DNA suggests Mayans sacrificed boy siblings

What happened

The remains of 64 Mayans believed to have been ritually sacrificed in the ancient Mexican city Chichén Itzá between 500 and 1000 A.D. were local boys, mostly age 3 to 6 and many of them closely related, researchers reported Wednesday in the journal Nature. There were two sets of twins.

Who said what

The remains were accidentally discovered in a chultún, or cistern, near Chichén Itzá in 1967. DNA analysis began in 2015, and "we kept rerunning the tests because we couldn't believe that all of them were male," said the study lead author Rodrigo Barquera at Germany's Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

The findings "obviously flew in the face of the argument that it was mostly young virgin women being thrown into the cenote," an idea first popularized by early archeologists, Northern Arizona University archaeologist Jaime Awe said to The New York Times. But while "only male children were selected for sacrifice" here, rituals varied.

What next?

Ancient DNA degrades faster in tropical areas, but "we're getting better and better at retrieving even very small amounts of DNA" and analyzing it to understand "this incredibly rich history" in Mesoamerica, said Harvard's Christina Warinner, a study coauthor.

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