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Bowls of Fingers, Baby Victims, More Found in Maya Tomb
National Geographic ^ | 7-21-2010 | John Roach

Posted on 09/25/2011 6:27:22 AM PDT by Renfield

Reeking of decay and packed with bowls of human fingers, a partly burned baby, and gem-studded teeth—among other artifacts—a newfound Maya king's tomb sounds like an overripe episode of Tales From the Crypt.

But the tightly sealed, 1,600-year-old burial chamber, found under a jungle-covered Guatemalan pyramid, is as rich with archaeological gold as it is with oddities, say researchers who announced the discovery Friday.

"This thing was like Fort Knox," said Brown University archaeologist Stephen Houston, who led the excavation in the ancient, overgrown Maya town of El Zotz.

Alternating layers of flat stones and mud preserved human bones, wood carvings, textiles, and other organic material to a surprising degree—offering a rare opportunity to advance Maya archaeology, experts say.

"Since [the artifacts] appear in a royal tomb, they may provide direct insights in the political economy of the divine kings that likely involved tribute and gifts," Vanderbilt University anthropologist Markus Eberl, who was not involved in the project, said via email.

Excavation leader Houston added, "we're looking at a glimpse of lost art forms."

Fingers, Teeth, and a Taste of Things to Come

The researchers found grisly deposits even before they reached the Maya tomb.

Almost every layer of mud above the tomb contained blood-red pottery filled with human fingers and teeth wrapped in decayed organic material—perhaps leaves.

The fingers and teeth were "perhaps a kind of food or symbolic meal offering," Houston speculated. "Sacred breads in [Mexico's] Yucatán are wrapped in such materials today."

In another bowl above the circa A.D. 350 to 400 tomb, the team found a partly burned baby. The bowls closest to the burial chamber were arranged like the Maya cosmos—the four cardinal compass points plus the center of world.

(Related: "Ancient Maya Royal Tomb Discovered in Guatemala.")

Dancing King and Child Sacrifices

"The chill of the morgue" and "a faint odor of decay" tempered the euphoria of the find when the team finally entered the tomb itself on May 29, Houston said.

Breaking though a side wall of the small tomb, excavators uncovered the remains of six children—a rarity among Maya burials. Nearby was an obsidian blade covered in a red residue that "may be blood," Houston said.

The arrangement suggests the children, some of them infants, may have been ritually sacrificed as the king was laid to rest. (Read about Maya rituals of sacrifice and worship.)

Why the children would have been killed is a mystery, said team member Andrew Scherer, a Brown University anthropologist.

But the youth of the victims hints that their value as sacrifices may have lain in their being, to Maya eyes, on the verge of personhood, Scherer said.

Dig leader Houston added, "[The fact] that at least four appear not to have been able yet fully to speak or walk may put them at that threshold of human existence."

The role of the king in his own burial may be slightly clearer.

The team found bell-like ornaments made of shells and "clappers" made of dog teeth, which were likely placed around the king's waist and legs, Houston said.

The same accessories are seen on performers in a ritual dance depicted in Maya art, suggesting that the king may have been "cast" as a dancer in the ceremony leading to his interment—despite the arthritic joints that give away his apparently advanced age.

(Take a Maya quiz.)

Turtle King Tomb a "Gold Mine"

His teeth embedded with jewels, the buried king, Houston suspects, was the founder of a dynasty at El Zotz, in what's now the Petén region (satellite map) of Guatemala.

According to the partially deciphered hieroglyphics on the tomb walls, his name translates to perhaps Red Turtle or Great Turtle. More information about him may be gleaned from further study of hieroglyphics from the tomb, Houston said.

A small state with no more than a few thousand people, El Zotz lay to the west of Tikal, once among the biggest and most powerful Maya centers (interactive map of the Maya Empire).

The neighboring settlements, though, probably weren't best of friends. El Zotz was likely "supported by the enemies of Tikal in a way to keep a check on Tikal's territorial ambitions," Houston said.

More details on the nature of that relationship—and on El Zotz and Maya life in general—may await decoding in the turtle king's tomb. The excavation team's next steps include residue analysis as well as continued analysis, and reconstruction, of the tomb's textiles and other artifacts.

"This," Houston said, "could be a veritable gold mine of information."


TOPICS: History; Science
KEYWORDS: archaeology; godsgravesglyphs; maya; mayans
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From last year, but I searched and didn't find this article on FR.
1 posted on 09/25/2011 6:27:25 AM PDT by Renfield
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To: SunkenCiv

Maya ping


2 posted on 09/25/2011 6:27:59 AM PDT by Renfield (Turning apples into venison since 1999!)
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To: Renfield

In before the El Zotz!


3 posted on 09/25/2011 6:32:27 AM PDT by Mmogamer (I refudiate the lamestream media, leftists and their prevaricutions.)
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To: Renfield

Ping for after church


4 posted on 09/25/2011 6:39:09 AM PDT by Beckett08 ("My Jihad means 'My Struggle' So does "Mein Kampf.")
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To: Mmogamer

The final abode of the Zotted. EL ZOTZ!


5 posted on 09/25/2011 6:40:14 AM PDT by ecomcon
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To: Renfield

The indigenous do love their bling.


6 posted on 09/25/2011 6:41:59 AM PDT by Tijeras_Slim
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To: Renfield
Three cheers for "cultural diversity"!

Wonder if the current residents are at all thankful for the gift of the European invasion? Certainly the owners of the fingers and teeth and the parents of those infants would have wished that they arrived earlier...

7 posted on 09/25/2011 6:47:21 AM PDT by Chainmail
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To: Renfield

Teeth bling is hardly a lost art. That's a 150K grill Lil Wayne is flashing. And they say you can't take it with you.

8 posted on 09/25/2011 6:51:01 AM PDT by bgill (There, happy now?)
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To: Renfield
I always find it amazing people buy into the 2012 Maya calendar devised by a people who saciface babies,pull beating hearts out of live people, ritual killing by the thousands

I don't get it

9 posted on 09/25/2011 6:51:30 AM PDT by Popman (Obama is God's curse upon the land....)
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To: Renfield
It clearly presages the coming of the internet ~ finger bones ~ all that's left of a myriad of devotees; young babies who were cut down before they could live "off net", and worse ZOTZ!

Great Turtle? I have this Apple Mouse and doggone if it doesn't look like a turtle ~

Is this a real article?

10 posted on 09/25/2011 6:52:35 AM PDT by muawiyah
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To: Chainmail

Probably they don’t.
The European invasion wiped out 97 percent of the population.


11 posted on 09/25/2011 6:53:42 AM PDT by Eric in the Ozarks
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To: Chainmail
Three cheers for "cultural diversity"!

...note the not so subtle excuses made for the child sacrifices: the children couldn't speak yet, so they were not yet considered human...

12 posted on 09/25/2011 7:03:19 AM PDT by ghost of nixon
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To: Eric in the Ozarks
Ah yes - And some of the diseases they had got back to Europe too.

Nonetheless, the human sacrifice incidence dropped a bit, post-invasion.

13 posted on 09/25/2011 7:13:53 AM PDT by Chainmail
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To: Renfield

Sounds like Mel Gibson got it right in ‘Apocalypto’, or perhaps didn’t go far enough. The “Aztlan” racists are always telling us how the Mayan civilization was peaceful, worshipped the stars in harmony, etc. B.S.


14 posted on 09/25/2011 7:19:18 AM PDT by montag813 (http://www.StandWithArizona.com)
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To: Chainmail
According to some historians, syphilis was the New World's gift to Europe, in return for small pox, influenza and measles, among others.
15 posted on 09/25/2011 7:22:24 AM PDT by Eric in the Ozarks
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To: Mmogamer

LOL!!!!!!


16 posted on 09/25/2011 7:27:49 AM PDT by Lockbar (March toward the sound of the guns.)
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To: montag813

I don’t think there’s been a book in the last 50 years still pushing the old “Mayans were ruled by astronomer kings”


17 posted on 09/25/2011 7:41:04 AM PDT by muawiyah
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To: Eric in the Ozarks
The Americas had had a problem with hanta virus for thousands of years. That's what killed off the Indians AND delayed European invasion and settlement for a good century and a half after Columbus' voyages.

In what is now the East Coast of the United States, for example, the Indians OUTNUMBERED the newcomers until about 1648 ~ that's when a particularly bad winter combined with a slightly higher than normal incidence of several communicable diseases (probably could add in the flu to the situation), boosted the death rate among Indians and Europeans right through the roof.

The big difference between the two groups wasn't natural resistance ~ it was far simpler ~ Europeans could ship in an indefinite resupply of human beings, which they promptly did.

There are a number of good books on the market that cover the American population catastrophe of the 16th and 17th centuries.

18 posted on 09/25/2011 7:48:55 AM PDT by muawiyah
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To: muawiyah
Mann, the historian, says the big difference was the lack of resistance. Only a comparative handful of Europeans arrived between 1519 and 1623. The indigenous population dropped from about 25 million to about 700,000 in about 100 years, a 97 percent reduction.
Hantavirius was called “Cocolitli” by central Americans. Small pox was the chief killer and is described unmistakably in 16th century drawings.
19 posted on 09/25/2011 8:12:13 AM PDT by Eric in the Ozarks
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To: muawiyah

“the coming of the internet ~ finger bones”

All digital!”


20 posted on 09/25/2011 8:20:28 AM PDT by Dr. Bogus Pachysandra ( Ya can't pick up a turd by the clean end!)
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