It’s one of the rarest finds in archaeology: a completely undisturbed tomb. The tomb of an ancient Mayan king, some 1600 years old, has been discovered beneath the appropriately-named El Diablo pyramid near the Guatamalan city of El Zotz. Why is the El Diablo pyramid appropriately named? Because, among the other features in the tomb were bowls of human fingers, human teeth, and the remains of six sacrificed children.
“When we sunk a pit into the small chamber of the temple, we hit almost immediately a series of ‘caches’ — blood-red bowls containing human fingers and teeth, all wrapped in some kind of organic substance that left an impression in the plaster. We then dug through layer after layer of flat stones, alternating with mud, which probably is what kept the tomb so intact and airtight,” said Stephen Houston, the Brown University archaeologist who uncovered the tomb.
Upon breaking into the tomb itself, Houston described “an explosion of color in all directions — reds, greens, yellows. When we opened the tomb, I poked my head in and there was still, to my astonishment, a smell of putrification and a chill that went to my bones. The chamber had been so well sealed, for over 1600 years, that no air and little water had entered.”
Finding any ancient tomb is awesome news, but uncovering one so well preserved in the middle of a Central American jungle is just incredible. The religious beliefs of the Mayan people are so poorly understood; this could be a crucial discovery that helps us understand the ancient indiginous people of North America (or at least inspire a better plot for Indiana Jones 5: The Search For Curly’s Gold).
Tags: bowls of teeth and fingers found in mayan tomb, Mayan tomb, bowls of fingers and teeth, unusual sacrifices, unusual burial traditions, El Diablo pyramid, El Zotz, Guatemala, archaeology, 1600-year-old tomb discovered, Stephen Houston, Brown University