There are 100 bones and none is where

In archeology, bones and bone fragments are usually time capsules capable of revealing a specific moment in history hundreds, or even thousands of years. Without going far, last summer there were two findings that revealed us dark scenes of the past. In one of them, 64 bones clarified that the Maya did not walk around the time to sacrifice children. Shortly after, the DNA of another area said that Mayan prisoners of war passed through a species of ritual violence.

An inaccessible cave for much of the year has thrown another dark secret.

The underground altar. In the heart of the Guatemalan jungle, under the old archaeological site of Two batteriesthe so -called Cave of Blood, rediscovered in the 1990s, has revealed A macabre landscape and deeply enigmatic: hundreds of fragmented human remains, scattered without anatomical order and marked by signs of ritual violence.

This cavity, inaccessible for a good part of the year due to seasonal floods, can only be explored at the dry season (from March to May), which suggests a ceremonial use linked to the replicas by rain, key to an agricultural civilization such as the Mayan. The findings, presented In Society For American Archaeologyhave baffled archaeologists not because of their brutality, but for their symbolic complexity: what is offered to the rain God are not bodies, but parts, carefully dismembered and arranged, as if the fragmentation itself was the essence of the sacrifice.

Ritual and violence in the gloom. The bioarcheologist Michele Bleuzetogether with the forensic anthropologist Ellen Fricano, has analyzed the bones found in the cave and suggests that the observed does not correspond to traditional funeral practices, but to a ritual of deeply sacrificial character. The evidences are multiple and forceful: unpublished bones, trauma inflicted around the moment of death, brands of beveled edge tools (probably axes), and even symbolic elements such as red ocher and obsidian blades.

In a corner of the cave they found themselves four cranial calo stacked, an image that evokes a ritual act than a practical need. Among the remains were identified both adults and children, which opens disturbing questions about the role of these victims within the social and religious structures of the Mayan world.

On the right a fragment of cranial bone extracted with a beveling instrument, and the left, a linear drawing of a human skull that shows the area of ​​origin of the fragment. The bone was found in the Cueva de Bleed

The sacrifice time. Plus: The seasonality of the blood cave is not a minor detail. Your limited access at the end of the dry season It coincides with dates of still in force religious celebrations, such as Santa Cruz Dayon May 3, when contemporary Mayan communities go to caves to ask for rain. This temporal coincidence reinforces the hypothesis that the place served as Scenario of invocation rituals and offering to the god of rain.

In a culture where the relationship with climatic cycles was vital, the delivery of human lives (or, in this case, of their fragments) could have been conceived as A sacred transactionnecessary to ensure the continuity of the crops and, therefore, of the community.

Mystery open to science. Despite the forcefulness of the material evidence found, archaeologists face Many questions. Namely: who were these people? What was their origin? Were they chosen, captured, offered by their own families? In that sense, research has just begun. The team led by Bleuze plans to perform ancient DNA analysis and stable isotope studies to try to rebuild not only the identity of sacrificed individuals, but also His vital trajectoriesits food, its genetic ties and its place within society.

What has become clear is that, be the ones who were, the individuals were treated in a wayAdarally different To the rest of the Mayan population, which implies a complex conception of the human body as a vehicle of meaning, power or connection with the divine.

Ritual will. Beyond your name evocativethis cave of blood is A ritual capsule Cattered over time, a kind of underground altar where, according to the findings, violence was merged with devotion, and where the act of dismembering was transformed into a kind of supply gesture to natural forces.

Seen that, and According to expertswhat for the modern observer may seem a brutal scene, was, for the ancient Maya, an act loaded with meaning, a dialogue with the gods forged in bone and blood. Now the other mystery through science remains to be known: decipher the story of its victims.

Image | Mike RoweMichele M. Bleuze

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