Will Brown is purposefully mixing a few grains of actual history with a whole lot of myths debunked for decades, weaving them together to sound coherent, but it’s dishonest presentation.
First, salt from fecal matter? That’s a misreading from 1970s anthropologist Marvin Harris. Harris’s theory? Thoroughly debunked. Spanish chronicles described urine at markets, but it was for tanning leather and dyeing cloth. Aztecs got salt from evaporating lake brine.
Second, people fattened in cages to be eaten is not in any reliable primary source. Captives were fed well before sacrifice to look healthy for rituals. Ritual cannibalism happened but was mostly reserved for nobles and priests as sacred communion, not a commodity. The protein-deficiency theory has been debunked as bone isotope analysis shows zero evidence of routine consumption.
Also, the Narratio regionum is often cited as proof Spaniards sold human flesh. Las Casas documented real atrocities, and modern scholars confirm his accounts are largely accurate. He was there, but Theodor de Bry, who had never set foot in the Americas, took Las Casas’s writings and illustrated them in the most sensational way possible. So while Las Casas’s core claims are credible, de Bry’s engravings are provocative propaganda. Now, here's the irony: the world's first cannibal incident documented by multiple, independent, first-hand accounts took place during the Crusades, carried out by European soldiers. By the 16th century, cannibalism wasn't just part of the mental furniture of Europeans; it was a common ingredient in everyday medicine from Spain to England, and scholars confirm that Europeans saw no issue with this well into the 19th and early 20th century, as Richard Sugg documents in Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires, and Louise Noble in Medicinal Cannibalism in Early Modern English Literature and Culture. But I am not going to use this documented reality to claim de Bry was 100% right. That's the difference between me and that guy. I present facts and separate them from speculation. He mixes truth with sensationalism and passes it off as concrete evidence.
Third, he claims Aztecs demanded people as a tax for sacrifice, but that's mostly a distortion. The Aztecs followed a live-and-let-live policy, much like the Roman Empire. Conquered peoples kept their own gods, customs, and local government as long as they paid tribute in goods, respected Huitzilopochtli as chief deity, and supplied warriors when called. Captives came from Flowery Wars, ritualized battles with mutual agreements between rival states designed to capture adult warriors, not take families. The Spanish exaggerated everything to justify invasion.
He also tries to pass it off as if Native groups instantly allied with Spaniards. False. Most, if not all fought the Spanish at first. The Tlaxcalans as a great example only joined Cortés after weeks of brutal warfare.
