Implications of age and sex determinations of ancient Maya sacrificial victims at Midnight Terror Cave

Abstract

The prurient element in the popular notion of the ancient Maya sacrifice of “beautiful virgins” during the first half of the 20th century appears to have made researchers wary of studying women in human sacrifice. Interest in human sacrifice arose in the 1990s along with the formulation of the warfare hypothesis for the collapse of Maya civilization so that models of human sacrifice often assumed that victims were largely male war captives. The present study reports on the detailed examination of all the pelvises in the Midnight Terror Cave skeletal assemblage, using osteological and paleogenomic techniques to shed light on the age and sex composition of sacrificed individuals. Our analysis demonstrates the presence of both males and females ranging from subadult to older adult ages. All four paleogenomic sex determinations on samples from subadults were determined female. Additionally, results indicate females fall into two age categories suggesting that sacrificed women may have served as deity impersonators in rituals dedicated to female deities.

Ancient genomes reveal insights into ritual life at Chichén Itzá

“…According to the age determination by tooth eruption method 113 , most (about 50%) of the subadult individuals were found to belong to the age group of 3–6 years old 4 . The fact that the age of the children differs from the age group normally related to death in children associated with infectious diseases according to palaeodemography 19 , 113 – 115 further supports the interpretation of this burial as a sacrificial offering 4 .…”

Life and Death Among the Earliest Maya: A Review of Early and Middle Preclassic Burials From the Maya World

“…There has been a number of recent critiques of aDNA research that have accompanied the hype surrounding it, and we agree that these new data are only as good as the questions we ask of them, necessitating deep contextualization provided by archaeology to examine the meaning of patterns of genomic variability (Michael et al 2021). New aDNA research is increasingly focused on specific social questions, including how patterns of genetic relatedness correlate to specific cultural practices, such as body modifications and mortuary rituals (Verdugo et al 2017(Verdugo et al , 2020a(Verdugo et al , 2020b, as well as exploring and mapping patterns of relatedness within and between communities that can also be used to estimate effective population sizes. Used in combination with stable isotope analyses, aDNA can help to identify patterns of migration and mobility (Freiwald 2020).…”