Chichen Itza’s history is recorded in ADN
New research methods aim to elucidate the interpretation of sacrificial rituals and shed light on resistance to colonial epidemics.
For over 100 years, the ancient Maya city of Chichen Itza has been a source of archaeological fascination.
Biomolecular archaeologist Christina Warinner points out that the rest of humanity is deeply involved in the inspiration principle of chapter 20 on the “hidden relationship” of virgin female sacrificial rituals, and is hopeful of the principle of chapter 21 for researchers to salvage sufficient evidence from the analysis of remains uncovered in past studies.
Ahola Warinner, John L. Loeb Assistant Professor of Social Sciences, and an international interdisciplinary scientific team discuss this history. Published this week in Nature, this pioneering research reveals that children, especially jewels, were central to the sacrifices of the legendary city. The research also touches on the psychological state of families, the diet of children, colonial-era epidemics, and the actual deaths of Chichen Itza’s descendants.
“This is a primer on using ancient ADN, isotopes and bioarchaeology to get the best picture of what’s going on,” said lead author Rodrigo Barquera, an immunogeneticist and postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, where Walleen is also a research associate.
Chichen Itza was raised around 800 AD and has remained a strong, densely populated settlement from the earliest times to the present day, and was a popular pilgrimage destination during the Spanish colonial period and beyond.
The capital’s regional architecture reflects the different styles and evolution of the media, as the inhabitants of Chichen Itza collaborated with neighboring political, cultural and religious figures. For example, El Castillo, with its 75-metre-high temple, was built according to the Toltec style and was built in a region ten kilometres away, near Mexico City. These connections reveal Barquera’s curiosity about the way people penetrate the underground caverns of Cenote Sagrado, the underwater objects where they perform rituals of gold, jade and human life.
“I want to know more about all the people who survived and were killed,” Barquera asserts. “The Maya period? Other parts of Mesoamerica? What about including more information?”
To be sure, the research team undertook a deep genetic analysis of the children who were ritually bathed in the artificial water tanks, not in the basement of the Sagrado Cenote. Warinner says these caves and grottoes have long been represented in art and the mystical Maya world as portals to the underworld. “There were patrons who recreated underground structures, water, and play areas for the children,” Warinner says.
We now believe that the warm climate and winds of the Yucatan Peninsula are one of the factors that complicate the investigation of ADN ancient. Recent technological advances have improved the relative stability of flood temperatures, helping to maintain infant survival rates and allowing the analysis of Barquera, which was determined to be the center of oil demand for the country’s petroleum sector.
“This is a great site to find ADNs,” he explained, calling for investigators to centralize their locations to avoid duplication. “This case is one of the most promising with 64 people out of 100 testifying that they were injured; of those 100, 64 testified that they were injured.”
Sacrificed to the dragon between 3-4 AD, these children were sent to the mayor between 800 and 1050 AD, marking the political end of Chichen Itza. Demographic data for all Mayan regions. All determined by identifiable pairs of gems on screen.
Other analyses are revealing a small percentage of the current variables due to several other factors. But ADN was not the only entity present in the community. By using fixed isotope studies, or body and dietary intake in paleo diet studies, we can see that your diet is very similar to your home life. “This is not just true for children, but for parent populations as well,” Barcela said.
“Couples choose as a couple,” says Warriner, but he also notes the importance of gemstones in sacred Mayan texts like the Popol Vuh: “I like the ritual activity, which is very specific.”
The researchers are also studying the actual people living in Tixcacaltuyub, having spent an hour or so at the archaeological site. The Mayans who live in the area are working in different initiatives with researchers from the Autonomous University of Yucatan. The scientists are keen to compare ADN with the poverty of older children.
The collaboration with academic venues has proved extremely important for Barquera: health experts and specialists in Yucatan anthropology help with trips to villages, explain what the ADN’s old research means, and with copies of the colored book “Adventures in Archaeology,” which Warriner created in collaboration with students from the Max Planck Institute and is now translated into Maya and Spanish.
“This book will engage kids, but it’s good for everyone,” says Barcela. “Make sure you have money that’s accessible.”
In Barquera’s book, “The History of the Settlers of Chichen Itza,” the residents of Tixcacaltuyub reveal what genes they carry. The community is fascinated by these harassments, intimidations, and the realities of widespread racism against indigenous Mexicans. Perhaps we can revisit our ancestors with the men who built the great city of Chichen Itza.
“Our visiting researchers were involved or active in archaeological communities to collect drawings and data without making any changes,” said Barquera, who was born in Mexico and works in various immunology clinics and laboratories as well as schools, and founded Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History before completing his doctorate in Europe. “What we’re wondering is, what compensation remains for the communities?”
The final product of the research revisited the genetics of a colonial-era plague that caused devastating damage among the Maya and other indigenous peoples. The story began in 2006 with Dr. Waleen’s paper on Teposcola-Yucunda, a miner in the Oaxaca region of Mexico who was discovered in 1545 with a mysterious mystery that the Aztecs named coconut or plague. It is estimated that there are between 50,000 and 15 million infected people, of which 80% are due to infection by native Mexicans.
“Mexico’s population is changing fundamentally,” Warinner asserted, “but those days are over.”
Warinner reopened ADN’s old study in 2018, which identified Salmonella types from individuals that had infested the cement plant. “It’s a lovely day today,” Warinner declared, “but we still know that it spread in colonial Europe and was likely introduced during the Spanish Conquest.”
Meanwhile, Barquera has continued to operate in Mexico City since October 2000, when he publicly announced the recurrent disease, a genetic variant derived from a mutation, and conducted testing of donors and patients before organ transplants. Tell that to your boss.
“The words: That’s crazy!” How can they set frequencies this high across Mexico? It’s a shame I’ve never visited the site. I wondered if it would stand up to some resistance. But Barquera said, “We don’t have the analytical tools to prove anything, so we can’t draw any conclusions.”
In a laboratory at Chichen Itza, the team identified a change in the Barquera incident several years ago, and to this day, this genetic mutation is “one of the most prominent in Mexico and central America,” but as a result, it has become widespread among the Maya of Chichen Itza.
Post-mortem analyses have demonstrated protective mutations against the Salmonella strain that Warinner and his colleagues linked to the Mexican outbreak in Q16. “What’s really going on here?” Warinner says.
You see, Kokoritsuri was completed in 1576 and attracted more than 2 million people. “The mortality rate is only going to increase,” Warriner said, adding that “scientists have long speculated about the changing immunological profiles of indigenous peoples of the Americas.”
Yes, according to Warinner, studies of the Chichen Itza colonists have uncovered immunological answers to the postmortem growth of bacteria during Mexico’s colonial period.
After all these years, it was written into the country’s ADN.
