember the episode I did around Halloween? Yeah, someone is selling a picture of that devil on Etsy that they handrew with their own blood.

And you know what, that's fine. It's at least it's ethically sourced blood. I feel fine about that. As long as you're being safe when touching someone else's blood that they consensually gave you, live your life. Someone else told me that they live right by the house where Sophia Wilson kept her son's body in a coffin for 12 years in the 1860s, and they were going to go try to find the brick pile that the house became when

it crumbled. That story is also from the Halloween episode if you haven't listened yet. If you're out there either seeing Hearts Sars pounding being marketed in the wild or you're hunting down stuff from our stories, definitely let me know. That is just so cool to me. And lastly, I have something really cool planned for you guys next week, a special episode of sorts. It's gonna go up Monday instead of Wednesday night.

So check back here Monday for what I have planned. You're not gonna wanna miss it. So, since it's almost Thanksgiving, at least for many of you listeners, just the season to think about community and rituals. Many people don't really know, or even particularly care for the origins of Thanksgiving. Yet, each year we make the ritual trek back to our hometowns. See the one person from high school we never wanted to see again at the one bar in town.

We listen politely and smile when our grandparents tell us the most unhinged story we've ever heard. And at the end of the day, we eat a seasonal harvest. We don't really think twice about this, but humans have been conducting seasonal rituals for thousands of years. Even if you're not American, you may have your own kind of harvest celebration that you still partake in. Maybe there's something innate in us as humans

that feels the need to have some sort of harvest ritual. For a lot of human history, one of those rituals was human sacrifice. These were either to follow a leader into the afterlife or to try and control something humans have no control over. A sacrifice to the gods so the harvest will be bountiful that season, or so that the sun will come up the next morning. And even when those things happened regardless of blood sacrifice, it wasn't really questioned. It was a ritual where everyone would flock to the city center,

probably see the one person from high school they didn't want to see, and watch as a human being was killed in a brutal way for the sake of their community. So today, I want to look at some of those rituals, and one thing I want to understand, the morbid question I had that led me down this rabbit hole, is what was it like for the person being sacrificed? I just watched mid-summer for the hundredth time, and in it, mild spoiler, the people in the community being sacrificed are so grateful. Like, it's a huge honor to be given up for the sake of their community. And that's the thing with Hollywood movies about sacrifice, right? You're either a member of the community who is nobly giving up their life for the greater good

and is honored to do so. Or you're the unsuspecting outsider who was tricked into coming to the community and is sacrificed to their god. Please see exhibit A, Nicholas Cage screaming not the bees in the Wickerman remake. But is that how it actually worked? Well, we're gonna get into that, but I can tell you right now, I was surprised with what I found. We're gonna take a quick ad break and when we come back, I want to jump back into what was happening at Cahokia. break and when we come back, I want to jump back into what was happening at Cahokia. Okay, so Melvin Fowler believed he stumbled upon a thousands of years old human sacrifice mound outside of St. Louis. But let's take a closer look at what it is he found and what it meant. and what it meant. Mount 72, as it was known, had in total 272 people buried in 25 different areas. One of the biggest areas was where he found the man wrapped in the beaded blanket,

who has since been nicknamed Birdman. Buried with Birdman were 53 women found in rows, and four men that had all been decapitated. He was also surrounded by jewelry, copper, unused arrows, and thousands of shellbeads that made up his blanket. The other burial areas within Mount 72 were full of people who were buried at the same time as Birdman. Leading archaeologists to believe that they had all been buried together, perhaps as part of a religious act, or to honor him and his family. They also assumed that the women were perhaps sacrificed for Birdman,

while the other people in the pit were friends and family members who chose to die with him to follow him into the afterlife. There's no written record of this, so these are just conjectures. But we can guess this is accurate, because in 1725, the Najez people who lived in Mississippi lost their leader, a man named Tatud Serpin. Present at the funeral was a French colonist who wrote down his account of what happened. From what we know about the naches, they had a very similar way of life as the Cahokians, so assumptions were made that their burial proceedings would have also been similar. When Tattood Serpent died, several commoners were sacrificed along with him. Most likely, these people were not given the choice on if they wanted to follow their

leader into the afterlife. There were many people, however, who did choose to follow him. Two of his wives, his doctor, his nurse, one of his sisters, a few old women amongst others, chose to die with him. Two parents even gave up their child to go with him into the afterlife. Those that wanted to follow him, as well as those who were being sacrificed, had their faces painted red, and were given a large dose of nicotine and the poisonous plant gymsin weed to ensure their deaths. So that's probably similar to what happened in Cahokia, although the Beheaded Men were clearly

not sacrificed as gently. And similar to the not-yes people, it's likely Birdman had an inner circle who chose to go with him. At Mount 72, the bones of the people directly next to Birdman showed they had richer diets, meaning they were probably members of an elite inner circle. This is different from the bodies found further away, who could have been commoners and civilians forced to take poison to follow their leader into the next life. It was a wild discovery that unsettled how historians and archaeologists thought about

these civilizations, but it wouldn't have been that wild of a discovery nearly 7,000 miles away in ancient Sumeria. Taking others with you has long been a reason for human sacrifice. 3,300 years before the Cahokians were doing it, in ancient Sumeria, located now in eastern Iraq, leaders were taking retainers with them to the afterlife. A tomb was found with 63 skeletons, which included, quote, 6 soldiers with copper spears and wearing copper helmets. Behind them were 6 oxen, associated with 2 4-wheeled wooden vehicles, 1 human skeleton was found with the animals, and 2 with

the wagons, designated as drivers. A row of ladies, all in their finery of elaborate headdresses, earrings and necklaces of gold, lapis- Leslie, and Cornelian had been placed against the short side of the chamber in a line with heads leaning against the wall. On top of them, a liar had been placed. In front of them and in the rest of the pit was a mass of human and animal bones. Initially, when this tomb was discovered, it was thought that the sacrificial victims had all drank poison to swiftly and painlessly rush into the afterlife after their leader. However, upon closer inspection when the helmets were taken off the bodies, a lot of them

had their skulls bashed in. Some of their skulls had even been rotated almost 180 degrees, something archaeologists agree was not from post-mortem placement. Obviously, these wounds indicate that not everyone was a willing participant in the sacrificial game. It didn't always feel like a great honor to go with your leader, and people didn't always go willingly. Sometimes, you were just the little guy those in charge saw as free labor to take to the afterlife. Sacrificing retainers for the afterlife can also be seen in the ancient Egyptian first

dynasty, which was around 2950 BC. Two kings in particular seemed especially brutal when it came to forcing others to come with them. King Jair and King Jet. King Jair was found with 326 other burials around him inside of his tomb. All of them female. Historians believe that he ordered the murder of his entire Herum, and their burials, mostly indicated some sort of struggle. Their tombs looked disturbed. It seems like they may have been stunned and then buried alive, only to wake up later and try to fight their way out.

His successor, King Jet, had 154 other graves in his funerary enclosure, including his dog. But he was the last king to have an overwhelming amount of sacrificed people alongside him. The next few kings had significantly less, and after the first dynasty, it seems the Egyptians didn't continue the practice. Okay, so it seems that when it comes to following your leader, people's attitudes were split on wanting to follow their king. For those close to the leader who loved and admired him, it was maybe more of an obvious choice to accompany them to the next life. Some retainers were promised higher status in the afterlife, so being sacrificed might

have come with a promise of a better existence, but we can tell from some of the burial sites that not all of these people felt it was in honor and a privilege. But what about when it comes to other types of sacrifices? What about when it's not to remain your leader's servant, but as an offering to the gods for a good harvest, or to make sure the sun stays in the sky? After short break, we're going to look at the bloody rituals the Aztecs used to control nature. This part of our story starts with the Spanish conquistador, Hernán Cortez.

Cortez arrived with his men in the Aztec city of Tenochitlan in 1521, and while they did a good job of writing down what they saw while they were there, historians didn't actually believe them for a long time. See, the Spanish conquistadors were known for being, well, dramatic. They would often exaggerate and dramatize their accounts with the Aztecs as a way to justify killing and enslaving them. So years after their conquests when historians were reading all about their adventures from their personal letters to the king, they took everything with a grain of salt. their adventures from their personal letters to the king, they took everything with a grain of salt.

Including the grizzly and violent scenes they described when talking about life in the empire. One of the conquistadors in Cortez's expedition described seeing two giant cylindrical structures made entirely of human skulls stuck together with mortar near the templomaior. And in between them, we're racks full of estimated thousands of more skulls. Each skull had holes bored into the sides which allowed them to be strung together like decorations. This claim was never taken seriously by historians. I mean, the image it conjures feels like morbid fantasy. But then, in 2015, archeologists in Mexico City were digging a site underneath a colonial-style house

near a cathedral when they made a shocking discovery. Yeah, you can probably see where I'm going with this. Underneath the house, they found skulls, hundreds of them, all with holes in the sides as if they had been strung together. And the deeper they dug, the more evidence they found that what the Spaniard saw was accurate, there were holes from where the large posts of the rack were stuck into the ground, from which they estimated the skull rack was around 35 meters long, 14 meters wide, and 4 to 5 meters high. They also found a section of one of the large cylinders made entirely of human skulls.

It appeared as if the skulls had been cleanly separated from the bodies, deflashed, and then placed on the rack. Some reports, however, say that the skulls were deflashed a while after they were placed on the rack, meaning some sections of the large rack could have held flushy human heads. And it was universally accepted that these goals were all from sacrificed people. So how did the Aztecs view sacrifices? Why did they do it?

And more importantly, what I want to know, how did those being sacrificed feel about it? There's a few different iterations of the Aztec religion's creation myth, but the central theme is that there's a few different iterations of the Aztec religion's creation myth, but the central theme is that there's a sun god who sacrificed himself to become the sun, and each night he wages a war against the darkness, ultimately winning and starting a new day. The religion states that humans can help the sun god win his nightly war by offering him blood and human hearts.

These sacrifices took place at ceremonies, one of which occurred on December 19th, 1487, at the Great Temple in Tennochitlan, a 250,000-person city in the Empire, making it larger than any European city at the time. The ceremony began with warriors dressed as eagles standing at the foot of the newly constructed pyramid, the Templomaior. Other men danced in sang, rhythmic drums beat in a menacing tone while thousands of

bystanders gathered in the square. Over four days of the festival, around 4,000 prisoners of war were led to the top of the pyramid where they were laid flat on an altar. A priest used an incredibly sharp surgical instrument made of obsidian to carve the hearts out of the living prisoners and hold them, still beating up to the sun god. After they decided the gods were pleased, the bodies were thrown down the steps of the temple, leaving dark crimson impressions on the stones, each time their empty chest cavities made contact with the step. Reports say that the city smelled overwhelmingly like blood during the entire festival.

If you were being sacrificed to the god Shipe picked Topek, as opposed to the sun god, after you were thrown down the steps, your body would then be flayed and a priest would wear your skin until the festival was over. Sometimes, that was 20 days. This ritual seemed to be as much of a warning to enemies of the Empire as it was a sacrifice to the gods. It was a shocking display of brutality that illustrated they were not to be messed with. In the next few years, however, the Aztec Empire would meet its match when Cortez and his men

showed up and were not stopped by the shocking executions. We don't know a ton about the people that were sacrificed, but through studying the skulls found on the racks, archaeologists concluded that 75% of the skulls were men between the ages of 20 and 35. This most likely meant that a lot of them were prisoners of war captured during various battles. 20% of the skulls were women, and 5% were children. Historians believe this could mean that the empire was specifically buying slaves for

sacrificial purposes. It was also determined that many of the people sacrificed were not from Tenno-Chitlan, but had spent time there leading up to their deaths, some for as long as a few years. There are some reports of prisoners of war living with the families of their captors for years leading up to them being sacrificed. We know from pre-colonial documents that there were some locals who were called upon to be sacrificed, but they were treated way differently from those who were not from the area. Before a local was brought to the top of the temple, other people from Tenno-Chitlan would approach them and tell them their problems, so that their earthly complaints could be taken to

the gods by the sacrificed person. Thus, it was a huge honor as a community member to be sacrificed to the gods, and these people had minor fame during and after the ritual. Outsiders did not always feel the same way, some seemed to be indifferent to the event. After all, they were raised in a time where being captured and sacrificed was normal, and they probably knew the other captives who were being sacrificed. It was also widely believed that if you died a normal death, you would be caught in the many layers of the underworld before being able to ascend to the gods. Those that were sacrificed, as well as those who died in childbirth

or battle, got a pass to travel straight up to the gods when they died. There were still some that definitely did not want to die. Some would pass out on the bloody walk up to the altar and were picked up by spiritual leaders to be carried the rest of the way. Others would scream and curse the whole way up, but as a captive, there was not much they could do to avoid their fate. I mean, imagine it.

You're walking up hundreds of bloody stone steps towards a man holding a piece of surgical equipment sharper than anything we have today. Your neighbors have just told you all of their boring problems for an hour, and you have to report them to the gods when you see them. The steps smell so bad, it's hard to walk up them without gagging, and the higher you go, the less you hear the chance of the crowd, and the more you hear the screams of your peers, who are getting their hearts surgically removed without anesthesia. It is so hard to imagine people being excited about this, but for some, this was the greatest honor of their life.

What I described, though, seems to be the most similar to the Hollywood movie model I referenced in the beginning. You have eager locals excited to give themselves for the betterment of their community, and you have unsuspecting outsiders forced to die for someone else's god. However, there is one sacrificial ritual that was kind of exciting for the person being sacrificed.

We're going to take a short break and when we get back, I am going to tell you about the Aztec sacrificial ritual that was, can you believe it? Pretty coveted. So it seems like the general feelings about being sacrificed were pretty positive. Neutral at worst, which is honestly a lot better than I was expecting. There was one Aztec ritual though, where if you were the one going to be sacrificed, this was probably the way to go. This ritual pertains to the god Tez Katlapoka, a creator god. He was said to punish captors who were unkind to their slaves. He adored children. He sent sickness to wrongdoers and bestowed riches to the virtuous. Each year,

one man was chosen to be the Ishiptla, or the Avatar of Tuscata Poka who would be sacrificed. It was usually a prisoner of war that was chosen, but with so many captives and so many slots for execution, how did they choose who would be the Ishiptla? Well, it was mostly based on looks, and the requirements feel like they're straight out of a modern day Tinder profile. They were looking for a man who was not too short, but not exceedingly tall, his body should be smooth and sculpted like a pebble, no acne, no hair loss, not buck tooth, not large tooth, not fang tooth, not yellow tooth, not bucktooth, not large tooth, not fangtooth, not yellow tooth, not ugly tooth, and not rotten tooth. Essentially, they were looking for the most beautiful man they

had captured, and as a reward for being the most beautiful man, for one year, he got to be treated like a god. The Ishiptla was given four wives who represented the deities of fertility, water, earth, and agriculture. He was adorned with beautiful clothes and jewelry and was given a flute to play around town. His only job was to hang out in town being universally loved. He was the avatar of a god and he was treated as such. People would bow down when they saw him.

Everywhere he went, he was followed by eight servants and four constables. They were there to make sure his every wish was taken care of, and also to make sure he didn't escape. Yeah, they were still a little bit afraid he would run away. One month before the sacrifice, which was 20 days for the Aztecs, the chosen man would give up all of the goods he had accumulated in order to prepare himself for the sacrifice. He would also start fasting and would get a ceremonial haircut. The change in appearance was symbolic.

This man arrived in Tenno-Chitlan as a captive, was elevated to the status of a god, was now being brought back down to captive status, and upon being sacrificed, he would become elevated again in the afterlife. To the Aztecs, this was a beautiful and symbolic cycle of life. The timing of this ritual is also important. This one took place before the harvest season, so it was believed that it was to ensure there would be a bountiful harvest that year.

Five days before the sacrifice, the victim and his four wives would take time to visit the shrines around the area and pray, and then one day before the sacrifice, he was separated from his wives. lives. On the actual day he was to be sacrificed, the victim would be brought to a small temple outside the city. This is very different from the other sacrificial ceremonies that took place at the Temple of Mayor. For having such an extravagant year, the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time of the time the time of the time of time the time of time the time of time of the time of the time of the time of time the time of the time of the time of the time of time the time of the time of the time of time the time of the time to drag him if he passed out. No, he needed to go up on his own free will.

And as he ascended, he was supposed to break his flute. And then, just like in other ceremonies, he was laid on his back on a large stone, and a priest would cut his heart out of him and raise it up to the sun. Interestingly, the victim was not thrown down the steps, rather, four men would carry him down to the sun. Interestingly, the victim was not thrown down the steps, rather, four men would carry him down to the bottom. For a year-long spectacle, this last gesture was a thoughtful acknowledgement of the man who gave his life for their community.

So, I'll admit, people seemed to be a little more excited or just neutral on being sacrificed than I initially thought they would be. And I think there's a good reason for that. Living back then was painful, and people around you were constantly dying. So I think people were more used to the concept of death. And they also believed in an afterlife, so perhaps they were less worried about what went on in this life. But I thought it was important for this episode to understand what those being sacrificed may have felt about the whole thing.

There's not much written history about these people, and we'll probably never get personal details about the skulls on the racks found in Mexico City. These rituals, though, wouldn't have been possible without them. And whether it was effective or not, they fully believed they were making the ultimate sacrifice for their community, even if they didn't necessarily want to. So, this holiday season, when you're doing your little family rituals, think back to the Aztecs. Maybe in hundreds of years, people will look back and horror at the things we did today.

They used to celebrate their harvest season by having 10-year high school reunions. Do we need to see those people again? Who knows, but it's a ritual that we still practice. This has been Heart Starts Founding, written and produced by me, Kalin Moore, Sound Design and Mixed by Peach Tree Sound. Thank you so much to all of our new patrons you will be thanked by name in the monthly newsletter. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grace and Jurnigan, the team at WME and Ben Jaffee. And thank you to AudioBoom.

Have a heart pounding story or a case request? Check out Heart StartsPounding.com. Until next time, stay curious. Woo!