Yes exactly. Here we have two cultures still heavily under the influence of their own general religions, and the ways that each allowed or dealt with applying violence. Each reflected the cultural view of what "reality" was. In Europe, shamanism had been replaced with Christianity, which had its own concept of the real world — one that was a prelude to an afterlife, in which one would be judged. For the Aztecs (and for other New World peoples too) reality was in no insignificant part determined by the knowledge of priestly shamans, their experiences, and the experiences that people had during rituals. All three of those were heavily influenced (according to Watson and others) by the natural presence of the world's strongest hallucinogens that were unknown in Europe. Add to that much more extreme weather, and you have the recipe for understanding the world as a potentially violent, terrifying place. If blood sacrifice or even human sacrifice seems to appease the capricious gods of that reality, then of course it makes perfect sense to do it.
Yes, this was my instant thought. What a naive Eurocentric way to think of history to insinuate that everyone except the Europeans were just barbaric savages who killed and devalued life. As if the Europeans weren't fresh off their own multi-year killing sprees for this and that reason that equally would have baffled Native Americans.
>What you see is two cultures separated by an almost unimaginable amount of time, distance, and history. The clash that occurred would have been hard to prevent whenever it happened.
Because surely there was more they had in common than that made them different.
As I said, the clash would have been hard to prevent. The biological consequences of foreign diseases are an important way things wouldn't have been other than tragic.
"After having treated their prisoners well for a long time, giving them all the provisions that they could one, he who is the chief calls a great assembly of his acquaintances. He ties a rope to one of the arms of the prisoner and on the other end, several feet away, out of harm's way, and gives to his best friend the arm to hold; and the two of them, in the presence of the assembled group, slash him to death with their swords. That done, they roast him and eat him together, sending portions to their absent friends. They do this, not as is supposed, for nourishment as did the ancient Scythians; it represents instead an extreme form of vengeance. The proof of this is that when they saw that the Portuguese, who had allied themselves with their adversaries, executed their captives differently, burying them up to the waist and firing numerous arrows into the remainder of the body, hanging them afterward, [the Tupi] viewed these people from another world, who had spread the knowledge of many vices among their neighbors, and who were much more masterly than they in every sort of evil, must have chosen this sort of revenge for a reason. Thinking that it must be more bitter than their own, they abandoned their ancient way to imitate this one.
I am not so concerned that we should remark on the barbaric horror of such a deed, but that, while we quite rightly judge their faults, we are blind to our own."
http://www2.fiu.edu/~harveyb/oncannibal.htm