5. Cannibalism was likely practiced by the Aztecs as a part of human sacrificial rituals
In pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, human sacrifice was a widespread ritual as an integral part of celebrating the various feasts of the year. While some have proposed that humans were part of the routine diet for the nobility and priests of the Aztec Empire, most scholars do not support that view. But evidence of cannibalism practiced ritually is strong. It must be noted cannibalism does not necessarily mean the complete consumption of a body, but any portion of it, and drinking the blood of sacrificial victims, as well as eating the heart and other internal organs, is evidenced in the art of the Aztecs, the later observations recorded by the Spanish, and the archeological discoveries of Aztec communities.
In the book The Conquest of New Spain (1632) by Bernal Diaz, descriptions of caged men awaiting sacrifice and consumption by their captors are found. Diaz wrote that after the Aztecs were defeated by the Spaniards, the latter found cooking pots “prepared with salt and peppers and tomatoes” in which the captured Spanish soldiers were to have been cooked, as part of a victory banquet. Though some consider Diaz’s account to be based on racism, as justification for the Spanish conquest, other eyewitness accounts corroborate him, including that of Diego Munoz Camargo, who wrote in 1585, “Thus there were butcher’s shops of human flesh, as if it were of cow or sheep”.