Deformed skulls and ritual beheadings found at Maya pyramid in Mexico

Archaeologists in Mexico have found the burials of 13 people — together with two who had been beheaded as a part of sacrificial rituals and 5 whose skulls had been elongated by means of intentional deformation — close to a Maya pyramid on the Ethical-Reforma archaeological website close to Tabasco.

Mexico’s Nationwide Institute of Anthropology and Historical past (INAH) initially discovered the burials in April however introduced their findings this week after analyzing the human stays. The burials date to between A.D. 600 and 900, a time when the Maya civilization flourished within the area, the INAH mentioned in an Aug. 23 translated assertion. The burials include human skulls, fragments of jaws, and bones of the decrease and higher extremities, the archaeologists mentioned within the assertion. Their evaluation additionally revealed that a few of the bones had been coated in pink pigment.