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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr. Strangemonkey" data-source="post: 2303268" data-attributes="member: 6533">Note that this article dates to 1977, way before Guns, Germs, and Steel in 1999.  'Environmental determinism' has been around in varios forms for a long time now.  Though here it mostly works off the anthropoligical theory that all cultural phenomena are, in effect, forms of social technology hidden behind meaning.  A useful theory, but not, I think, the best we can do and it often overlooks just how irrational people can be.It's an interesting article but the fact that he starts with an anthropological premise and then finds the evidence to support it doesn't do a lot for its credibility in my eyes.  There might very well have been a dietary aspect to the practice, for instance,  but that doesn't change the fact that it was also propitiating the gods.  Sacrifice is a far older and broader institution then just this one ecological niche.I'd be very interested in Fusangite's take on this, he's done a fair amount of professional reading into the cultures of the Valley of Mexico.  I think it's very interesting that the article doesn't mention avocados, high fat and high protein, as an essential part of the Aztec diet.Certainly, his evidence that cannibalism took place as a wide spread and critical institution in Aztec society is more compelling than his evidence it was a dietary necessity.The Anasazi theory I'd heard was that the Anasazi were cannibalizing people as a means to control the immigrants through terror.</blockquote>

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