The April 9, 2025, CBS headline summarized it nicely: “Ancient altar found in Guatemala jungle apparently used for sacrifices, ‘especially of children’, archaeologists say”.

It is indeed a spectacular discovery of an aspect of an ancient Central American culture, and its religion, that was long gone before the arrival of Cortés in the 16th Century. The Mayan civilization has long been recognized as technologically advanced and, like the Aztec, is usually compared favorably against the “motley crew” of Spaniards who arrived after the former and in the midst of the latter.

This particular altar was from the Teotihuacán religion and culture. It was in a dwelling place in Tikal, the ancient center of the Mayas. The reason this is striking is that Teotihuacán is about 800 miles away, to the north, in what is now Mexico. 

This tells us that both civilizations interacted with each other and that distances back then were not so formidable but were likely as little of a barrier as they are today.

In a similar vein, scholars who have studied, and continue to study, the Middle Ages tell us that travel and international commerce were extensive and, although the distances took time to traverse, little was thought about it. As is the case today.

Apparently the same can be said of the ancient peoples of North and Central America. 

Therefore, we have the apparent anomaly of a house in Tikal, the center of the Mayas, with a sacrificial altar linked to Teotihuacán.

“Lorena Paiz, the archaeologist who led the discovery, said that the Teotihuacán altar [in Tikal] was believed to have been used for sacrifices, ‘especially of children…. The remains of three children not older than 4 years were found on three sides of the altar,’ Paiz told the Associated Press.”

Another archaeologist, Edwin Román, said that this “discovery 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.”

Yet another archaeologist, María Belén Méndez, gushed, “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.” 

The peak of both Mayan and Teotihuacán empires coincided between 100 and 600 AD, with the Mayan having thrived before and after the Teotihuacán, and both having disappeared by the time of the rise of other empires with the same unique way of “connecting with the celestial bodies”: the Aztec and the Inca.

Why is it that human sacrifice, including the ritual sacrifice of children, is so blithely minimized if not dismissed by our moderns? We no longer deny that the Aztecs had sacrificed thousands in the years preceding the arrival of the Spaniards. John Eidsmoe writes that in 1487 “Ahuitzotl, Montezuma’s immediate predecessor, dedicated the great temple to Huitzilopochtli, the sun-god, and sacrificed twenty thousand victims; they stood in four lines stretching between three and four miles long, and the ceremony lasted four days and was conducted by eight teams of priests.” 

Sacrifices exceeded 50,000 each year.

Jon M. White, in Cortez and the Downfall of the Aztec Empire, writes, “When we visit or study photographs of Aztec temples, we should picture to ourselves those tall staircases as they frequently appeared: covered from top to bottom with a tacky, crimson sheath of blood.”

I’ll skip Aztec cannibalism and their several methods of exquisite, torturous, execution, including skinning alive, as was also done by the savage Caribs in Venezuela and the Caribbean islands.

Alfonso Caso, perhaps the premier scholar of the Aztec religion in the 20th Century, is a good representative of our modern sages when, after documenting what can only be objectively described as bizarre, heinous, and savage practices, he goes on to write about the Spanish conquest, “a sad event, for the Aztecs’ way of life was no longer to impose its views upon these peoples and their civilization.” 

That is how many of our intelligentsia describe what we deplorables rightly see as a cult of savagery, debauchery, and death. 

In other posts I’ve written about the voluminous dishonesty of Bartolomé de Las Casas and the deleterious impact he had not only in his lifetime but to this very day.

One of the bitter fruits of his propagandistic endeavors was the indigenismo (“Indianism”) that took hold, not only in Latin America, but also in our own continent. This is the cult which emphasizes Indian America over our European heritage, accompanied by bitter denunciation of the latter. And, of course, the propagators of this condemnation are very careful to blacken “Spanish” or “European” culture, not “Christian” culture, although their target is very obviously Christianity. 

This poison has been running through the educational systems of the Americas for generations now. Its fruits are manifest and it is not a pretty sight.

Therefore, when evidence was discovered of high altitude sacrifices of children by the Incas, an avalanche of words poured forth from our betters explaining the lofty significance of such bloody rites, but no word was uttered in gratitude to our European Christian forebears for having put a stop to this vile death cult.

Instead, we have scholarly encomiums such as that by the aforementioned Alfonso Caso, lamenting that the elimination of such practices was “a sad event” or the assurances of archaeologist María Belén Méndez that Teotihuacanes ritually murdering 4-year olds does not mean “that they were violent”; it was their way of communicating with “celestial bodies”. 

We may respect the archaeological digs of such people, but we must not honor their sorry lack of wisdom, which is hypocritically and intellectually dishonest. All they prove to us is that scholarship is by no means synonymous with wisdom. On the contrary, scholarship unmoored from fixed moral codes and divine laws only serves to inexorably return us to barbarism and tyranny.

I visited Teotihuacán in 1986. A resident guide assured me that the Teotihuacanes did not practice human sacrifice; that the stairs up and down the impressive pyramids, unlike those of the Aztecs, were for approaching the sun and moon, not for the spilling of blood. But now, with such practices more and more evident, such sages no longer seek to hide but to blatantly glory in them.

Ours is a wonderful and truly glorious Christian heritage. But it must be defended and it must be taught.

View of Teotihuacán’s sun and moon pyramids.

Atop the Sun Pyramid with friends and colleagues, Doug and Jerry, November, 1, 1986

Tikal, Guatemala

Ancient Teotihuacán altar found in a residence in Tikal. Humans, including children, were ritually sacrificed by both Teotihuacanes as well as Mayans.

“The frozen body of the 13-year-old-Maiden [sacrificed by the Incas] was entombed in a small chamber 1.5 metres underground near the summit of Volcán Llullaillaco in Argentina, together with the bodies of two 4 or 5-year-olds. With the blood still visible in their hearts and their lungs inflated, the three are probably the best-preserved mummies anywhere in the world….” — New Scientist, 29 July, 2013.