"Golden, in collaboration with Brown University bioarchaeologist Andrew Scherer and a team of researchers from Mexico, Canada and the United States, began excavating the site in June 2018.
"Among their findings is a trove of Maya monuments, one of which has an important inscription describing rituals, battles, a mythical water serpent and the dance of a rain god. They’ve also found remnants of pyramids, a royal palace and ball court."
"In the 1990s,archeologists in Mexico City unearthed a 500-year-old skeleton near an ancient Aztec temple — a victim of human sacrifice. A grisly discovery, yes, but perhaps even more chilling was what the beheaded skeleton was holding: two small whistles, one in the shape of a skull. When a researcher blew into one of the tiny instruments, the horrifying sounds that emerged immediately captivated imaginations. One scholar described the noise as 'a shriek of death.'" Source: Gizmodo (2018).
If you ever feel like letting out a blood-curdling scream but you're too lazy to actually do it yourself, various replica death whistles can be purchased at NewNationsMusic, a business which appears to be run by grungy "festival" hippies with horns growing out of their heads.
Hoyo Negro. Underwater cave. Yucatan. Video from 2016.
"The cenotes and underwater cave systems of the Yucatan Peninsula are emerging as one of the most promising frontiers for Paleoamerican studies. Following the end of the last glacial maximum, rising sea levels flooded the region’s maze of underground passageways and preserved a diverse Late Pleistocene fossil assemblage. A female human skeleton, named 'Naia[1],' found in spatial association with the remains of now-extinct fauna in the submerged subterranean pit of Hoyo Negro presents a unique opportunity for interdisciplinary Paleoamerican and paleoenvironmental research in Quintana Roo, Mexico. At 13,000-12,000 years BP, the young woman’s skeleton represents the oldest nearly complete individual yet found in the Americas." Source: University of California - San Diego.
[1] "Naia (designated as HN5/48) is the name given to a 12,000–13,000 year-old human skeleton of a teenage female that was found in the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico. Her bones were part of a 2007 discovery of a cache of animal bones in an underwater chamber called Hoyo Negro (Spanish for 'Black Hole') in the Sistema Sac Actun. At the time of Naia's death, the cave system was mostly dry, and she likely died falling into Hoyo Negro." (Wikipedia)
Video from 2014.
The Hoyo Negro cave "is part of the underwater labyrinth known as the Sac Actun cave system," according to Live Science (2014). "The cave is more than 100 feet (30 meters) deep, and divers get only an hour of bottom time on each dive, further complicating the exploration of the site."
Note: The scale of the Sac Actun system has only recently been discovered:
"In early 2007, the underwater cave Sistema Nohoch Nah Chich was connected into and subsumed into Sac Actun making it the longest surveyed underwater cave system in the world." (Wikipedia) "In 2018, a discovery of link between the Sac Actun system (reported to be 263 km long) and the Dos Ojos system in Tulum, Quintana Roo (84 km long) has been reported [next video]. The combined system is reported to be the world's largest underwater cave system known."
A number of very ancient human remains have been discovered in these flooded cave systems:
"Humans have been living in Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula since at least the Late Pleistocene (126,000-11,700 years ago). Much of what we know about these earliest settlers of Mexico comes from nine well-preserved human skeletons found in the submerged caves and sinkholes near Tulum in Quintana Roo, Mexico." Source: Science Daily (2/5/2020).
The latest discovery is a possibly female skeleton around 10,000 years old. Designated Chan Hol 3, the skeleton "was likely a woman, approximately 30 years old at her time of death, [who] lived at least 9,900 years ago." Whoever she was, she appears to have been disfigured, possibly by an STD, and seems to have come to a bad end:
"The woman's skull had three distinct injuries, indicating that something hard hit her, breaking the skull bones. Her skull was also pitted with crater-like deformations, lesions that look like those caused by a bacterial relative of syphilis..." (Live Science)
The shape of the skull shows distinct differences from the skulls of other specimens from the same general period:
"The Tulúm skeletons indicate that either more than one group of people reached the American continent first, or that there was enough time for a small group of early settlers who lived isolated on the Yucatán peninsula to develop a different skull morphology. The early settlement history of America thus seems to be more complex and, moreover, to have occurred at an earlier time than previously assumed." (Science Daily)
"Archaeologists have found a Maya stone palace that dates to more than 1,000 years ago, according to the Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH)." Source: Live Science.
"It's likely that the Maya elite enjoyed the sturdy abode, INAH archaeologists said. Scientists have spent years excavating and restoring Maya structures surrounding the palace, which is located at the archaeological site of Kulubá, a landmark in northeast Yucatán just 100 miles west of Cancún."
"The palace had six rooms and measures about 180 feet long, 50 feet wide and 20 feet tall ... Because it's so big, restorers have a ways to go before the building is fully conserved. The palace would have been even grander back in the day, when it was part of a larger complex that included an altar, an oven and residential rooms ...
"An analysis of the palace indicates that people lived there at two different times: during the Late Classic period, from A.D. 600 to 900, and again during the Terminal Classic period, from A.D. 850 to 1050."
Related:Chronology of the Mesoamerican Cultures. This excellent Thought Company article details the rise and fall of Mesoamerican cultures from the Preclovis Period (?25,000 – 10,000 BCE) to the Colonial Period (1521 - 1821).
Comment:The Spanish conquest of Mesoamerica is a fantastic adventure story. I'm currently reading The True History of the Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Diaz del Castillo, one of the conquistadors who fought with Cortez before and during the conquest of the Aztec Empire. Highly recommended.
"The ninth century collapse and abandonment of the Central Maya Lowlands in the Yucatán peninsular region were the result of complex human–environment interactions. Large-scale Maya landscape alterations and demands placed on resources and ecosystem services generated high-stress environmental conditions that were amplified by increasing climatic aridity. Coincident with this stress, the flow of commerce shifted from land transit across the peninsula to sea-borne transit around it. These changing socioeconomic and environmental conditions generated increasing societal conflicts, diminished control by the Maya elite, and led to decisions to move elsewhere in the peninsular region rather than incur the high costs of maintaining the human–environment systems in place." Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States (2012).
Comment: If I understand this correctly, the theory here doesn't describe a social collapse so much as a process of decentralization and geographic dislocation. The growth of the Mayan civilization led to increased complexity and instability caused by a greater demand on a dwindling supply of resources which was made even worse by a catastrophic drought. At the same time, the change in trade patterns from land to sea transportation would have shifted the centers of economic power to coastal areas -- that would have been enough to weaken the central governments even if they weren't already under a lot of stress.
The Classic Mayan Period lasted for around 650 years -- roughly three times longer than the United States has so far. The Mayans built a great civilization, but they were brought down by a combination of factors they couldn't deal with. Maybe they would have lasted longer if they hadn't been so successful and grown so large and complex, but all civilizations collapse eventually from systemic instability or foreign conquest or both. Sometimes they simply enter a long period of decline and never recover, fading into the background noise of history.
If you start counting from the Declaration of Independence, the United States is only around 244 years old and it is declining very quickly by historical standards. There's a good argument that the American culture has already collapsed or is in the last stages of collapse. One way or another, if you take the long view of things, it looks like we'll be lucky if we can last even a third as long as the much more primitive Mayans.
During the years 250-900 AD, a chaotic period that saw the decline and fall of the Roman Empire in the west and the beginning of the Dark Ages in Europe, an advanced civilization completely unknown to the Romans entered its golden age in the rain forests of MesoAmerica on the other side of the world, only to collapse mysteriously by the end of the millennium.
This was the classical civilization of the Maya. Their secrets would remain hidden in the jungles until Spanish conquistadors subjugated the Yucatan Peninsula in the 16th Century. Since then, the Mayan ruins have been explored and their hieroglyphs translated, revealing an enigmatic, bloody and sophisticated culture that may have been the most technologically advanced society on the planet at the time.
"More than 1,000 years before Europeans landed on the shores of the Americas, the Maya developed a science-based civilization in the almost total isolation of the tropical lands of the Yucatan Peninsula," according to James A. O'Kon, author of The Lost Secrets Of Maya Technology (New Page Books, 2012). "The mystery of the Maya and the origins of their advanced science and technology have always intrigued me and initiated my quest for answers to their riddles."
O'Kon is an interesting character, a professional engineer who "synergistically applied field exploration, research, forensic engineering and 3D virtual reconstruction of Maya projects to discover lost Maya technological achievements." He argues persuasively that the engineering and scientific feats of the Maya rivaled any of the accomplishments of the more well-known civilizations in the Mediterranean world.
The Maya developed a written language, mathematics (including the number zero), an elaborate astronomical system, huge cities that included some of the highest buildings ever constructed at the time, the blast furnace, water systems, underground reservoirs and an extensive network of paved roads, among other things, all without the benefit of metal tools.
This lack of metal tools means that the Maya are generally considered to be a Neolithic culture, but O'Kon disputes the current "three-age system" (Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age) popular with mainstream archaeology, precisely because the Maya clearly meet all of the criteria for an advanced civilization. He suggests calling them "technolithic," meaning "a technologically advanced culture that did not have metal tools," (p. 88) presenting evidence that the Maya compensated for their lack of metals by designing tools made of jadeite and obsidian.
The Lost Secrets of Maya Technology discusses subjects like the rise and fall of the classical Mayan civilization and their mathematics and astronomy, but its main focus is on their technology. O'Kon goes into considerable detail about the techniques they used in the manufacture of cement, multistory buildings, arches, vaults, water collection and storage systems, water filtration, roads, long-span bridges and things like Maya boat construction and the "man-powered tumpline," a "load-carrying mechanism that powered the Maya economy." (p. 274)
O'Kon sees the collapse of the Classical Period as a result of the breakdown of Maya technology in the face of radical environmental changes. He surveys the evidence that climatic conditions, especially prolonged drought and the effects of tropical volcanic eruptions, led to the abandonment of Maya cities which could no longer support their populations.
This is a fascinating and unique book, well-written and accessible to the general reader. I'd recommend it highly for anyone interested in one of the most exotic and spectacular civilizations in the ancient world.
"Between 800 and 925 CE Mayan society experienced a rapid transition. The world of cities ended as populations moved back into the countryside. Historians debate the possible causes of the change — civil revolts, invasions, erosion, earthquakes, disease, drought. Likely some combination of these brought on an unusually rapid fading of a once-vibrant civilization. The Maya didn’t just disappear; several million descendants are still alive today." Source: The Khan Academy.
Comment: The theory that there was a Mayan migration to South America is interesting, but as far as I can tell it's mostly speculation. If something like this did happen, it would have been a long and arduous journey, to say the least. The distance from Guatemala to Brazil, for instance, is over 3000 miles. Another problem with the theory is that most sources believe that the Mayans who abandoned their cities during the Postclassic period moved north rather than south:
'Although much reduced, a significant Maya presence remained into the Postclassic period after the abandonment of the major Classic period cities; the population was particularly concentrated near permanent water sources. Unlike during previous cycles of contraction in the Maya region, abandoned lands were not quickly resettled in the Postclassic. Activity shifted to the northern lowlands and the Maya Highlands; this may have involved migration from the southern lowlands, because many Postclassic Maya groups had migration myths." Source: Wikipedia.
"What was the role of warfare in Mayan civilization? New evidence from lake sediments around the abandoned city of Witzna indicates that extreme, total warfare was not just an aspect of the late Mayan period, leading to its fall, but a characteristic of intercity rivalry during the peak of Mayan culture. Researchers discovered a thick charcoal layer from a massive, scorched-earth attack on Witzna on May 21, 697 CE (AD)." Source: Live Science.
According to new research, the scenario described in this video may not be accurate.
"Imagine a crowd roaring as royalty take to the ball court, rubber ball in hand in a sport so spectacular, it symbolized good versus evil. The ballgame played by the Maya, Aztec and neighboring cultures is famous for its ubiquity in Mesoamerica before interloping Europeans shut it down. But many mysteries and misconceptions continue to dog people's understanding of the game." Source: Live Science.
"For instance, did the game's winners or losers get sacrificed at the end of the game? And were the hoops on the ball courts treated like modern-day basketball nets?
"The answer to both questions is no; the players were most likely not sacrificed, and the ball wasn't meant to go through the hoop, although it likely happened from time to time, said Christophe Helmke, an associate professor at the Institute of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies at the University of Copenhagen."
Note: "The Mesoamerican ballgame was a sport with ritual associations played since 1400 BC by the pre-Columbian people of Ancient Mesoamerica. The sport had different versions in different places during the millennia, and a newer more modern version of the game, ulama, is still played in a few places by the indigenous population." (Wikipedia)
This modern version of the game looks like a more restricted form of soccer. Some human sacrifices would probably liven it up.
Comment: I'm not sure how reliable this new research is. There does seem to be solid archaeological evidence for human sacrifice at these ball games:
"The association between human sacrifice and the ballgame appears rather late in the archaeological record, no earlier than the Classic era. The association was particularly strong within the Classic Veracruz and the Maya cultures, where the most explicit depictions of human sacrifice can be seen on the ballcourt panels — for example at El Tajín (850–1100 CE) and at Chichen Itza (900–1200 CE) — as well as on the well-known decapitated ballplayer stelae from the Classic Veracruz site of Aparicio (700–900 CE). The Postclassic Maya religious and quasi-historical narrative, the Popol Vuh, also links human sacrifice with the ballgame." (Wikipedia)
Ultimately the question seems to boil down to how you interpret the archaeological evidence:
"In addition to the association between the game and the gory Popol Vuh, this 'human sacrifice' myth [?] stems from artwork on some ball courts featuring skulls and bones. 'But the question is, 'Are those references to the underworld and that mythical event? Are they supposed to be taken literally?' I think it's an open question,' Helmke said." (Live Science)