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The rings of the Sun Stone

The Ring of Sacrifice

The band of drops and piercers

The whole disc, with this ring lit: the band read as drops and piercing implements. Each ring carries the number of elements its own entry declares; the hollow centre is where the stone puts the face of Tonatiuh.

What it covers

The band that has been read as drops and piercing implements, and the argument over what it depicts.

The full entry is in Spanish, and here is why

What you have read above is this project's own summary of the ring of sacrifice. The full entry — the part that rests on the sixteenth-century sources — has not been translated, and that is a decision rather than an omission.

We chose not to touch the primary text. Those sections quote Sahagún, Durán and the codices in their own words, often in sixteenth-century Castilian. A quotation carried across stops being a quotation: it loses the register, the ambiguity and the exact wording someone might want to check against a facsimile.

In Spanish the entry carries:

Read the full entry in the original Spanish → Nahuatl names and terms are identical in both versions.

How to cite this page

Alma Mexica, «The Ring of Sacrifice», The rings of the Sun Stone. Revised 2026-09-17. https://almamexica.org/en/anillo/sangre/

Questions that reach this page

Why did the Aztecs perform human sacrifice?

The sources tie it to sustaining the Sun and the cosmic order, not to punishment or gratuitous cruelty. This site reports what the sixteenth-century sources say — including those written by conquerors with an interest in exaggerating it — and points out where they disagree, rather than repeating a figure none of them supports.