Researchers recently delved into a chilling discovery made during a construction project in 1967. While constructing an airstrip near the ancient Mayan city of Chichén Itzá in Yucatan, Mexico, builders stumbled upon a mass grave. This site contained the scattered remains of over 100 children, revealing a grim aspect of the Mayan religion which involved the sacrifice of children.
The Maya priests of Chichén Itzá are believed to have sacrificed children to plead with the gods for rain and fertile lands, casting them into sacred sinkhole caves known as cenotes. “It was thought that the gods preferred small things and especially the rain god had four helpers that were represented as tiny people,” explained Archeologist Guillermo de Anda from the University of Yucatan to Reuters in 2008. “So the children were offered as a way to directly communicate with Chaac.”
Decades after the discovery of these remains, scientists have conducted DNA analyses on 64 of the 106 children found in the 1960s. The results of this study, published on June 12, revealed significant details about these young victims.
The analyses showed that all the children were male, with 25 percent of them being closely related to at least one other person in the chultun, including two sets of identical twins. The researchers noted, “Genetic analyses showed that all analysed individuals were male and several individuals were closely related, including two pairs of monozygotic twins.” The discovery of twins is particularly significant as twins hold a prominent place in Mayan and broader Mesoamerican mythology. They represent duality among deities and heroes, yet had not been identified in ancient Mayan mortuary contexts until now.
One such myth, the ‘Popol Vuh’, narrates the story of twins Hun Hunapu and Vucub Hunahpu who descend into the underworld and are sacrificed by the gods after losing a ballgame. This is followed by the birth of another set of twins who undergo cycles of sacrifice and resurrection to outwit the underworld gods.
The bones that were analyzed are estimated to date back to between the 7th and 12th centuries. Additionally, the study revealed that some of the related individuals shared similar diets, suggesting they lived together. The children ranged in age, with half of the remains belonging to boys between three and six years old, all dying over a span of 500 years.
This investigation not only sheds light on the dark practices of child sacrifice in ancient Mayan culture but also adds a new layer of understanding to the social and familial structures of the time.