Mérida (Mexico), April 29 (EFE).– A researcher from the Mexican southeast found new information about the DNA of the pre-Hispanic Mayans after analyzing a mass burial.
The research project “The descent, the descendants of Kukulcán, archaeogenetic analysis of a mass burial-ritual in Chichén Itzá” yields results on this indigenous people.
“The study on the genetics of the Maya began in 2017 in Germany,” explained researcher Rodrigo Barquera, from the Department of Genetic Archaeology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Saxony, to EFE.
“There is some genetic continuity between the inhabitants of Chichén Itzá and the current Mayan population,” he added.
Interviewed at the end of the presentation “Interdisciplinary approaches in the study of Mesoamerica”, which he offered at the Faculty of Chemistry of the Autonomous University of Yucatán, he explained that one of the results is resistance to salmonella not only in the Mayan population, but also in in Mexico in general.
“We are more resistant than the Mayans of the past,” he said about his investigation of a ritual mass burial found in a chultún (pre-Hispanic cistern) near the Sacred Cenote of Chichén Itzá, in southern Mexico, where an airport was built in 1967.
In that chultún they found bones of more than 100 individuals, mostly children, and “apparently it was a ritual related to Mayan cosmogony.”
“The interesting thing about this massive burial is that we found skeletal remains of identical twins, such as Hunahpú and Ixbalanqué”, the twin brothers who were challenged by the gods of Xibalbá (Mayan underworld) to a ball game, as recounted in one of the passages from the Popol Vuh, the sacred book of that Mesoamerican civilization.
He said that there is still much to be investigated in Chichén Itzá and in several archaeological zones of Yucatán.
“Every time someone takes a step we are forced to reconsider, to follow the clues, because that helps to spot things that might have been covered,” he commented.
The work of the Mexican who studies bone remains of pre-Hispanic Mayans and DNA of the current inhabitants of Yucatan in Germany continues.
“My thing is an ethnohistorical, genetic issue and Germany is the one that sponsors the research, the results of which are invaluable for learning more about the Mayan people”, famous in the world for its cosmogony, architecture, writing, art, culture and mastery of mathematics .
The results of the research will serve to increase the number of individuals and archaeological sites, to report and confirm what has been discovered, as well as to bring to light new findings “to make progress in the field of Genetic Archaeology.”
Originally from Mexico City, the specialist considered that there is still much to be investigated in Chichén Itzá, “one of the most impressive sites in the world, not only because of the invaluable architectural issue, but also because of the mystique of the place.”
The burials in the area are important from an academic point of view and because of the magical connection reported by their visitors.
