Teeth Found in Belize Cave Burial Linked to Maya Elites

ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO—Science reports that more than 200 teeth have been recovered from a Maya woman’s burial in southern Belize’s Bats’ub Cave by a team of researchers led by Keith Prufer of the University of New Mexico. When the woman was buried, her head had been removed and replaced with a ceramic bowl containing a jade bead. A similar scene was depicted on a bowl left in the grave. The burial took place between about A.D. 250 and 400, but radiocarbon dating shows that the first human tooth was left more than 100 years later. People continued to leave teeth in the cave for more than two hundred years. Genetic analysis of the teeth conducted by David Reich and Esther Brielle of Harvard University shows that they belonged to at least 30 different people. More than 20 of these individuals had been buried in elite family tombs at the site of Muklebal Tsul, some 16 miles away over rough terrain. The researchers suggest that Maya elites from Muklebal Tsul traveled to the woman’s grave, which had become a shrine, and left teeth from dead relatives, or perhaps their own extracted teeth. The genetic study also traced family lines represented in the teeth found in the cave and in the elite graves at Muklebal Tsul, showing that women married into male family lines in Maya society. For more on the Maya in the region, go to “Off the Grid: Xunantunich, Belize.”