[drawqrtz]

I would have loved to live in ancient Maya or Aztec times. Playing ōllamalitzli with the boys, cracking open some cocoa, in the evening watch a proper offering to the sun god. Maybe a bit more violent and shorter than modern life but definitely more exciting.

[ashtonkem]

Feels like a good place to visit, not live. My sneaking suspicion is that subsistance farming feels pretty similar no matter what century and empire you do it in, and that’s the boring stuff that doesn’t make it into the history books.

[i_am_proteus]

Pre-Columbian farming in South/Central America was substantially less labor-intense than in Europe and Asia because maize has an intrinsically higher yield in terms of calories per unit labor.

The downside is that maize isn't as nutritious as wheat or rice and needs to be more heavily supplemented with proper protein from meat or pulses - or the human being becomes malnourished.

>Easily obtained, what is more, for maize has always been a crop that demands little effort. The archaeologist Fernando Marquez Miranda has given us an excellent account of the advantages enjoyed by peasants cultivating maize: it required them to work only fifty days in the year, one day in seven or eight, according to season. They were therefore free, perhaps a little too free. The maize-growing societies on the irrigated terraces of the Andes or on the lakesides of the Mexican plateaux resulted in theocratic totalitarian systems and all the leisure of the peasants was used for gigantic public works of the Egyptian type. (It is arguable whether the cause was indeed maize, or irrigation, or the dense population of societies which became oppressive from sheer weight of numbers.)[One]

[One]https://archive.org/details/BraudelFernandCivilizationAndCap... p161

[abrowne]

On the other hand, the physical labor of grinding the kernels into meal, done by women kneeling at large mortar and pestle like tool, was intense and visible in skeletal remains.

[koheripbal]

With no animals to help and no wheels... Every bit of soil had to be rolled by hand and every product carried by foot.

...it was most definitely worse than others.

[hutzlibu]

"Feels like a good place to visit, not live. "

I am pretty sure if you came "to visit" aka a tourist, you likely would not have lived too long there to settle down.

Unless you brought some modern day magic, like a gun or a smartphone, to convince them you are send from the gods and not to be sacrificed just yet.

They literally murdered babies regulary. Why would one want to visit those, except for hardcore anthropologic studies?

And subsistence farming probably did differ, depending how far away the next empire was. Some lived in total slavery and dependency and some quite undisturbed pretty much on their own (there are some villages in remote greece areas for example, claiming to never have been conquered.).

[dang]

Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. We don't need anti-Mayan flamewars any more than anti-any-other-$thing flamewars.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[hutzlibu]

Seriously?

"I would have loved to live in ancient Maya or Aztec times. Playing ōllamalitzli with the boys, cracking open some cocoa, in the evening watch a proper offering to the sun god. Maybe a bit more violent and shorter than modern life but definitely more exciting."

The thread was literally about people wanting to enjoy human sacrifice and I expressed my disgust with that.

I am not anti-mayan, nor anti aztec, nor anti historic-german tribes who practiced human sacrifice, too (which would be my heritage). There are many interesting things in their way of life. But I am anti to people who like those cultures today, because of the blood and gore.

So anyway, expressing interest in human sacrifice, is ok here, but not expressing discomfort with that, because this might cause flame wars? Well, good to know.

[dang]

That quote doesn't say what you're describing, and of all the things to get upset about on the internet, imagining that other people enjoy human sacrifice and then getting mad about it is surely among the most avoidable.

Perhaps it would be helpful to explain how this becomes a moderation issue. It's because we can't play both indignation games and curiosity games at the same time. The former very quickly drowns out and burns up the latter. HN is supposed to be for curiosity games. Therefore when people start playing indignation games (and that is certainly not just you—the temptation is ubiquitous) we try to get them to stop and to return to the intended spirit of the site.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[hutzlibu]

" in the evening watch a proper offering to the sun god. Maybe a bit more violent and shorter than modern life but definitely more exciting"

Yes, maybe I should have just asked, what exactly does he mean by "proper offering to the sun god" in the combination of "maybe a bit more violent" but "definitely more exciting".

Because that just sounds like human sacrifice in that context to me. Along with other quotes like that in that thread. "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29129436" So clear, that I did not see much point in asking. So yeah, I got a bit "agitated" with that. Still, in my perception I got the mod warning, for expressing disconcern with peoples lust with human sacrifice. And those people did not, because they expressed their desire in soft terms.

It is allright. I probably just seek more other places now again.

[halfmatthalfcat]

I think there's some romanticization going on, which is fine to an extent.

[quinnjh]

Seems like your info might be a little erm- spaniard leaning. Not dismissing the sacrifices but dont turn a blind eye to the roots of the west - https://www.britannica.com/topic/Moloch-ancient-god

[h2odragon]

We're giants, with no scars and no disfigurations. Wouldn't that be enough magic? Most of us are utterly ignorant of the most basic skills that would be universal in such times; further evidence that we must be if not Gods then the swaddled products of some form of divine grace.

[hutzlibu]

They believed everything is magic and from the gods. And the priests interpreted the signs. So yeah, maybe the signs said for you to be treated as a king. And then to be sacrificed the next day. A special sacrifice.

[konart]

Many places in the world can offer you such life even now. Yet you are writing it from a cozy sofa or something.

[dr_dshiv]

Can you imagine the feeling of watching a human sacrifice in a crowd of 10,000 people? Or watching the king pierce his own penis with a stingray spine? The blood! And still-beating hearts! The collective empathy induced by these powerful experiences, specifically the affective resonance, would be a powerful binding force. Especially when combined with the pounding music and (occasionally) psychedelics [1].

Wikipedia has a nice article on Mayan human sacrifice [2]. It all sounds so brutal, but then again, so is Squid Game.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entheogenics_and_the_Maya

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice_in_Maya_cultur...

[oblib]

We still have capital punishment so, yeah.

I'll offer that was probably not any more common in Mayan life than ours now and those glyphs and stories are a sort of example used to keep folks in check or aggrandize the rulers of the day and in regards to those not much has changed.

[goldenManatee]

Cannot compute, mind overload, lol

[jl6]

There are plenty of ways to inject violence and excitement into modern life if that’s what you’re missing!

[dunefox]

Don't threaten me with a good time.

[shrumm]

I know this isn’t the spirit of your comment but this is one of the use cases of VR that I’m most looking forward to.

We’ve invested a LOT into immersing people into past worlds - think Jurassic park for dinosaurs, plenty of TV and movies about Roman times etc. VR would make all that seem so dated and boring.

Work up a sweat running from a T-Rex - quick shower and off to work!

[jjk166]

Actually the first time I ever used a VR headset it was a program that put you in the dinosaur era. There were some triceratopses and hadrosaurs walking around in front of me, then I heard a branch snap behind me, I turned my head and saw a Tyrannosaurus and it was legit the scariest experience of my life. The graphics weren't even that high quality, but I don't think my flight or fight response takes the time to measure a predator's polygon count.

[agumonkey]

Lost yourself in a forest at night, you won't need a t-rex to be afraid.

[L_226]

You may enjoy the Transformation series by Neal Asher.

A non-significant plot detail involves organisms being fitted with neural capture devices to record full sensory stimuli, before being killed/eaten by other organisms. These neural recordings are then sold to wealthy buyers who want to experience novelty.

[prometheus76]

That is also the premise behind a 1983 film called Brainstorm starring Christopher Walken.

[stareatgoats]

Looking forward to that day too. And if I may add another wish; that it becomes routine to be able immerse oneself in the ideas and culture of that time too. I realize that it is presently both easier and appeals to a larger audience to simply project our own ideas and culture onto past settings. But who knows what the future will bring. One can hope.

[d3nj4l]

Defile what I defile! Eat who I eat!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEMbLt4B4iA

[bryanrasmussen]

think of the honor if you could actually be a proper offering to the sun god!

[mtgx]

Being offered to the sun god - Achievement Unlocked!

[idkwhoiam]

Sounds cool until it's your turn to sacrifice yourself to the sun god

[bregma]

I hate to sprinkle blow on your parade, but coca was a different civilization 3000 miles and a few centuries away from both the Maya and the Aztecs. The only thing they have in common is they or their descendents eventually had their history erased by Spanish colonizers in the name of "civilization".

[Panoramix]

OP wrote cocoa, not coca

[ianhawes]

I find it ironic that the Spanish get a bad rap for “colonizing” the Mayans, but all the evidence suggests the Mayan civilization was committing genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Modern day countries participating in human sacrifice and mass murder would similarly be invaded and the history of their actions would be altered. See: Germany in WW2.

[xvilka]

There are many places where mass murder happens right now yet nobody is even contemplating their invasion. It happens only when there is something to take, something precious.

[elnatro]

Well two countries were invaded by USA after 11-S. At that moment both invasions were sold to the public as justified, because “security” and “for the people living there”.