When the CBS News report headline reads, "Ancient altar found in Guatemala jungle apparently used for sacrifices, 'especially of children,'" you probably don't expect CBS to go out of its way to find someone to excuse countless bloody murders. Or perhaps you're already familiar with CBS News.
The report itself is fascinating, at least until you get to the completely unnecessary excuse-mongering, but I'll return to that momentarily.
An 18-month-long archeological dig in Guatemala's Tikal National Park revealed a Teotihuacan altar believed to have been used for human sacrifices, "especially of children," according to archeologist Lorena Paiz, who led the team. "The remains of three children not older than 4 years were found on three sides of the altar," she said.
The ancient city of Tikal was Mayan, but Teotihuacan culture originated much further north, northeast of modern-day Mexico City, approximately 600 miles away. It's the first time anything like that has been found in Guatemala, adding to our understanding of pre-Columbian America.
Not having left a written language, not much is known about the Teotihuacan. Even their name came centuries later. Aztecs were awestruck by the size and scope of the abandoned city — once home to an estimated 100,000-200,000 people — and named it Teotihuacan, or "The Place Where the Gods Were Born." The Aztecs were prolific practitioners of human sacrifice themselves.
But forget all the horrors of human sacrifice, particularly of children, because I believe CBS News found its multi-culti hook with an innocuous statement from Edwin Román, who heads up the park's South Tikal Archaeological Project. CBS News wrote that Román said the discovery "reinforces the idea that Tikal was a cosmopolitan center at that time, a place where people visited from other cultures, affirming its importance as a center of cultural convergence."
The important thing, you see, isn't that folks visiting Teotihuacan were cutting the hearts of children but that Tikal was so multicultural.
That's where María Belén Méndez comes in.
Méndez, CBS reported, said that what Paiz and her team found confirms "that there has been an interconnection between both cultures and what their relationships with their gods and celestial bodies was like."
"We see how the issue of sacrifice exists in both cultures. It was a practice; it's not that they were violent, it was their way of connecting with the celestial bodies," she told CBS News.
Well, yeah — it is that they were violent. If Teotihuacan culture was anything like the Aztecs, who followed in their bloody footsteps, they carved the still-beating hearts out of children under the age of four. But no matter how the Teotihuacan did it, "their way of connecting with the celestial bodies" was a murderous business.
But here's the kicker, straight out of the CBS News report: Méndez "was not involved with the project." Somebody at CBS News — the report doesn't feature a byline — had to go out of its way to find some rando archeologist with zero connection to Paiz or her dig to make excuses for child killers.
Repeat it with me once more: "No matter how much you despise the media, it isn't enough."
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