Maya Children Also Received Dental Inlays

GUATEMALA CITY, GUATEMALA—Common within Maya culture was the practice of dental modification, which usually involved filing teeth into distinctive shapes, engraving designs, or drilling holes and embedding stones such as jade or pyrite. Scholars had previously thought that these procedures were only performed on adults, but Phys.org reports that a new study suggests for the first time that some children may have also participated in the ritual. The evidence came from three Maya teeth inlaid with jade stones that are in the collections of Francisco Marroquín University's Popol Vuh Museum. Researchers recently reexamined the teeth—a maxillary central left incisor, a mandibular lateral left incisor, and a maxillary right canine—and determined that they came from three different individuals aged between eight and 10. Unfortunately, since the loose teeth were donated to the museum and are unprovenanced, archaeologists don’t know for certain why the dental modification was carried out on only these three preadolescents. They prove, however, that this practice was part of local tradition in at least one region of the Maya world. To read about other Maya body modification practices, go to "From Head to Toe in the Ancient Maya World."