Sacrifice at Midnight Terror Cave, Belize

Summary

Skeletal data from Midnight Terror Cave (MTC) have recently been used to suggest that individuals with physical deformities would have formed a class of “social outcasts” who were preferentially selected as sacrificial victims. Close scrutiny reveals a number of flaws in the data used. The extraction and sequencing of DNA recovered from a number of the bones in question is used to clarify the situation. Considering the size of the MTC assemblage, well over 100 individuals, the authors are impressed by the lack of obvious deformities. Ethnohistoric data is presented to suggest that the crippled or deformed may have actually been rejected as sacrificial victims.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Human Sacrifice in Ancient Mesoamerica: New Evidences and Theoretical Perspectives

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Spatial Coverage