Ancient Maya sacrificed boys not virgin girls: study

[malkin767]

The victims of human sacrifice by Mexico's ancient Mayans, who threw children into water-filled caverns, were likely boys and young men not virgin girls as previously believed, archeologists said on Tuesday

Comments

[the_samosaurus]

I heard about this article! Thanks so much for posting! I wonder where the original idea that Mayan sacrifices were virgin females came from, anyway? ::ponders::

[idunn]

This also begs the question of how victims were picked. "Sorry, Billy, we drew straws ... you lost"

[dorantherook]

The idea of virgin sacrifice came from the colonial documents, in this case I think from Bishop Landa. This discovery isnt new though; we read an article last semester from an issue of Archaeology in my bioarchaeology seminar. I'm not sure that the results are as conclusive as this article makes it out to be as children can't be accurately sexed.

[the_samosaurus]

Huh, nifty stuff. I'd be really interested in the title of the "Archaeology" article you read, if you know if offhand! :)

Also, interesting in this article how the word "virgin" is taken out now that the evidence points to boys rather than girls...or maybe I'm nit picking. ::shrug::

[quasilover]

I've been to Chichen Itza twice. This is very interesting. I still wonder how the Maya could take water from a sacrifice cave - as far as I know, one can't drink water where there are human corpses...

[the_samosaurus]

delicious!!! :D

[dorantherook]

The Inca and Chimu did, particularly the latter. One burial platform from Chan Chan contained upwards of 300 sacrificed females. It is suggested that it is a nifty show of conspicuous consumption to be able to waste this sort of resource all in one go.

[thorny_rose]

So what did they do with all the virgins?