Recent research shows what rituals were like to enact the Maya creation story, bringing to light details of the religious sacrifices of this ancient Mesoamerican people in Belize.
The eerie red glow of the lanterns shows the broken pottery on the damp clay floor of the cave.
Our guide shined a white light on the stalactites and stalagmites, revealing broken stone metates – tools used by the Mayans to grind corn – and large clay pots.
Until the light caught the glow of a human skull half buried in the clay. His front teeth were broken and his bones crystallized into calcite a long time ago.
We are in the main chamber of Actun Tunichil Muknal (the ATM cave), in the wilds of western Belize. This fascinating and mysterious cave, for the Mayans, was a sacred entrance to Xibalba, the Mayan underworld.
For over a thousand years, the five kilometer-long ATM underground cave system has remained untouched and nothing has been taken from there. Locals rediscovered the entrance in 1986 and, shortly after, hydrologist and speleologist – cave expert – Thomas Miller found skeletons inside.
In the decades that followed, the surprisingly intact ATM cave became the subject of much study, offering scientists and intrepid travelers a taste of what Mayan religion and society was like from 700-900 BC.
From research at this and other sites in Belize, archaeologists have discovered that the Mayans ventured into deep caves to somehow connect with their deities. But the details and motives of these ceremonies and rituals remain shrouded in mystery.
‘Recreation of creation’
In 2021, two of the leading archaeologists involved in excavating the ATM cave since the 1990s came up with a new methodology to unravel these mysteries.
His study is called Sacrifice of the Maize God: Re-creating Creation in the Main Chamber of Actun Tunichil Muknal (“The Sacrifice of the God of Corn: The Re-Creation of Creation in the Main Chamber of the ATM Cave”, in free translation) and is a chapter of the research anthology The Myths of the Popol Vuh in Cosmology, Art and Ritual (“The Myths of the Popol Vuh in Cosmology, Art, and Rituals”).
In that study, Holley Moyes, professor at the University of California, USA, and Belizean archaeologist Jaime J. Awe explain how they were able to form a detailed picture of religious ceremonies, studying the spatial arrangement of skeletons and artifacts left behind by the Mayans.
Moyes and Awe were able to discover where the Mayans stood during ceremonies, what mythical stories they enacted, which gods the Mayans represented in rituals, and how unfortunate humans were sacrificed.
There are no personal accounts of what happened at Mayan cave ceremonies, but the new theory recreates their religious ceremonies in a human way that had not yet been understood.
Moyes and Awe argue that the Mayans staged detailed and deadly theatrical recreations of the Popol Vuh – the Mayan creation myth – and that they did so to motivate their gods to force the “rebirth” of the world in the run-up to the droughts and political crises they caused. the end of their civilization, known as the Mayan Collapse, in the 10th century.
“It’s probably one of the most important archaeological caves in the world, in terms of its level of preservation and archaeological value. Mainly because it hasn’t been looted,” says Moyes. “It’s a cave full of adventure; just to get there, you go through the jungle, you go through the water, and you experience the path the Mayans took to get there.”
Visiting the Mayan Cave
The entrance to the ATM cave is eight meters high and hidden by tangled vines and thick foliage, in the middle of the Tapir Mountain Nature Reserve. The trailhead is an hour’s drive from the town of San Ignacio, close to the Guatemalan border.
From there, it’s a 45-minute walk through the jungle, crossing rivers with knee- and waist-deep water, to the entrance to the ATM cave – where the path ends and the only way to enter is by swimming.
“The Mayans should have made this trip with torches burning,” says Hector Bol, a guide for the local Mayan community, who has been promoting ATM cave tours for 18 years. Our small group of five tourists turn on their headlamps and leave daylight behind, following the guide across the river and its carved limestone path.
Caves are part of the Mayan worldview.
“The Mayans started using caves around 1,200 BC, when they first arrived in Belize,” according to Moyes. She explains that, for them, the caves were at the bottom of a three-tiered cosmos, below the earthly human world and the gods in the sky.
When we reach the main chamber, Bol instructs us to remove our shoes. “You always miss the jump in the Mayan underworld,” he joked. Using his flashlight, he points to clay pots balanced on rocks and heavy metates in calcified pools in the ground.
When its light reveals the unmistakable outline of that crystallized skull, we all fall silent. About 1,500 objects and fragments have already been recorded in the cave, in addition to 21 human skeletons.
the ceremony
In the Popol Vuh creation myth, two deities known as the Twin Heroes travel to the underworld to appease the Lords of Xibalba and challenge them to a game. But the twins lose and are quickly sacrificed.
Another group of Twin Heroes then proceeds to avenge their father – who was one of the original Twin Heroes – and ends up victorious. Their avenged father is reborn as the God of Corn, from whom all human life is created, and the Twin Heroes punish the Lords of Xibalba who, from then on, can only receive offerings that have been damaged in any way.
Evidence from the ATM cave indicates that it is this myth that the Mayans enacted, in a desperate attempt to stand up to the Lords of Xibalba, as did the Hero Twins.
“The Mayans must have believed that the cruel Lords of Xibalba were somehow winning during the droughts,” says Moyes, referring to the natural disaster that experts believe contributed to the downfall of civilization.
“The Lords of Xibalba couldn’t have pretty things and almost everything we found in the ATM cave is broken, which makes me think they must be offerings to the deities of the underworld,” she explains.
Moyes also explains that all of the ATM cave artifacts have been dated to just before the Mayan Collapse.
“We have super-close radiocarbon dates. We know this happened in a very short period of time,” she says. “All the ceramics in the cave date from 700 to 900 [d.C.]. [Os maias] face total drought conditions in about 820 [d.C.]. in 850 [d.C.]the region is unpopulated, so they keep coming to the cave at the height of the drought, just before it’s abandoned.”
When our group reaches the center of the main chamber, Bol highlights the small Heart of Three Stones, built by the Mayans with three speleothems (mineral deposits found in caves), in clear reference to the three-stone heart of the Popol Vuh, upon which the God do Milho was reborn after being sacrificed.
“There are several artifacts, in addition to human remains, gathered in the central 5×5 meter area of ​​the main chamber around the three stacked speleothems, which indicates a literal reenactment of the Popol Vuh story,” Moyes and Awe write in their article.
I saw one of these human remains in a pool near the heart.
In their study, Moyes and Awe called this headless skeleton the “Embodiment of God.” His theory is that “the central location [do esqueleto] next to the Heart of Three Stones indicates that the sacrifice was intended to invoke the God of Corn and his journey through the waters of the underworld”.
A few meters away, two other sacrificial victims met their end. Analyzing their position, Moyes and Awe believe they should be representing the first two Twin Heroes.
Standing in the center of the chamber, I could imagine this deadly drama. But Moyes makes it clear that the Mayans did not always perform this type of ritual.
“Among the Mayans,” she says, “we see rarely, if any, human sacrifice until the end of the classical period. [séculos 8° e 9° d.C.]. And I think they started doing that because they were in the midst of a drought and they tried to increase human offerings.”
In fact, Moyes believes the Mayan world has parallels to our own.
“The story that happened to the Mayan people is a real human story,” she says. “It’s a story that recalls what we’re seeing now with climate change. After all, the Mayans were simply praying for rain. Here in California, we do the same. We have signs on the highway that literally say ‘Pray for Rain’.”
After carefully making our way up the haunted Mayan steps, we put our shoes back on and followed Hector Bol back through the underworld into daylight. As he held my hand to help me climb the rocks that lead us back to the forest path, Bol repeated the same sentiment:
“It was religious fervor that brought the Mayans to these caves,” he said. “But when things get out of hand and science fails us, we all start praying.”
This text was originally published here.
