New Research Reveals Clues About How Ancient Maya Chose Their Human Sacrifices

And they turn common assumptions on their heads

Hiya!

Archaeology is cool because it tells a never-ending, albeit slow-moving, story of what happened on Earth long before we arrived. Ancient human history is especially fascinating because, well, it’s our story. Everything we’ve learned so far about ancient civilizations reveals vast differences from modern society that leave us dazzled, inspired, and even fearful.

For instance, the ancient Maya civilization, a vast empire that once covered today’s Mexico and reached well into South America, has inspired us for decades. Their brilliant architecture, astounding knowledge in astronomy, writing, and economics, plus their unyieldingly fierce reputation for warfare, have captured our modern imagination.

Perhaps the most intriguing discovery about the ancient Maya is their traditions involving human sacrifice. Scientists have long sought to understand these practices, and now, thanks to technological advancements, they’re discovering a goldmine of insight.

Initial Discovery

Impressive ball courts and remarkable temples, including the awe-inspiring El Castillo, make the ancient Maya city Chichén Itzá in today’s Mexico a popular tourist attraction and World Heritage Site.

In its prime, however, Chichén Itzá was one of the most powerful cities in the ancient Maya civilization. It served as a spiritual and political hub of the northern Maya lowlands, which today would cover Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, northern Guatemala, and Belize.

This ancient city is filled with evidence of Maya rituals, including a skull rack holding the heads of their enemies and the Sacred Cenote, a water-filled sinkhole where the Maya sacrificed valuable objects and even humans to their gods.

In 1967, while constructing an airstrip about 1,300 feet (300 meters) north of the Sacred Cenote, a bulldozer unearthed a cistern, or chultún, connected to a low-ceiling cave with the remains of over 100 children in its two small chambers.

Archaeologists at the time concluded some of the children were as young as three years old, based on the size and shape of the bones, and were sacrificed, or at least deposited in the cave, sometime between 500 B.C.E. and the 1300s C.E.

The young ages, however, made it challenging for experts to determine the children’s biological sex since skeletal differences don’t become apparent until around puberty when the female pelvis grows about 25 percent wider than the males’.

Archaeogeneticist Roderigo Barquera of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany and the lead author of a new study I’ll tell you about next told Tom Metcalfe of National Geographic:

“Traditionally, these kinds of burials are associated in Mesoamerican archaeology with fertility offerings, and fertility offerings usually feature females only.”

Because of this assumption, experts in the 60s thought most of the remains belonged to girls and young women who served as ritual fertility sacrifices — but new research turns this idea on its head.