The Mesoamerican technology included the manufacturing of different piercing instruments, such as stone burins, needles and punches made from various materials. Many of the bone punches like these were used for the practice of auto-sacrifice. From the Preclassic period until the Conquest era, Mesoamerican peoples made blood offerings. The Mesoamerican concept of the offering was to deliver valuable goods to the gods in a gaseous or volatile form, so that the gods, light and almost invisible by nature, could be fed; the fragrance of flowers and the aromatic smoke of the copal were very important offerings.
The blood offering was made in two ways: the act of killing human beings, quails and other animals, and the piercing of body parts to draw blood. In the case of both live human sacrifice and ritual piercing, other objects had to be soaked in the blood obtained and most of the time burned, so that its aroma and smoke produced by combustion could be used as a divine food. The piercing of the body itself caused the blood to drip which was collected on paper or grass balls, highly combustible materials.
The piercing instruments used to draw blood were inserted into grass balls (called zacatapayolli in Nahuatl) until they were well impregnated and ready to be burned. Those who performed the piercing or auto-sacrifice were the noblemen, who proudly declared that they had the necessary strength to withstand this practice, while the Macehual class or plebeians rarely engaged in such activities. In particular, it was the young noblemen in their training stage or the priests who practiced blood auto-sacrifice on a daily basis. We often see images of priests or novices holding the piercing instruments used to practice body piercing in their hands. Normally they used two piercing instruments, one made from bone and the other from maguey. For obvious reason, only the first type has been preserved.
The god Quetzalcoatl, patron of priesthood and mythical initiator of this practice, is almost always represented with the piercing instruments in his hand. According to the sources, during the night and in the early morning, the priests and young noblemen of Mexico Tenochtitlan climbed the mountains and to the top of certain temples to pierce their ears, tongue, calves and sometimes other parts of the body, such as the penis. Sometimes this practice is categorized as "penance", but it is necessary to clarify that this is a Christian term and does not correspond to the Mesoamerican offering; the priests were not offering their pain, as a penitent may do in the western tradition, but instead their blood. The fact of resisting pain was also valued, but it was an ideological and social valuation, which strengthened their authority and power as of the ruling class. A commonly used material for the piercing instruments was bone from the limbs of a jaguar, as seems to be the case of the one exhibited here.
The Mesoamerican technology included the manufacturing of different piercing instruments, such as stone burins, needles and punches made from various materials. Many of the bone punches like these were used for the practice of auto-sacrifice. From the Preclassic period until the Conquest era, Mesoamerican peoples made blood offerings. The Mesoamerican concept of the offering was to deliver valuable goods to the gods in a gaseous or volatile form, so that the gods, light and almost invisible by nature, could be fed; the fragrance of flowers and the aromatic smoke of the copal were very important offerings.
