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A mass burial contains the cadaver of more than 100 individual who were sacrificed as part of a serial of ancientMayarituals , a new study finds . Unusually , the remains were all from untried boys , and they were buried over a 500 - year period .
archaeologist made the discovery after conductingDNAanalyses on 64 of the skeletons , which were line up in 1967 inside a chultun , or underground water store chamber , at the Maya metropolis ofChichén Itzáon Mexico ’s Yucatán Peninsula . The researchers revealed their findings in a study release Wednesday ( May 12 ) in the journalNature .
A pyramid at Chichén Itzá, a Maya site in Mexico.
carbon 14 see demonstrate that the cistern was in use between the other 7th century and the mid-12th 100 , and the genetic psychoanalysis revealed that all of the individuals were boys , of whom a tail were closely related . research worker also reveal two sets of twins in the quite a little inhumation .
" Most of them were between 3 and 6 age old , " lead authorRodrigo Barquera , a postdoctoral researcher at Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany , told Live Science . " Since many of the individuals were touch to each other to some extent , that tells us that it ’s likely that only specific families would have had access to this burial and that not just anyone could put their minor in there — it was a big honor . "
It is currently undecipherable how the boys lay to rest there go .
concern : shadow of hallucinogenic works and chile pepper establish at Maya orb court paint a picture rituals took place there
" As we analyze the bones , we did n’t find any signs of trauma , so they were n’t cast into the chamber , " Barquera say , adding that further analytic thinking could facilitate them make up one’s mind if they were poisoned .
Researchers determine some characteristics of the burial surprising , as alike Maya burials typically check either only young female or a mix of males and females , the latter of which was the case at a known burial called the Sacred Cenote , also at Chichén Itzá .
" Traditionally , sepulture tie in with an underground surround are normally rankness offering , " Barquera said . " But when we found that this entombment was all male and that many of [ the individuals ] were relate to each other , the narrative changed . Now we want to try out to make sense of it . "
Barquera said that we may " never know " what the exact role of the burial was and that it ’s possible the forfeiture could have been a supplication to the idol for crop yields or for rainfall . However , one clue is the presence of the two matching burials .
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" We do get it on that for the Maya , manly twins were important and that there ’s a taradiddle of the wedge Twin who went to the Hades to avenge their father , " Barquera said . " It ’s potential this was a memorial to the grinder twin . "
last , the inherited depth psychology show patrimonial lineage between the sacrifice boys and present - sidereal day people who live in this region of Mexico , indicate that the individual were from local communities . The modern - day universe had higher relative incidence of cistron tie to resistance toSalmonella entericathan did the sacrificed minor , supporting the hypothesis that epidemics usher in during the compound catamenia fueled the rise of these factor in the population , the study authors remark in the newspaper publisher .
The researchers design to conduct community outreach with local to get new insight into their refinement and inheritance .
" We can learn so much from them , " Barquera enounce .
