Unpredictable Rainfall May Have Helped Destabilized Ancient Maya Societies

Reduced predictability of seasonal rainfall might have played a significant role in the disintegration of Classic Maya societies about 1,100 years ago. The decline in seasonal predictability potentially destabilized Classic Maya societies in a new study recently published in Communications Earth & Environment.

University of New Mexico archaeologist Keith Prufer is among the authors, along with colleagues at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and Potsdam University. The findings may have significance for populations in the region facing climate change today. 

The research team studied variations in stable isotope signatures from a stalagmite collected in a cave in Belize near an archaeological site in the former heartland of the Maya. The carbon and oxygen isotope ratios are sensitive recorders of local and regional rainfall dynamics. 

This paper is a continuation of 18 years of research by Prufer, UNM colleagues, and an international team of scientists into the past climate in the Belize tropics.  

Prufer has been a principal investigator for the research program, with funding from the National Science Foundation and the Alphawood Foundation. 

“The climate record was generated from a cave called Yok Balum, located near the ancient Maya city of Uxbenká. That ancient city figures prominently in this article and is important because it is the closest to the site of the climate data and because of two decades of research there exploring the timing of the collapse,” Prufer explained. 

This paper is a collaboration with the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany to get advanced time-series modeling to understand the patterning of seasonal variation. The lead at PIK, Tobias Braun, used this study for his dissertation. 

Also included in the research team from UNM are Ph.D. candidate student Erin Ray and Victor Polyak, a senior research scientist in the UNM Department of Earth and Planetary Science. Ray worked to assemble the cultural data, such as the data that records the dynastic history of the Maya from their hieroglyphs, and demographic data. Polyak originally developed the high-precision chronology for the climate and seasonality records. 

“A key ingredient for Maya agriculture was the timely arrival of sufficient rainfall. Farming in subtropical Central America is tough because freshwater is only available during the summer rainy season.

Changes of onset and intensity of the rainy season can have serious repercussions for Central American societies,” Braun noted in a PIK press release about the newly published study. While most scientists agree that repeated intense droughts were one of the key factors that led to the fragmentation of urban centers and population dispersal in lowland Maya societies, evidence at seasonal time scale was so far missing. And this is exactly what the study takes into focus.  

The significance of this record is three-fold, according to Prufer. 

“First, it is a novel climate record for the American tropics with such high resolution – one to seven samples per year over a 1,600-year period − allowing us to look at changes in seasonality from year to year. It is also the first such record to incorporate advanced time series modeling to evaluate seasonal variation in the neotropics and link those changes directly to quantitative cultural records,” Prufer explained. 

Second, the research sheds new light on an enduring question in Maya archaeology: What caused the population decline and disintegration of political institutions at the end of the Classic Period between 250 and 850 CE? 

Prufer and his colleagues found that changes in seasonality would have challenged food production in this region where all agriculture is directly dependent on rainfall by making the timing for planting harvesting much more difficult − or impossible − to predict from year-to-year. 

“The collapse was significant,” he noted. “Over the course of perhaps 100 to 150 years, populations as high as 5 to 10 million people declined by as much as 60 to 70 percent, and a complete form of governance was abandoned.” 

Third, this research has significance for farming today. The past is an indication of what might be expected in a dire future. 

“With modern global climate change, seasonality patterns are again far less predictable than they were only a couple of decades ago,” Prufer pointed out. “This is forcing modern Maya farming communities − and everyone else − to rethink how they produce food and how to achieve food security, considering their dependence on the timing of the rainy season and the seasonal distribution of rainfall, which is no longer predictable.

“This is important because farming requires both traditional knowledges of when to clear fields and plant, as well as a reliable amount of rainfall each season. When this breaks down, it causes food shortages and human suffering. This case study has implications for collective responses to climate change across the global tropics, a region that feeds over 2 billion people.” 

Intact Ball Game Carving Discovered at Chichen Itza

*** Presents two ball players in the center; It has a diameter of 32.5 centimeters, 9.5 centimeters thick, and 40 kilograms in weight.

*** It must have been attached to an arch that served as access to the Casa Colorada architectural complex

 In the Archaeological Zone of Chichén Itzá, archaeologists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) discovered a stone marker of the Ball Game in a circular shape, which presents a bas-relief glyphic band surrounding two attired characters like ball players. 

The relevance of the finding lies in the fact that it is a sculptural element that preserves its complete glyphic text.

With 32.5 centimeters in diameter, 9.5 centimeters thick, and 40 kilograms in weight, the piece was found during archaeological work carried out as part of the Program for the Improvement of Archaeological Zones (Promeza), in charge of the Federal Ministry of Culture.

The piece, named Ball Players Disc, was found by archaeologist Lizbeth Beatriz Mendicuti Pérez, within the Casa Colorada architectural complex (named after the remains of red paint inside) or Chichanchob ─located between the Ossuary and the Observatory─, as part of Structure 3C27, which corresponds to an access arch to the area, informed the archaeologist Francisco Pérez Ruiz, who together with the archaeologist José Osorio León coordinates the execution of the Promise in Chichén Itzá.

“In this Mayan site it is rare to find hieroglyphic writing, let alone a complete text; It hasn’t happened for more than 11 years,” said archaeologist Pérez Ruiz, explaining that the monument found functioned as a marker of some important event related to the Casa Colorada Ball Game, a court much smaller than the Great Game of Chichen Itza ball.

The researcher estimates that this Ball Game marker must correspond to the Terminal Classic or Early Postclassic period, between the end of the 800s and the beginning of 900 AD.

In turn, the archaeologist Mendicuti Pérez explained that the monument was found in an inverted position, 58 centimeters from the surface, which suggests that it was part of the east wall of the aforementioned arch, and its final position was due to its collapse.

He explained that it is a disc composed of rock of sedimentary origin, recognized by the geographer Arlette Herver Santamaría. The glyphic band, present on the front face, measures approximately six centimeters wide, which surrounds an iconographic interior record 20 centimeters in diameter: the iconographic and epigraphic study, headed by the responsible archaeologist, Santiago Alberto Sobrino Fernández, has identified two characters dressed as ball players, standing in front of a ball.

“The character on the left wears a feathered headdress and a sash that features a flower-shaped element, probably a water lily. At the height of his face, a scroll can be distinguished, which can be interpreted as breath or voice. The opponent wears a headdress known as a ‘snake turban’, whose representation is seen on multiple occasions in Chichén Itzá.

The individual wears ballcourt protectors. The epigraphic band consists of 18 cartouches with a short count date of 12 Eb 10 Cumku, which tentatively points to AD 894.

Pérez Ruiz announced that the study of the piece will be carried out within the Promeza; At the moment, its conservation is already being attended to.

Meanwhile, the movable property restorer, Claudia Alejandra Mei Chong Bastidas, desalinated the piece with cellulose fiber compresses and physical-chemical cleaning with distilled water.

In turn, the biologist Luis Alberto Rodríguez Catana has carried out the photogrammetry process, in order to have high-resolution images of the details of the iconography and the glyphic text, to later be studied down to the smallest detail, the researcher concluded. 

83 ancient Mexican artifacts returned from Italy, Germany, France

The National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) has announced the return of 40 historical artifacts from Italy, as well as another 40 from Germany and three from France.

Some of the artifacts are nearly 1,700 years old.

The artifacts arrived safely back in Mexico thanks to Aeromexico, who collected them in Rome, Culture Minister Alejandra Frausto reported during President López Obrador’s daily press conference on Tuesday.

Frausto traveled to Rome to repatriate the articles in person. 

“There was joy, applause, and a lot of pride,” amongst the team on the return journey, she said. Videos on Twitter showed the group jubilantly celebrating the loading of the items into the aircraft in Rome.

“Not only do we announce the recovery of heritage but also the recovery of dignity in this country,” she told the assembled press.

The artifacts were confiscated in 2021 by the Carabinieri group for the Protection of Cultural Heritage — and Italian enforcement agency tasked with identifying cultural items that may have been removed without permission from their countries of origin. 

Some of the pieces in question were in private hands at the time of the seizure.

It is not the first time Italy has returned missing cultural artifacts to Mexico: as recently as July, it returned 30 artifacts found by Italian authorities being offered for sale online and at auction. At the time, Mexico gave Italy custody of 1,271 documents in its possession that were connected to the Italian sculptor Ettore Ferrari in exchange. 

The Italian government has been directly advising Mexico on how to create a similar cultural protection enforcement organization that could further recover more missing items and has sent an attaché to Mexico to assist.

The recovery of historical artifacts has been a key element of foreign policy under the López Obrador government, and foreign embassies have been instructed to advertise repatriation services. 

“Binational cooperation is experiencing a happy moment,” said Giorgio Silli, the Italian Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs.

Las piezas sustraídas del país, que la casa Millon Maison de ventes aux enchères pretende vender, son parte de la identidad y riqueza invaluable del pueblo de 🇲🇽

Insistimos en el llamado a desistir de la venta ilegal de piezas #MiPatrimonioNoSeVende, se ama y se defiende. pic.twitter.com/kkQjk1NxZI

— Alejandra Frausto (@alefrausto) March 29, 2023

President López Obrador has prioritized the recovery of pre-Hispanic artifacts, and through the Culture Ministry, launched an education campaign aiming at getting owners to repatriate such items. In this tweet, pre-Hispanic items being offered for sale outside Mexico are highlighted.

In addition to the artifacts recovered from Italy, INAH says that a further 40 pieces have been returned by Germany, as well as 3 from France, several of which date from 400 B.C. 

The French pieces were part of a private inheritance that had been delivered to an auction house. According to the newspaper El Pais, the owner delisted and returned the objects to the Mexican embassy in Paris after learning of the government repatriation scheme, according to El País.

The Mexican government is now targeting the return of 83 Olmec artifacts from France that are set to be sold at a private auction on April 3. Frausto has slammed the auction of these pre-Hispanic pieces and at the press event, she challenged people who would buy such artifacts to appreciate works being made by modern artisans throughout Mexico.

“They are put up for sale as if they were a luxury item to decorate a house as if they were merchandise. This is not only illegal but it is also immoral…

“We call for potential buyers to set their eyes on the art in towns today. There are extraordinary pieces that may be adorning the most luxurious houses in the world. Contemporary art in Mexico is also a power. Visit and see this art that is being created right now,” she said. 

INAH reports that a total of 11,505 archaeological pieces have now been repatriated under President López Obrador’s government.

Burial Chamber Uncovered at Maya Site of Palenque

The discovery of a burial chamber in the archaeological zone of Palenque with a primary burial, composed of a human skeleton, and a secondary burial, an offering made up of three plates and a niche with various green stone figures, was reported by archaeologists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), informed its director Diego Prieto during the morning conference of President López Obrador, from Palenque, Chiapas.

Prieto Hernandez emphasized that the discovery was registered during the salvage of Structure CP3, during the construction works of the Mayan Train.

The head of INAH explained that the skeleton of the individual of the primary burial presents a face-up position and is oriented towards the north, something usual in the ancient funerary customs of Palenque.

The skeletal remains of the second deposit would correspond to a woman, who was probably buried in a different place.

Prieto Hernandez said that there is also another skull, of which the analyses continue for its identification.

The archaeological salvage tasks, said Diego Prieto, are practically concluded, nevertheless, the archaeologists and other professionals continue with the analysis and interpretation of the archaeological information.

Cemetery Found in Mexico City Reflects Changing Burial Customs

INAH experts recovered the skeletal remains of 21 individuals during the construction of the so-called “Pavellón Escénico“, in Chapultepec Park, Mexico City.

A cemetery from the early viceregal period (1521-1620 AD) was found in the area where the Chapultepec Forest Garden and “Pabellón Escénico” (Scenic Pavilion) are being built, reports the Ministry of Culture.

Experts from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), through the Directorate of Archaeological Rescue (DSA), made the discovery in the area known as ecological parking.

In the text, the coordinator of the DSA, María de Lourdes López Camacho, explains that during the monitoring of the works as part of the Chapultepec Project, the INAH dug a two-by-two-meter test pit, and “human skeletal remains were detected from 1.37 meters deep.

With the field assistance of archaeologists Blanca Copto Gutiérrez and Alixbeth Daniela Aburto Pérez, “it was decided to double the excavation.

In the last three weeks, the team recovered the bones – in various states of conservation – of 21 individuals, mostly female and male adults, including a couple of infants”, adds the archaeologist.

It details that the burials were carried out directly in the ground and at three different moments during the first century after the fall of Mexico-Tenochtitlan. 

“Despite the fact that most of the burials presented the same west-east orientation, which alludes to the belief in the resurrection in the Christian faith, their arrangement suggests two types of population: one of indigenous origin, probably Mexica, and another European”.

The archaeologist explains that for the most part, “individuals were placed outstretched with their arms crossed over their chests or in the pelvic region, as indicated by the Catholic funeral rite; However, two were buried in a flexed and lateral way, in the Mesoamerican style, not to mention that another couple of individuals were buried carrying a seal and a green obsidian blade, both pre-Hispanic”.

According to their studies, it is a collective burial that corresponds to an early viceroyalty cemetery, “because it shows the transition from pre-Hispanic funeral customs to those implemented with the arrival of the Spaniards and their religious system.”

The report adds that “according to the coordinator of the DSA Bioarchaeology Section, Jorge Arturo Talavera González, who made a first osteological report -which will be complemented with other analyses, including DNA-, the epigenetic traits of certain individuals indicate the presence of two different populations in that context, the Amerindian individuals being identifiable by their spade-shaped teeth .”

Regarding health conditions, the document concludes, “preliminary observations indicate that the people buried suffered, among other conditions, hypoplasia, attrition and dental calculus (wear of enamel and dental structure, as well as tartar), inflammation of the periosteum ( fibrous sheath that covers the bones) and other infectious processes, as well as diseases related to the nutritional deficit”.

Archaeologists in northern Mexico shed new light on ancient Huastec burial and construction practices

Recent excavations at a site in the state of Tamaulipas included analysis of large earthen mounds that were used for burials and everyday activities.

Archaeologists in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas, Mexico, have identified remnants of a human settlement active more than a millennium ago that shed light on the pre-Columbian Huastec civilisation.

The foundations of four large earthen mounds were found at the archaeological site known as El Naranjo, and served not only as burial grounds but also places for daily activities, according to an announcement last week by the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH). Researchers say it is one of the most important findings in the region in recent decades due to the volume of recovered material.

“Without a doubt, they were dynamic spaces,” archaeologist Esteban Ávalos says. “In addition to what is related to human burials, we propose that there were daily activities. This is based on the discovery of hearths, not very stylised ceramics, grinding stones and projectile points.”

The ancient Huastec civilisation occupied land stretching across what is now six Mexican states and constructed substructure mounds for activity that have been identified at archaeological sites including Vista Hermosa and Platanito.

At El Naranjo, archaeologists have so far excavated two of the four mounds, which held a dozen human interments. The smaller, measuring 20 metres in diameter and named Mound 4, revealed multiple burials of adults adorned with earrings made of green quartz and shells, some carved in the shape of flowers.

At the larger mound, measuring 30 metres in diameter and named Mound 1, researchers identified several other burials in addition to the discrete grave of one adult within a limestone structure.

“We can see that they practised both single-individual and multiple-type burials, and that they were buried in different positions—some more frequent than others, such as the dorsal flexed position or the flexed decubitus position,” Ávalos says. “Also that the objects that accompanied them are rare materials in the region, and that they were worked with great care and detail.”

Archaeologists are especially interested in the architecture of the mounds. They were made of alternating layers of earth, limestone and basalt and suggest a specialisation of labour and use of materials. “[The discovery] allows us to characterise and know in-depth the construction systems of this type of earthen construction with stone masonry, which have been little-studied from the architectural point of view,” Ávalos says.

“This contributes to understanding social organisation, resource management and habitability solutions in response to the environment.” He adds that the foundations are similar to those of earthen houses known as Bajareque houses that people in Ocampo and the surrounding areas are currently building, demonstrating the “permanence of traditional knowledge”.

Excavation of the site has been underway as part of the ongoing construction of a superhighway linking the municipalities of Mante and Tula in Tamaulipas.

Archaeologists and physical anthropology experts are studying the recovered remains to further understand the complexity of settlement life at El Naranjo. “We are expected to obtain accurate data about cultural affiliation, age, sex, nutrition and disease,” Ávalos says.

Lasers reveal sites used as the Americas’ oldest known star calendars

Olmec and Maya people living along Mexico’s Gulf Coast as early as 3,100 years ago built star-aligned ceremonial centers to track important days of a 260-day calendar, a new study finds.

The oldest written evidence of this calendar, found on painted plaster mural fragments from a Maya site in Guatemala, dates to between 300 and 200 B.C., nearly a millennium later (SN: 4/13/22). But researchers have long suspected that a 260-day calendar developed hundreds of years earlier among Gulf Coast Olmec groups.

Now, an airborne laser-mapping technique called light detection and ranging, or lidar, has revealed astronomical orientations of 415 ceremonial complexes dating to between about 1100 B.C. and A.D. 250, say archaeologist Ivan Šprajc and colleagues.

Most ritual centers were aligned on an east-to-west axis, corresponding to sunrises or other celestial events on specific days of a 260-day year, the scientists report January 6 in Science Advances.

The finding points to the earliest evidence in the Americas of a formal calendar system that combined astronomical knowledge with earthly constructions. This system used celestial events to identify important dates during a 260-day portion of a full year.

“The 260-day cycle materialized in Mesoamerica’s earliest known monumental complexes [and was used] for scheduling seasonal, subsistence-related ceremonies,” says Šprajc, of the Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Ljubljana. “We cannot be certain exactly when and where it was invented.”

Some of the oldest ceremonial centers identified by lidar clearly belong to the Olmec culture, but others are hard to classify, says archaeologist Stephen Houston of Brown University in Providence, R.I., who did not participate in the new study.

Olmec society dates from around 3,500 to 2,400 years ago. Links between the Olmec and later Maya culture, known best for Classic-era cities and kingdoms that flourished between roughly 1,750 and 1,100 years ago, are unclear. But Classic Maya inscriptions and documents also reference the 260-day calendar.

Mobile groups in Mesoamerica, an ancient cultural region that extended from central Mexico to Central America, may have scheduled large, seasonal gatherings using the 260-day calendar long before it gained favor among Classic Maya kings, Šprajc and colleagues suggest.

The same calendar may also have marked days of important agricultural activities or rituals as maize cultivation spread in Mesoamerica starting around 3,000 years ago, they add. Some Maya communities still use a 260-day calendar to organize maize cultivation and schedule agricultural rituals.

Previous lidar data indicated that ceremonial centers based on a common blueprint appeared at many Olmec and Maya sites along Mexico’s Gulf Coast by about 3,400 years ago (SN: 10/25/21). Only now has the calendrical significance of ceremonial centers’ alignments become apparent.

The most common architectural alignment detected in the new study corresponded to the position of sunrises on February 11 and October 29 when complexes were in use, separated by 260 days. These complexes faced east toward a point on the horizon where the sun rose on those two days.

Another frequent orientation matched sunrises separated by 130 days, or half of the 260-day count.

A minority of ceremonial complexes were aligned with dates of solstices (longest and shortest days of the year), quarter days (the midpoint of each half of the year) or lunar cycles in the 260-day year. Other centers tracked the position of Venus, a star associated with the rainy season and maize farming.

Sunrises or sunsets recorded at ceremonial centers were typically separated by multiples of 13 or 20 days. Aside from representing basic mathematical units of a 260-day year, the numbers 13 and 20 have long been associated with various gods and sacred concepts among Maya people and other Mesoamerican groups, Šprajc says.

Future excavations at lidar-detected ceremonial complexes can investigate whether ancient groups formally dedicated certain structures to specific days in the 260-day year, Houston says.

Ice Age Hunting Camp Identified in Mexico

This story begins anywhere from 4,000 to 17,000 years ago, when woolly mammoths roamed the Earth. It picks up in Mexico in the mid-1950s, when the remains of a couple of those mammoths — and stone tools with traces of human use — were found in the central part of the country.

Now flash forward to the present day, when a recent study of those artifacts, using modern science and technology, is giving new glimpses into what researchers now believe was an Ice Age camp of humans in what is today México state.

“The study indicates that it was a seasonal hunter-gatherer camp,” archaeologist Patricia Pérez Martínez, author and coordinator of the project, said Tuesday during a presentation of the study’s findings.

The animal remains and artifacts, found nearly seven decades ago during a public works project in the small community of Santa Isabel Ixtapan, represent “the first material evidence of the existence of this type of site on the shores of Lake Texcoco, around 9,000 years ago,” Pérez said.

The findings are significant because small villages of humans in that time period usually existed in caves and rock shelters, often in mountainous regions, usually in the northern region of Mexico.

“Finding a seasonal hunter-gatherer camp in the open air is very [rare],” Pérez said. 

Indeed, the Santa Isabel Ixtapan site is the only one in the Valley of México with direct evidence of stone tools and mammoth bones, she added.

The first set of bones was found here in 1954, and then two years later, another mammoth’s remains, along with stone tools, were found about 250 meters away. Then, between 2019 and 2021, more bones and “possible mammoth traps” were discovered.

These days, in tribute to the area’s prehistoric past, there is a sculpture of the long-tusked, giant beast in the middle of a roundabout in Santa Isabel Ixtapan.

The research project, “Interaction of First Settlers and Megafauna in the Basin of México,” is a joint effort between INAH and the National School of Anthropology and History (ENAH), where Pérez heads the Hunter-Gatherer Technology Laboratory.

The effort to reevaluate the site was carried out with advanced technology tools and testing methods that Pérez said can lead to fresh findings about the landscape, megafauna (large animals) and human interactions with the surroundings.

Her hypothesis is that the ancient human inhabitants used and subsisted on the lake’s resources, which she said is supported by the discovery of small fragments of fish bone (seemingly cooked in some sort of charcoal) and obsidian microflakes (indicating residue from a stone that was possibly carved into a tool).

“Since the flakes are very small fragments, we hope that in the next [field research] session, scheduled for this year, we will be able to do extensive excavation that will give us a better context,” said Pérez.

“Likewise, in 2023, the soil samples will be studied in our laboratories, and the traces of use of the three tools found with the second mammoth — which are exhibited in the National Museum of Anthropology — will be analyzed,” she said. 

“Initially, they were thought to be hunting projectile points, but recently, more detailed observations place them as knives, possibly used for butchering.”