Archaeologists have uncovered what may be the largest royal tomb found in more than a century of work on Maya ruins in Belize, along with a puzzling set of hieroglyphic panels that provide clues to a “snake dynasty” that conquered many of its neighbors some 1,300 years ago.
The tomb was unearthed at the ruins of Xunantunich, a city on the Mopan river in western Belize that served as a ceremonial center in the final centuries of Maya dominance around 600 to 800AD. Archaeologists found the chamber 16ft to 26ft below ground, where it had been hidden under more than a millennium of dirt and debris.
Researchers found the tomb as they excavated a central stairway of a large structure: within were the remains of a male adult, somewhere between 20 and 30 years old, lying supine with his head to the south.
The archaeologist Jaime Awe said preliminary analysis by osteologists found the man was athletic and “quite muscular” at his death, and that more analysis should provide clues about his identity, health and cause of death.
In the grave, archaeologists also found jaguar and deer bones, six jade beads, possibly from a necklace, 13 obsidian blades and 36 ceramic vessels. At the base of the stairway, they found two offering caches that had nine obsidian and 28 chert flints and eccentrics – chipped artefacts that resemble flints but are carved into the shapes of animals, leaves or other symbols.
The excavation site at Xunantunich.
“It certainly has been a great field season for us,” said Awe, who led a team from his own school, Northern Arizona University, and the Belize Institute of Archaeology.
The tomb represents an extraordinary find, if only for its construction. At 4.5 meters by 2.4 meters, it is “one of the largest burial chambers ever discovered in Belize”, Awe said. It appears to differ dramatically from other grave sites of the era. Most Maya tombs were built “intrusively”, as additions to existing structures, but the new tomb was built simultaneously with the structure around it – a common practice among cultures such as the ancient Egyptians, but uncommon among the Mayas.
“In other words, it appears that the temple was purposely erected for the primary purpose of enclosing the tomb,” Awe said. “Except for a very few rare cases, this is not very typical in ancient Maya architecture.”
Many Maya societies ruled through dynastic families. Tombs for male and female rulers have been found, including those of the so-called “snake dynasty”, named for the snake-head emblem associated with its house. The family had a string of conquests in the seventh century, and ruled from two capital cities. Awe said the newly discovered hieroglyphic panels could prove “even more important than the tomb”, by providing clues to the dynasty’s history.
The third hieroglyphic panel discovered at the Maya ruins in Xunantunich, with Jaime Awe holding a flashlight.
The panels are believed to be part of a staircase originally built 26 miles to the south, at the ancient city of Caracol. Epigraphers say the city’s ruler, Lord Kan II of the snake dynasty, recorded his defeat of another city, Naranjo, on the hieroglyph, to go with his many other self-commemorations. On another work, he recorded a ball game involving a captured Naranjo leader whom he eventually sacrificed.
Naranjo apparently had its revenge some years later, in 680AD, having the panels dismantled and partially reassembled at home with gaps and incorrect syntax – possibly deliberately, to obscure the story of the snake dynasties’ conquests. Fragments have been discovered elsewhere in Caracol and at a fourth site along the Mopan river, but Awe said the new panels could be “bookends” to the story of war and sacrifice in the ancient Maya world.
According to the University of Copenhagen’s Christophe Helmke, the research team’s epigrapher, the panels provide a clue for Kan II’s conquests – he appears to have dedicated or commissioned the work in 642AD – and they note the death of Kan’s mother, Lady Batz’ Ek’. The panels also identify a previously unknown ruler from the Mexican site of Calakmul, Awe said.
Helmke said the panels “tell us of the existence of a king of the dynasty that was murky figure at best, who is clearly named as Waxaklajuun Ubaah Kan” . This ruler reigned sometime between 630 and 640AD, and may have been Kan’s half-brother.
“This means that there were two contenders to the throne, both carrying the same dynastic title, which appears to have been read Kanu’l Ajaw, ‘king of the place where snakes abound’,” he wrote in an email.
The panels clarify what Helmke called a “tumultuous phase of the snake-head dynasty” and explain how it splintered between cities before dominating Maya politics in the region.
The panels identify the origin of the snake dynasty at Dzibanche, in the Yucatan peninsula of modern Mexico, and refer to the family’s move to their capital of Calakmul. Awe said Lady Batz’ Ek’ “was likely a native of Yakha, a site in neighboring Guatemala, who later married the ruler of Caracol as part of a marriage alliance”.
The nine eccentrics.
The researchers have had their work peer-reviewed for publication in the Journal of the Precolumbian Art Research Institute.
Awe said it was not clear why the panels appeared in Xunantunich, but the city may have allied itself with or been a vassal state to Naranjo. The cities both fell into decline, along with other Maya societies, around 800 to 1,000AD, for reasons still mysterious but possibly including climate change, disease and war.
The city was called Xunantunich, meaning “stone woman” in the Yucatec Maya, long after its abandonment by original residents. The name derives from folklore around the city about a hunter who saw a ghostly, statuesque woman, dressed in indigenous garb, standing near an entrance to a temple called El Castillo – a story touted by touristsites today. The site was also once called Mount Maloney, after a British governor.
The temple is impressive in its own right, a stone structure that towers 130ft above the city’s main plaza, adorned with a stucco frieze that represents the gods of the sun and moon.
Archaeologists at the Mayan ruin site of Palenque said Monday they have discovered an underground water tunnel built under the Temple of Inscriptions, which houses the tomb of an ancient ruler named Pakal.
Archaeologist Arnoldo Gonzalez says researchers believe the tomb and pyramid were purposely built atop a spring between 683 and 702 AD. The tunnels led water from under the funeral chamber out into the broad esplanade in front of the temple, thus giving Pakal’s spirit a path to the underworld.
Attention has focused on the heavily carved stone sarcophagus in which Pakal was buried, and which some erroneously believe depict the Maya ruler seated at the controls of a spaceship.
But Gonzalez said Monday that carvings on a pair of stone ear plugs found in the grave say a god “will guide the dead toward the underworld, by submerging (them) into the water so they will be received there.”
Pakal, in other words, didn’t fly off into space; he went down the drain. “There is nothing to do with spaceships,” Gonzalez said.
The tunnel, which connects to another, is made of stone and is about two feet (60 centimeters) wide and tall.
The director of archaeology for the National Institute of Anthropology and History, Pedro Sanchez Nava, said the theory makes sense in light of other pre-Hispanic peoples such as those who lived at Teotihuacan, near Mexico City, where another water tunnel was found.
“In both cases there was a water current present,” said Sanchez Nava. “There is this allegorical meaning for water … where the cycle of life begins and ends.”
The dig began in 2012, when researchers become concerned about underground anomalies detected with geo-radar under the area in front of the pyramid’s steps.
Fearing a hole or geological fault that could cause the pyramid to settle or collapse, they dug at the spot—and uncovered three layers of carefully fitted stone covering the top of the tunnel.
Gonzalez said the same type of three-layered stone covering has been found in the floor of Pakal’s tomb, within the pyramid.
Gonzalez said he believes there is no shaft or connection between the tomb and the tunnel, but adds the conduit hasn’t been fully explored yet because it is too small to crawl through.
Researchers had to send a robot with a camera down to view much of the underground horizontal shaft.
Author Erich von Daniken suggested in his 1968 book “Chariots of the Gods?” that Pakal’s position in the engraving on the stone sarcophagus lid resembled the position of astronauts, and he appeared to be seated in a contraption with flames coming out of it and controls.
Experts say that the “flames” are in fact depictions of the Maya’s “World Tree” or “Tree of Life,” whose roots were believed to reach into the underworld.
Place of Manufacture: Motul de San José area, El Petén, Guatemala
Ritual drinking vase painted with a scene that combines elements from two seminal Maya myths–the sacrifice of the Baby Jaguar and the featuring the birth/resurrection of the Maize god at Nah-Ho’-Chan , a supernatural mountain location in the north named in the hieroglyphic text as well as depicted underneath the conflated representation of the Baby Jaguar-Maize god. Two supernaturals flank him, and a white cord, which makes reference to an umbilical cord, unites the three figures. This vase was painted by one of the most accomplished artists of the Classic period.
This vase is considered one of the finest examples of Maya painting. The artist’s mastery of the watercolor-like quality of slip paint is particularly remarkable here. Notice the subtle washes on the bodies, extremely difficult to achieve with clay-based paints.
The scene depicts the birth of the Maize god, flanked by a supernatural with jaguar attributes and another with Sun-god features. The white umbilical cord that unifies the scene also encouraged the viewer to rotate the vase. The hieroglyphic text records the birth’s mythological date and supernatural locale, Na-Ho-Chan (Five Sky House).
Much is known about Maya kings, lords and priests. Gaps remain, but we have long had some idea of how they lived. But what about the majority—the rest of Maya society? This question has been harder to answer. To shed some light on the subject, doctoral student Ashley Sharpe at the University of Florida examined animal bones found in three Maya cities.
The bones belong to the university’s Florida Museum of Natural History collection, of which Kitty Emery is one of the curators and co-author of the study published in a recent issue of the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. Their conclusions reveal a world where elites did not necessarily choose to eat everything that was available, and where members of the lower classes were ready to carry food for kilometers for both economic and social purposes.
Complicated Social System
The Maya formed one of the most important pre-Columbian civilizations, and their pyramids still cast shadows over the jungles of southern Mexico and northern Central America. They developed the concept of zero and a ballgame that prohibited players from using their feet. Their mythology records their artwork on their buildings and their bloodline remains in the many indigenous descendants now living in areas including Yucatán and Guatemala.
But most Maya people did not belong to the elite, whose world is the one more clearly reflected by their civilization’s remaining art and architecture. Instead they were part of what we now describe as “middle” or “lower” classes—groups not devoted to political, military or religious leadership.
Sharpe and Emery’s study focuses on Aguateca, Piedras Negras and Yaxchilan, capitals during the late Classic period (A.D 500 to 900) and indicates that the Maya had a complex social system regulating trade, food distribution and access to animal species. Although it may seem strange at first glance, research shows it was the middle classes ate the widest range of animals. In contrast, the upper echelons’ diet was mainly focused on species that had great symbolic value for Maya, such as the powerful jaguars and crocodiles that roamed the Central American jungles. “We expected the elites to have the greatest diversity [in consumption of animal species], but it wasn’t like that. The elites ate animals that were considered delicacies, similarly to how today people of upper classes eat things like caviar, but the rest of us think that is not very appealing,” Emery said in a press release.
Geography also played a role. Whereas poor inhabitants of coastal areas had a diet that included local resources such as fish and shellfish, socially important residents of other areas were not left with only food from their environment but had access to shellfish—even in places 160 kilometers from the coast. In such inland locations mollusk shells were also used in crafts, a sign that the shells had social value, and home flooring, an indication of commercial value. The study explains that if the elites of a city had control over a resource, they presumably had some kind of control over the populations that obtained and manually transported it.
More Evidence on the Bones
Another discovery confirmed in the three cities is that although different classes ate the same animals, not everyone consumed the same parts. This conclusion was reached after analyzing the remains of white-tailed deer, and points to the social division of food: The best parts were for the elite. “It’s the first time we’re seeing this kind of evidence about what the middle and lower classes were doing,” Sharpe says. “This study demonstrates the diversity of roles that animals played in Mayan society and economy, which were far beyond dietary preference. Elites and nonelites living in the capital and areas of influence had different access to different species, and in some cases even to different parts of certain species,” the authors wrote in the study.
Sharpe says she agrees that the study has limitations: “More work is needed to determine whether the patterns found in this study were common throughout the Maya area, and also to know why or how these patterns exist. They probably had rules or laws that kept these practices, but we do not know the details.”
A unique combination of forms, this ceramic vessel joins the U-shaped element commonly considered to be a belt or waist-guard—associated with the ancient Mesoamerican ballgame—and a cylindrical container that rises from it. The entire vessel, as the interior space is contiguous, stands on three substantial legs. Incised onto the surface of both cylinder and lid are four figures, identified as ballplayers by the large belts at their waists. They wear grand feathered headdresses, and scrolls issue from their mouths, indicating speech. Each faces a large, feather-topped ball, one hand raised as if in salute. Recessed on the ends of the belt shape are two heads with closed eyes, undoubtedly representing death. While the overall theme is the ballgame, the significance of the specific elements assembled together in this context is not clear.
During the mid-fifth to mid-sixth century, when this work was probably made, the cylindrical form was widely used for important ceramic containers in the Maya area, where vessels were lidded, as in the example illustrated here. The basic three-footed, more or less straight-sided shape, however, is primarily associated with the central highland city of Teotihuacan, and its use in other areas of ancient Mesoamerica is taken as evidence of the influence of the great central Mexican city.
Object Place: Motul de San José to Dos Pilas areas, El Petén, Guatemala
The narrative scene depicts a meeting between two lords seated on a bench-throne. The primary lord wears a black deer headdress, and a dwarf-like person accompanies the other lord. Behind the main figure sits a woman, and behind her kneels a man wearing a jaguar-deer headdress and jaguar pelt cape. All figures except the main lord hold a bouquet-like sheaf of white and orange-painted objects. Short glyphs texts in the scene identify the participants and may specify the nature of the event.
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