Monument 03, Bilbao.
Offering of heart sacrifice.
Rubbing image by Merle Greene Robertson.
Copyright 1995 Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute.

Together with other gods, he sprinkled them with his own blood, restoring them to life. Thus humankind was born from the pennance of the gods themselves.

And this gift had to be repaid in the blood of sacrifice. How else could it be, reasoned the ancients. Since the death of vegetation always preceded its regeneration, death must be the cause of life.

"Life and Death in Ancient Mexico" is based on The Flayed God: The Mesoamerican Mythological Tradition by Roberta H. and Peter T. Markman. The story of Quetzalcoatl in Mictlan is based on The Myth of the Suns and the Toltec-Chichimec Origins of the Mexica People, as translated by Willard Gingerich.