Harner quotes from Spanish sources on the witnessing of acts of human sacrifice and cannibalism, among the peoples of the Aztec culture. "Moreover every day they sacrificed before our eyes three, four, or five indians, whose hearts were offered to those idols and whose blood was plastered on the walls. The feet, arms, and legs of their victims were cut off and eaten, just as we east beef from the butcher's in our country." (120) This evidence may be compelling but like numerical estimates must be taken with a grain of salt as interpretive conquest literature is frequently peppered with "evidence" of the need to civilize and convert natives to Christianity. Harner relies heavily upon these sources and sites many such dialogues and diaries of the conquest population as reasonable evidence that such events were at the very least logical and frequent.

Harner closes his work with a discussion of the nutritional aspects of cannibalism and the remainder of the diet, stressing that most commoners did not eat...

All of this evidence is essential to understanding Harner's thesis and the work is relatively persuasive, with the exception of relying on Spanish conquest sources, which is balanced only by sheer quantity of sources that offer evidence based upon eyewitness accounts and/or indigenous reporting. At the very least this work is persuasive of the fact that the Aztec population, more than other regional populations was in significant peril with regard to available food supplies, given their massive population and the limited nature of food sources in the area.
Works Cited

Harner, Michael. "The Ecological Basis for Aztec Sacrifice" American…