The elite of the ancient Maya didn’t just bury their dead. They went further.
Some of the most powerful people had their teeth ripped out. Not by accident. These teeth were hauled twenty-six kilometres through mountainous terrain. Deposited in a cave called Bats’ub.
Esther Brielle at Harvard led a study on remains in Belize. She looked at sites from the Classic period. Roughly AD 250 to 900.
It wasn’t just local burial plots.
A royal mouthpiece?
Brielle and her team generated genomic data from 341 samples. This pointed to 107 unique individuals. Twenty-four of these people were special. Their bones turned up in two places.
One location: The Plaza Tomb beneath a house at Muklebal Tzul. The other: Bats’ub cave. A steep, remote trek away.
Inside that cave were 226 teeth. Belonging to those 24 people.
They lay near an adult woman’s skeleton. Her head was missing. Instead. There was a vessel part with a jade bead.
Near her pelvis sat a jumbled pile. Cranium fragments. Jaws without teeth. A big cache of individual teeth. And an upside-down bowl.
Inside the bowl? Five cacao seeds.
An orange bowl nearby featured a mythical hummingbird-serent creature. 🦜
“The collection of grave goods imply she was royak”
Brielle’s team didn’t speak to journalists. But their findings are clear. That woman was an ancestor to many of the people buried in the elite tombs.
Or maybe they said she was.
Bloodline or brand?
Mirko De Tomassi works in Munich. He suggests the connection might be more ideological than biological.
Power needs legitimacy. Linking yourself to an ancestor helps. You pretend she’s your forebear. Suddenly, your status is solid.
Only the top tier of Muklebal Tzul society did this.
Angelina Locker at Vanderbilt University explains the geography of death.
Caves weren’t just holes. They were entrances. The Maya called it Xibalba. The underworld.
Locker says elite folks were likely the only ones allowed near this “mouth” of Xibalba. It was a spot to talk to supernatural forces.
Why teeth specifically?
Locker points to the Ik’. In Maya thought. The body has four parts. The Ik’ lives in the mouth. It represents the soul’s breath.
By sending the teeth. They were securing the journey to Xibalba. Ensuring the ancestor made it in.
Seeds in the dark
Asta Rand from Nicolaus Copernicus University has another idea. Teeth last.
They also mattered. The Maya filed them. Set jewels in them. Status symbols that survived rotting.
Rand thinks the teeth might have come from burials. Or maybe they were pulled during life. Who knows?
There’s also a agricultural angle.
Teeth looked like maize kernels. Maize equals life. Maize equals rebirth.
“It could have been a way … to plant them in the mouth of Xivalba”
Locker suggests a cosmic harvest. You plant the tooth in the cave. You get reincarnation later. A cycle of grain and bone.
But let’s look at the logistics.
De Tomassi notes the trip took days. The terrain was rugged. Brutal.
This wasn’t a Tuesday errand. It mirrored pilgrimages to Chichén Itzá. Where people threw precious stuff into the cenote.
Except instead of gold or pottery. These elites carried fragments of themselves.
Why go that far for a tooth?
We still don’t fully understand what they expected to find at the bottom. 🕳️
bioRxiv DOI: 10.64838/2024.12.03.532301 (Note: Source provided specific DOI in text, see reference above for context on current literature).
