Cannibalism in pre-Columbian America

There is universal agreement that some Mesoamerican people practiced human sacrifice and cannibalism, but there is no scholarly consensus as to its extent.

At one extreme, anthropologist Marvin Harris, author of Cannibals and Kings, has suggested that the flesh of the victims was a part of an aristocratic diet as a reward, since the Aztec diet was lacking in proteins. According to Harris, the Aztec economy would not support feeding slaves (the captured in war) and the columns of prisoners were "marching meat".

Bernard R. Ortiz de Montellano has proposed that Aztec cannibalism coincided with times of harvest and should be thought of as more of a Thanksgiving. Montellano rejects the theories of Harner and Harris saying that with evidence of so many tributes and intensive chinampa agriculture, the Aztecs did not need any other food sources.

At the other extreme, William Arens doubts whether there was ever any systematic cannibalism.

The Mexica of the Aztec period are perhaps the most widely studied of the ancient Mesoamerican peoples. While most pre-Columbian historians believe that ritual cannibalism took place in the context of human sacrifices, they do not support Harris' thesis that human flesh was ever a significant portion of the Aztec diet. Michael D. Coe states that while "it is incontrovertible that some of these victims ended up by being eaten ritually […], the practice was more like a form of communion than a cannibal feast".

Documentation of Aztec cannibalism mainly dates from the period after the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire (1519-1521):

In The Man-Eating Myth, Arens writes, “The gradual transformation of what little evidence is available for Aztec cannibalism is also an indication of the continual need to legitimize the Conquest". The following claims could have been exaggerated.

...
Wikipedia