Note 845 — Chapter III

This has induced some historians to call these wars “holy wars.” Bandelier discredits wholly the common view, that wars were undertaken to secure victims for the sacrificial stone (Archæol. Tour, 24). But in another place (Peabody Mus. Reports, ii. 128) he says: “War was required for the purpose of obtaining human victims, their religion demanding human sacrifices at least eighteen times every year.”