It kind of feels like the closer the world gets to breaking down, the less people really think about how it’s going to happen.
Disaster can feel kind of inevitable at some point, don’t you think?
Back in the day, people seemed to give it a lot of thought. The Aztecs had a whole artifact dedicated to the how and when of it all, so if you do find yourself idly curious about when you might not have to worry about how you’re going to pay rent, read on.
The Sun Stone is a 24-ton, circular, basalt calendar stone that some, including Latin American art and archaeology scholar Susan Milbrath, believe has been long misunderstood.
Most experts agree that the stone’s central image is of Tonatiuh, their sun deity. Milbrath’s paper, though, says the eclipse imagery is more nuanced.
She interprets the image as showing their demise during an eclipse – an event they believed would portend an earth-shaking apocalypse.
Based on the drawings surrounding the god – claws clutching human hearts, depictions of an eclipse monster, and a circle of signs symbolizing the 260-day calendar – modern scholars believe this potential end-of-days actually comes around on a regular basis.
Which is why they turned to human sacrifices to stave off this inevitable doom.
Milbrath says,
“The Sun Stone was almost like a stage for public ritual.”
Every year, on the date depicted (4 Olin), a high-value prisoner would be sacrificed to stop the eclipse – and the end of days – from happening.
To a population that didn’t understand the universe the way we do, an eclipse must have seemed like a terrifying event.
“Pregnant women stayed indoors during eclipses because they thought their children would be born with horrible deformities. Most of the details of how the Aztecs dealt with solar eclipses are not well-know, but they definitely did try to scare away the monster they thought was eating the sun.”
According to her, their reputation for being bloodthirsty and into human sacrifice and decapitation was born from fear, not savagery.
“They did perhaps have a more foreboding look on their future than people in today’s societies do. But the Aztecs were more sophisticated in terms of astronomy than people realize.”
The proof, she says, is in the Sun Stone itself.
“When they created their mythology, they made sure that 4 Olin would never occur with an eclipse in their world. The possibility of purposeful manipulation should not be ignored.”
Kind of wild to think that, even back then, the powers that be were using religion to manipulate the masses.
But bottom line? I don’t think you have anything to worry about while viewing the eclipse in our near future.
If you found that story interesting, learn more about why people often wake up around 3 AM and keep doing it for life.