Detail of a reconstructed stone tzompantli, or skull rack, at Chichén Itzá.Anagoria/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0
Posted on 06/13/2024 5:55:51 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
In the height of the Maya empire, the victims of human child sacrifice appear to have been very carefully selected.
According to a new analysis of ancient DNA led by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, the chosen victims have something in common. The remains of 64 individuals found inside a subterranean chamber known as a chultún all belonged to young boys, many of whom were closely related. Among them, two sets of identical twins.
It's a discovery that contradicts the common notion that sacrifice victims tended to be young girls...
We've known about the tragic fate of the children in the chultún since 1967, when excavations revealed the chamber and its grisly secrets. Likely once a water cistern, the chultún had been enlarged to connect to a nearby cave, a type of natural feature known to be connected to ritual sacrifice.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencealert.com ...
Detail of a reconstructed stone tzompantli, or skull rack, at Chichén Itzá.Anagoria/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0
Thanks for the link.
Modern America is less choosy about which children are killed.
Oh, well that's a relief!
Human sacrifice was one of the early examples of bad government decisions based on junk science.
Children of the king's and priest class's opponents I'm thinking.
So these satan worshippers were just precursors to the modern democrap party then...
Nowadays our junk science is more advanced and we know that we can change the weather by eating bugs.
exactly!
we “think” we are so advanced now, but in truth, we do the dumbest things imaginable to try to live forever or change the unchangeable.
100 years from now they will laugh at how we injected botulism into our faces to try to look younger for instance!
“Children of the king’s and priest class’s opponents I’m thinking.”
Ditto
Toxic males insisting on identifying as males?
When I was there about 35 years ago, the tour guide (a local historian) said only the remains of young boys were found in the "cenote," a spot where human sacrifices were made. According to the guide, the theory was that the leaders were secretly keeping the girls for themselves inside the temple, and then dressing the boys as girls and sacrificing them in front of the crowd.
Now, I'm reading that girls' remains have been found in the cenote, too. So, maybe some of the remains thought to be boys years ago were later found to be girls. But, if historians knew years ago that boys were sacrificed there, they shouldn't be surprised to find all the remains in the "chultun" were boys.
So sad... What a cold, bloodthirsty culture.
Quite.
When I was there a few months ago the tour guide showed us the place where the sacrifices were made. (It was at the end of field where they played the game with the vertical hoops on the walls), and he said that it is now believed that the AZTECS introduced the Maya to sacrifices.
“Mostly peaceful sacrifices.” s/
SunkenCiv, thank you for finding and posting these articles. Some of the headlines and the authors themselves lay open for snarky comments. But, all of this work is interesting, and ultimately, important for our understanding of the past, and of ourselves.
Take care,
Oldplayer
Life in those early civilizations must have been brutal.
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