The Aztec Empire was one of the most famous and mighty civilizations of pre-Columbian Americas.
Today, they have a savage image in the mind of the general population but how much of it was
true? Was it a lawless land where emperors ruled with iron fists acting as gods? No,
they had a very sophisticated law system where everybody saw their day in court.
But they also had the harshest of punishments for ordinary crimes.Welcome to Nutty History,
and today let’s find out what Punishment was like in the Aztec Empire.
The Aztec Empire had a steep rise and fall. Between 1300 and 1521, it covered some 200,000
square kilometers and controlled some 371 city-states across 38 provinces at its
height. The result was a vast number of disparate city-states that encompassed various customs,
religions, and laws. No empire can grow that big that fast without fighting a lot of battles and
the Aztecs were a self-proclaimed warrior race. Such a grand amount of warring resulted in a
vast number of captured warriors from enemies. Although most of these warriors were treated as
ritual sacrifices to gain the gods’ favor for more upcoming battles, a lot of these warriors
were also deemed worthy of punishment depending on if they were found guilty of war crimes. The
simpler method of punishing these prisoners was a sort of firing squad. They would be tied in a
standing position between two posts which may resemble a wide defensive stance of a modern
goalkeeper from soccer. Then a white spot would be painted onto their chest, over the heart. Archers
were then ordered to shoot arrows on everything except the head and heart which would be for the
final blow. Some captured warriors were offered an honorable death where they were given a flattened
cudgel to defend themselves while being tied up to a rock to defend against an Aztec warrior who
would attack them with a sharpened blade with an obvious intention. But most of these prisoners
were dealt with by laying them on a sacrificial stone and facing an obsidian blade. Then the
priest would take their heart out. But if that wasn’t considered sufficient, they would slowly
cook them over a bonfire. They would be thrust in and out of the fire repeatedly until they
were nearly gone. After that, they would finally perish by having their heart removed. The Aztec
Civilization had very little tolerance for crimes. They believed in the harshest of punishments for
the simplest of crimes, something that won’t be considered humane in the present world. Frankly,
it wasn’t even humane by the standards of contemporary Europe, and in Europe,
they were using the Judas Cradle back then. However, unlike the other side of the pond,
the Aztecs didn’t care much for physical pain as a punishment method. They were not fond of
incarceration either. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t have prisons. In fact,
they had four different kinds of prisons. The Cuauhcalli was the prison meant for the convicts
who were on death row. The Teilpiloyan was meant for people who defaulted on their debts. It was a
dark house with small openings where prisoners were lowered into their wooden cages through a
trap door at the top which left them without food and water for the duration of their sentence. The
Petlacalli were extremely tiny cages that were meant to be short-term claustrophobia-inducing
prisons for those who committed minor crimes. Conditions in the Petlacalli were so harsh that
many prisoners would perish being in custody. The fourth kind was simply a judge drawing lines or
placing sticks on the ground around prisoners and ordering them to not cross them until told. It was
literally the box from Disney’s Recess if you remember that amazing show from your childhood.
But prisons were only used as short-term penance, the death penalty was often used as the only means
of judgment for major infractions. However, these deaths were different from sacrifices. Sacrifices
were considered sacred but death punishment was an affair of disgrace. The only way to avoid a death
punishment was to have the victim or the victim’s family intervene and save the culprit from their
doomed fate. However, in this case, the culprit would then owe their life to them and would be
bound in life-term servitude.The crimes deemed worthy of death punishment were someone’s life,
perjury, intentional miscarriage, robbery, tampering with borders of a region, serious
defamation, destruction of someone else’s crops, selling stolen goods, witchcraft, inbreeding,
treason, defying orders as a soldier, forging emperor’s insignia, serious judicial misconduct,
etc. Petty theft was generally punished through restitution but stealing anything
of decent value was considered a serious crime. Stealing from temples, merchants, armories,
or the military and even stealing more than 20 ears of corn was considered grave enough to be
punished by death. The most common methods of death punishment were drowning, stoning,
asphyxiation, battering, burning, quartering, and many others. But there were far more savage
methods reserved for prisoners of war and the rarest of crimes. Aztecs were known to get really
creative with ideas about taking a life when it was about punishment for a crime. Aztecs had a
very defined social hierarchy and everybody was supposed to respect that. There were
grave consequences for crossing the imaginary lines that separated one class of society from
another. They even had laws about what size shoes one could wear along with the shape, size, style,
and placement of jewelry that was allowed for a particular class. Anybody who was lesser than a
noble wasn’t supposed to wear woolen garments and you could be sentenced to death if your clothes
didn’t match the status of your class. That’s a severe punishment for minor infraction by the
present world’s standards. Thanks to the Spanish who justified their conquests of the Aztecs by
citing their penchant for sacrifices, Aztecs were stereotyped as barbaric people. This was
further affirmed at first when the great tower of skulls, a Tzompantli, was discovered in 2015
around the Templo Mayor which stood at the heart of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan. But people
often forget that during the 15th century when the Spanish brought the Aztecs to destruction,
people in Spain were performing witch hunts and the Spanish Inquisition were punishing people in
the name of heresy. Similarly, Aztecs couldn’t be defined only by what their religious beliefs
were and how they treated criminals. Even though sacrifices were integral to Aztec life, the people
of the empire weren’t dehumanized because of it. These were compassionate, sophisticated, and very
familiar people. They loved music, poetry, and flowers, and treasured close emotional ties with
their families. They were also highly educated with universal schooling provided for both boys
and girls. Yes, they would tell their children very early in their life that existence is painful
and would use harsh punishments but this is the 15th century we are talking about. To be fair,
younglins weren’t dealt a good hand in any part of the world back then, unless you are
part of royalty. However, adolescents anywhere else perhaps weren’t also under the threat of
being sued by their parents in a court of law for mere subordination, but that was a thing
for Aztec teens. Unless they were under the age of 10 of course because according to the Aztecs,
children less than 10 years old weren’t capable of committing crimes. One thing that the modern
world could possibly learn from the Aztecs was how their law treated their nobility. The Aztecs were
staunch believers in classism, but they didn’t separate responsibility from privileges either, in
fact, they believed more privileges meant harsher punishments for breaking the law. The commoners
sentenced to death punishments were most likely either stoned or clubbed, but harsher methods
were used for nobles who would take the law into their own hands. While commoners could be pardoned
for their first offense with a strict warning to not repeat the same mistake, nobles weren’t given
that extension of the leash. Drunkenness under the age of 50 was a major offense among the Aztecs,
nobles, and priests, who would be asphyxiated for being caught the first time, but there were
other punishments as well. Meanwhile, commoners could get away with having their heads shaven,
property destroyed, or paying for theft in servitude. Nobles on the other hand would face
being maimed, flayed, exiled, or denial of funeral rites after death. Nobles were punished harder
because Aztecs believed that they should set an example for others and not disturb the system.
Adultery was also punished severely but because married men were allowed to have concubines,
the law was mostly against married females. Men were punished for adultery only if they
had relations with a married woman. But married women were considered guilty regardless of the
circumstances of the marital status of their lovers. What do you think Aztecs would think
of modern law if they traveled in time to observe it? Tell us in the comments below, and as always
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