Bloodletting in Mesoamerica

Bloodletting was the ritualized practice of self-cutting or piercing of an individual's body that served a number of ideological and cultural functions within ancient Mesoamerican societies, in particular the Maya.

Bound within the Mesoamerican belief systems, bloodletting was used as a tool to legitimize the ruling lineage's socio-political position and, when enacted, was important to the perceived well-being of a given society or settlement.

Bloodletting was performed by piercing a soft body part, generally the tongue, and scattering the blood or collecting it on amate, which was subsequently burned.

Ritualized bloodletting was typically performed by elites, settlement leaders, and religious figures (e.g., shamans) within contexts visible to the public.

The rituals were enacted on the summits of pyramids or on elevated platforms that were usually associated with broad and open plazas or courtyards (where the masses could congregate and view the bloodletting).

However, solid evidence for its practice exists in the jade and ceramic replicas of stingray spines and shark teeth as well as representations of such paraphernalia on monuments and stelae[6] and in iconography.

Contemporaneous with the Maya, the south-central panel at the Classic era South Ballcourt at El Tajín shows the rain god piercing his penis, the blood from which flows into and replenishes a vat of the alcoholic ritual drink pulque.

[11] One of the first to recognise the distinction was Diego de Landa in a 1566 manuscript:"At times they sacrificed their own blood, cutting all around the ears in strips which they let hang as a sign.