On human sacrifice

Here I am pretending to be a sacrificial victim in the tiny room at the top of the little pyramid. There is a channel cut into the floor that slopes toward a small hole in the side, reminiscent of an abattoir. While it is beyond dispute that the ancient Maya practiced human sacrifice, I ally myself with those who decry the representation of the ancient Maya as bloodthirsty heathens who needed "saving" by the merciful, humane, and oh-so-civilized Spanish conquistadores in the recent movie by the well-known alcoholic christian supremacist Mel Gibson. Every civilization in the history of the planet has done the same. So why set up human sacrifice as an ideological justification for colonization? The europeans burned witches, White US southerners lynched Black men, Indians burned widows, and on a daily basis people are murdered by soldiers (from all kinds of armies). All of these are forms of human sacrifice designed to maintain power structures.