The "blood of the Sun": on human sacrifice in the pre-Columbian tradition

The ancient traditions of Central and South America held that the Sun, as well as water, earth and the gods themselves, in order to prosper and guarantee the continuation of the world, had to be regularly fed with human blood, a concept that precisely among the Aztecs became of absolute, if not strictly obsessive, importance; nevertheless, the same conception was also found among the Maya, the Toltecs, the Olmecs and the Incas, as evidenced by the historical sources that have come down to us.

The enigma of Tiahuanaco, cradle of the Incas and "Island of Creation" in Andean mythology

by Marco Maculotti


For the purpose of the continuation of the analysis concerning the foundation myth by the Viracochas [cfr. Viracocha and the myths of the origins: creation of the world, anthropogenesis, foundation myths], it will now be useful to pause to produce some considerations on the importance in the Andean tradition of the ceremonial center of Tiahuanaco, "one of the most significant and disconcerting legacies of human prehistory" [
Petratu and Roidinger, p.152], cradle of the first men of the "Fifth Sun" [cf. Pachacuti: cycles of creation and destruction of the world in the Andean tradition]. The origins of this monumental complex are lost in the mists of time: at the time of the conquest the Andes claimed to have never known the city if not in ruins; the Aymara, one of the most ancient peoples of the Andes, claimed that Tiahuanaco had been inhabited "from the first men of the Earth"[Charroux, p.52].Β For these reasons, by virtue of its enigmatic nature, Tiahuanaco has always attracted the curiosity of historians and explorers. In 1876 the French archaeologist Wiener wrote [cit. in Charroux p.49]:

"A day will come when it will be possible to say about the classical civilization of the Pharaohs, the Chaldeans, the Brahmans: you are cataloged in our books as the most ancient, but science proves that the pre-Inca civilization of Tiahuanaco precedes yours by many thousands years. "