Dr. James Fitzsimmons
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
The Aztecs are hunting people.
You'll throw it and you'll throw it at a group.
You isolate one person.
The purpose of Aztec warfare, Mesoamerican warfare, all this sort of stuff, is not to kill in battle.
It's to actually capture in battle and then either take back home and ransom or kill.
That's the whole point.
It's not mass casualties.
It's not mass death.
Sure, deaths will happen, but that's not the point.
You want to ransom.
So a lot of the reason why the Aztecs are using it and a lot of folks in Mesoamerica are still using it, even after the bow and arrow, is that they want to be able to capture people and bring them back.
And you can't do that with a bow and arrow.
It's too lethal.
So you want something that will actually like
Yeah, you can dodge it.
You want somebody who can dodge it.
And you actually want them to because you want them to run off somewhere and you can get them.
You can run them down.