Luke Caverns
speaker
1,858 appearances
5 recordings
5 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard 27 May
Luke Caverns’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Like at about 1200, they start really imitating what's happening in central Mexico. And at that time, it's the Toltecs who are going to develop into the Aztecs. But the Aztecs love to pull out hearts. Both of those ones on the top left are good examples of people getting their hearts ripped out. So they were holding it up. And some of these images, you know, you see all four ventricles.
They know exactly what a heart looks like.
In this one particular context, that guy who would be cultivated for this moment. Otherwise, they were just people that they captured in battle. But they would always just – again and again, you see them rip out the heart. And there was some sort of way – somebody just criticized me that I don't know the anatomy well enough, which is true.
But what they do is somehow with those big, thick obsidian blades that are super sharp – They would break the rib cage and push down on one part and pull up on another part so they could then reach in and grab the still beating heart and rip it out. Any anesthesia? Nope. Nope. Nope. Not for these guys. It just ripped out.
See, that one, the person, the black person or gray is definitely holding one of those axes and he's got the heart up. And look, there's even a god going, yeah, give me more. The god is eating the heart. That's the death god, but he's not the war god. But look at the temple he's on. It's like covered in blood. The Aztecs said, they told the Spanish that...
In the last inauguration of the Temple Mayor, their main temple that has one side is to the war god, one side is to the rain god. But they said that over a three-day period, they sacrificed 20,000 people. And that at some point during the ceremony, the priests were ankle-deep in blood on top of the temple. That it was just a river of blood. And all these people were alive when they sacrificed.
Yep. Yep. And they also did, they had a ritual calendar where sacrifices occurred in some of the months. And then there were these battles. Actually, the Aztec Empire grew so big that it was a pain in the butt to get to the edge of the empire to actually fight people who weren't part of the empire.
So they kind of kicked out this group called the Tlaxcalans that live in between Mexico City and Veracruz. And they would just go every year to – fake war with them and capture them. And they could legitimately say, oh, these are not us. These are our enemies because we've never made peace with them. And so when Cortez showed up, it was the Tlaxcolins who were raised their hand.
You're like, yeah, we'll fight the Aztecs with you. We hate those guys. because they were just their sheep for this sort of activity. Did you do the math, Steve?
6,666.
That's doable. That's doable, especially with the quick break, pull up, rip out, drop them, get a next one up here.
Now, this is what the Aztecs told, I think, initially Cortes, and I think that that was also echoed in Sahagún's very good ethnography. He was there the next generation in what the Aztec capital became, Mexico City. And he wouldn't put anything in his book that he couldn't verify from three independent sources. So he's a really good source. I love... What a good investigative reporter he was.
But it is possible, A, that the Aztecs were exaggerating to Cortes to impress him. Or B, Cortes was exaggerating to Spain to validate destroying the empire. And these are nettling questions we may never answer. What is this Noche Triste situation? That's the time that the Spanish screw up, get their hostage killed, who's the king.
Montezuma dies, and without him as the hostage, the Aztecs are free to just kill the Spanish. And they are planted in the middle of the city, and they have to escape at night along the causeways across the lake. And that's the sad night, the Noche Triste. And they get decimated. But a lot of people do survive. The captain survived. Cortez survives. A couple hundred people.
There were like less than a thousand Spanish in the capital at that point. I guess there were only a couple hundred. Cortez was returning with a couple thousand Spanish. The story goes it was Pedro Alvarado who screwed it all up. Pedro Alvarado was this red-haired, fiery dude. The Spanish called him the son of the sun, Tonatillo. And they had been there for months.
They had Montezuma captured as a polite – guest of their quarters, but he really couldn't leave and he was ordered to do whatever he wanted by Cortez, bring me gold, all this sort of stuff. They were stockpiling gold in the compound that the Spanish had been given.
But then Cortes gets word from the coast that Cuba has sent a couple of ships with a thousand more men to come and subdue him, that he was not allowed to attack and colonize. He didn't have the authority, and they were coming to stop Cortes. And Cortez said, OK, Alvarado, you're in charge here. I'm going to go over to the coast and I'm going to convince these people to be with us, not against us.
And he does that. He you know, Cortez was actually trained as a lawyer. So he had the gift to gab and he goes over there and gives them this magnificent speech saying we're all going to be rich beyond our wildest dreams. And what I really need is a thousand Spaniards to turn the tide here. So you guys can become my army and become amazingly rich or you can arrest me right here.
What do you want to do? And but he convinces them and they head back to Mexico City. But while he was gone. Pedro Alvarado is invited to this feast like they are again and again. But somebody at the feast tells him, do you like the food? Oh, it's humans. You're eating humans. Ha, ha, ha. You're a cannibal like us. And he freaks out. And he has everybody close the doors of this banquet.
And he murders everyone in there. They're unarmed. He has the soldiers kill women, children, men. It's like a civilized party. And he goes nuts and kills them. And so when Cortes gets back, he finds Alvarado and his men barricaded into their compound and the Aztecs are all over it. And so they put Montezuma up on the roof to try to quell things like, hey, everybody calm down, calm down.
Showing 1681–1700 of 1,858 · page 85 of 93
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