RPTM Podcast Episode Four: Drugs, Sex, Human Sacrifice, and Columbus and his Friends

Last episode I mentioned the two ways to really know a culture was trough their food and their music. But there are other ways that are quite frankly a little more fun: sex and drugs. The things a culture does in private gives us another chapter of the book of history that most historians often skip writing. And perhaps this is selfish, but I just am not that interested in the dogmas of religion and politics. It seems that that we want to focus on historical figures and their grandiose policies and edicts rather than the what the everyday man or woman endured. So, our next rule of history: Don’t focus on the 1% of history. If you do, you will only be looking at essentially elite white men, and as we all know by now there are plenty of other stories to tell. Howard Zinn started this notion with bottom up history in his work, People’s History of the United States, and has since evolved into the “from the gutter up” lens of history coined by Thaddeus Russell in his work A Renegade’s History of the United States.

Buckle up. Keep your arms and legs in the podcast at all times. It’s going to get trippy.

SHOW HIGHLIGHTS

• People living in Mesoamerica before the arrival of Europeans used such psychotropic drugs primarily in medicine and religious rituals. 
• The mystical aspect of sex was a cardinal point of all pre-Columbian civilizations. Not only did it represent their deep relationship with nature, but it was also an element that maintained the natural order of everything. Sexuality, far from being a perversion or an offense against God, was a way for humanity to honor life.
• Human sacrifice was the highest level of an entire array of offerings through which the Aztecs sought to repay their debt to the gods. The Aztecs gladly parted with everything. 
• The debate over Columbus's legacy continues. Scholars give more considerable attention to the harm committed under his governance, particularly the near extermination of the indigenous Taino population from mistreatment and European diseases. 
• With the meeting of two worlds, animals, insects, and plants were carried from one to the other, both deliberately and by chance, in what is called the Columbian Exchange. 
• Hernando de Soto's expedition was one of the most elaborate efforts made by the Spanish to explore North America's interior. De Soto and his men were the first to thoroughly examine most of the southern half of the modern United States. 
• Although Balboa suffered a premature death, his actions and deeds are remembered by history as the first European to cross America.​

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​CHAPTERS
0:00 Start
0:37 Intro
2:07 Drugs and Mesoamerican Culture
6:49 Sex in Mesoamerican Culture
10:08 Human Sacrifice in Mesoamerican Culture
14:56 Christopher Columbus
23:48 The Columbia Exchange
32:00 Ponce Deleon and Friends
45:26 Outro

RESOURCES
Drugs in Early Americas Included 'Magic' Mushrooms and Toad Skins
Human sacrifice in Aztec culture
Christopher Columbus
The Columbian Exchange
History of Hispanic and Latino Americans in the United States
Ponce de León, Exposed
Hernando de Soto
Vasco Núñez de Balboa
 

Episode 3

RPTM Podcast

Episode 5