Jawbone Jewelry: Archaeologists Discover 1,300-Year-Old Painted Bone Pendants in Mexico

Ancient Origins

Archaeologists have unearthed painted human jawbones at a ceremonial site in Mexico associated with the ancient Zapotec civilization. It is believed the bones were worn as necklace pendants as part of their ancestor veneration rites. Dozens of whistles and statuettes, some honoring the Mesoamerican god Xipe Totec, were also found. 

Ceremonial Site of the Zapotec

Live Science reports that the discovery was made at the ancient ceremonial site of Dainzú-Macuilxóchitl in the Oaxaca Valley in southern Mexico.  Dainzú is a Zapotec archaeological site that was first occupied 700-600 BC, but the main phase of occupation dates from about 200 BC to 350 AD, and the latest discovery belongs to this period.

The archaeological site of Dainzú-Macuilxóchitl in the Oaxaca Valley in southern Mexico, once inhabited by the Zapotec civilization (public domain)

The Zapotec civilization, or “Cloud People” as they are sometimes known, were an indigenous, pre-Columbian civilization that rose to power around 2,500 years ago. They left behind impressive ruins and provided a lasting influence on many of the cultures that superseded them.

Panoramic of the Zapotec ruins of Monte Alban, Oaxaca, Mexico. (public domain)

Painted Bones

The decorated jawbones were discovered in a ceremonial area of the Dainzú site, and while they were found alongside artifacts honouring the god Xipe Totec, who is associated with human sacrifice, the researchers do not believe the mandibles came from sacrifice victims.
According to Jeremias Pink, a graduate student at Oregon State University, who was involved with the finding, there is evidence that the Zapotec people exhumed, painted, and modified the bones of those buried in the residential complex.
People were "probably going into the tombs of their ancestors and bringing the remains of their ancestors out," Pink said [via Live Science]. People likely used the bones of their ancestors "in a ritual way to demonstrate the linkages between themselves and their ancestors as a way of sort of legitimizing their positions within that community," he said.

Xipe Totec as depicted in the Codex Borgia, shown holding a bloody weapon and wearing flayed human skin as a suit. (public domain)

Amazing Artifacts

In the same area that the jawbones were found, researchers also unearthed around 3,000 ceramic fragments of figurines, 30 figurine molds, and 1,600 whistle fragments. Some of the figurines depict Xipe Totec, while many others remain identified.
Numerous Mesoamerican civilizations are known for their ornate and complex whistles, which were designed to emulate the sounds of animals, nature, and even human screams. The whistles themselves were often shaped like animals, humans or mythical beings.

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Left: A whistle in the shape of a frog from Yaxchilan (Tlapitzalli.com). Right: Maya monkey whistle. (William Scott / BigStockPhoto).

The researchers speculate that the whistles and figurines had been intentionally smashed as part of their ceremonial rites, as evidence of this ritual has been found at numerous other Mesoamerican sites.
Top image: Carved and painted human mandible (jawbone) was found in a ceremonial area within a residential complex at the site of Dainzú-Macuilxóchitl in Mexico. Credit: Erica Ausel (Ph.D. Indiana University)
By April Holloway

Drinking in the Past: Centuries Old Evidence for Consumption of Corn Beer Found in Mexico

Ancient Origin

By analyzing calculus on the teeth of the remains of people who died in an influential Mexican city hundreds of years ago, researchers are getting clues about their diet. One finding was that the people drank corn beer.
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The ruins of the city of Casas Grandes are in Chihuahua State about 80 miles (130 kilometers) from the New Mexico border. The city, which numbered about 3,000 people at its peak in the 1300s, is also known as Paquimé. The Casas Grandes culture stretched across several river valleys in northern Mexico.
The town was probably a hub of culture and trade between central Mexico and the Southwestern United States.

Map showing the location of the Casas Grandes culture. (Beloit College map)

The stuff trapped in the teeth as tartar, which fossilizes to become calculus, is probably from the last few weeks of their lives, says an article in Western Digs.
“The results of this study offer some of the first hard evidence for the production of corn beer, consumption of corn smut, and food processing methods,” lead researcher Daniel King, a graduate student in anthropology at Brigham Young University, told Western Digs. “It is a step forward in understanding Casas Grandes human-plant interactions, especially diet.”

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Anne Katzenberg of the University of Calgary is analyzing the remains of people excavated at Casas Grandes in the 1950s and ‘60s. Some of the bodies were buried, others dismembered and put in urns, and others were just exposed to the elements.
King and his team are doing the teeth analysis of 110 people buried in and around Casas Grandes between 700 and 1450 AD.

Part of the Paquimé (Casas Grandes) site, Mexico. (HJPD/CC BY SA 3.0)

Of the samples, teeth from 63 bodies provided microscopic traces, the most common of which were starch granules, corn mostly. They also found tiny mineral fragments from squash and grasses.
About 10 percent of the bodies had corn smut traces. Corn smut is a nutritious fungus that grows on corn. Even today it is a delicacy called by its Aztec name huitlacoche.

Granules of corn found in the tooth calculus of people buried at Casas Grandes show signs of swelling and fragmentation that are typical of fermentation, researchers say. (King et al.)

“Given the nature of calculus, any microremains recovered are going to be from the last days or weeks of the person’s life, maybe a month or two, but not longer,” King said. “So reconstructing diet, in the long term sense, doesn’t work with calculus. However, identifying specific foodstuffs — like corn beer, fish, chile, et cetera — is useful, as many of them can’t be seen in the results of other studies.”

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King told Western Digs that the most interesting aspect of the tooth analysis was the presence of corn alcohol. Three people’s teeth showed maize remains that apparently had been fermented. The swollen, fragmented grain particles apparently resulted from the brewing of chicha, which has been made in Central and South American for about 5,000 years.

Chicha de jora. Huancayo, Perú. (Public Domain)

But this may be the first evidence of corn beer that far north, King said. The corn fragments date to the period of 1200 to 1450. And the researchers don’t know when it may have been introduced from more southerly communities in Peru or Mesoamerica.
A Beloit College website says the Casas Grandes culture, which extends from Sonora to Chihuahua up into present-day New Mexico, was more closely related to Mesoamerican cultures to the south than to the Hohokam or Mogollon peoples to the north.

A Casas Grandes culture figurine. (Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts)

Like people to the south, the Casas Grandes people had platform mounds and ball courts, apparently used in rituals. They lived along river drainages and had irrigation systems. Paquimé was a major center of trade, through which macaws, pottery, shells, and copper were shipped from Central America into Arizona and New Mexico.
The people had shallow pit houses arranged around a large community house. The homes were made of jacal, a wattle-and-daub type of construction. As time went on, a plaza design became more prevalent, and, Beloit College says that people probably lived in the houses with common ancestors. Later they developed poured adobe walls.

A partially reconstructed residential building in Paquimé, Chihuahua, Mexico. (HJPD/ CC BY 3.0)

Featured Image: Examples of variegated maize ears (Sam Fentress/ CC BY SA 2.0) and a figurine from the Casas Grandes culture c. 1200 - 1450. (Public Domain)
By Mark Miller

Stunning 16th Century Church Emerges from Mexican Reservoir after Drought

Ancient Origins

The remnants of a 400-year-old Spanish colonial church have emerged from the depths of the Nezahualcoyotl reservoir in Chiapas, Mexico, after a drought caused the water level to drop by 82 feet (25 meters).  The church, known as the Temple of Santiago or Temple of Quechula was originally lost to the waters of the reservoir in 1966 when the dam was finished on the Grijalva River. Tourists are now flocking to the site to catch a glimpse of the Temple before it disappears beneath the water once again.

The church measures 183 feet long (61 meters) and 42 feet (14 meters) wide, while the bell tower reaches 48 feet (16 meters) above the ground.
The Temple of Quechula was first built in the mid-1600s by a group of monks headed by Friar Bartolome de la Casas. The Dominican friars also constructed a town around the church, which they called Quechala and Friar Bartolome made himself Bishop.
Mexico News Daily reports that the region was inhabited by the Zoque people, predecessors of the Olmec.  In 1494, they were invaded and defeated by the Aztecs before the Spanish moved into Zoque lands in 1523. Under Spanish rule, their population was decimated by disease and the toils of hard labor, and their land was parcelled out among the settlers.
Friar Bartolome initially supported the colonization and subjugation of the Zoque, but later took an opposing view and went on to write about the horrors of colonization.
Bartolome had high hopes for the town of Quechala, expecting it to one day become a great city. However, a plague hit the town in 1773, forcing the inhabitants to flee. The town and the church were left abandoned.
When the dam on the Grijalva River was completed, not just the colonial church, but the whole town and surrounding villages and archaeological sites were submerged.
The Associated Press (AP) reports that tourists are now flocking to the site to catch a glimpse of the temple before it disappears once again. Local fisherman Leonel Mendoza has been taking people to the site by boat in droves.
According to AP, it is only the second time that a drop in water level has revealed the church. The first time was in 2002 when the water decreased so much that people were able to walk inside the church.
People are taking the opportunity while they can to explore the church as it is not known when it may emerge from the water once again.

Featured image: A photograph of the colonial church that has emerged out of the Nezahualcoyotl reservoir in Chiapas, Mexico. Credit: Associated Press.
By April Holloway

The real-life Indiana Jones on the hunt for lost ancient Mayan cities in Mexico

Jo Tuckman

Ivan Šprajc at one of the Mayan sites discovered in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula.

Slovenian archaeologist Ivan Šprajc is behind discovery of three significant ruins in the remote jungles of the Yucatán peninsula

There are days when Ivan Šprajc gets fed up with his job. Hacking pathways through the Mexican jungle with machetes is exhausting. Keeping a constant eye out for deadly snakes can be nerve-racking. The risk of finding nothing to show for all the effort is real.
But then there is reward that comes when the contours of a plaza, palace, ball court or pyramid emerge from beneath the tree cover, or inscriptions that could help explain them are revealed by brushing off undergrowth.
“I’ve said to myself quite a few times that this is the last season, because it is so difficult. But it is such a reward when you find a new site,” says the Slovenian archaeologist, who has made a career of finding lost Mayan cities. “It’s tough work, but it’s dead romantic.”
This year Šprajc’s team found two – Tamchén and Lagunita – which followed last year’s discovery of a large site called Chactún.
The finding of the three sites is the first step in surveying an almost unexplored area spanning about 1,200 sq miles in the northern part of the Calakmul biosphere reserve, between the Río Bec and Chenes regions, in the southern Mexican state of Campeche.
“You can call it archaeological reconnaissance,” he says. “It is the very first step into an area that is completely unknown.”
Tamchén, Lagunita and Chactún have all been dated to the 8th century, within the post-classic period that runs for the three centuries immediately before the collapse of high Mayan civilisation around AD900.

The ruins at the three Mayan sites have been dated to the 8th century.

Šprajc believes the size and obvious importance of some of their buildings denote a revival of the power of smaller cities that were once subjugated to the authority of Calakmul, a great city that quickly faded after losing a war in 695 with Tikal, the other lowland Maya superpower of the classic period.
“When Calakmul falls, apparently these other cities thrive,” he says.
Beyond regional power relations, Šprajc believes the new cities could also help shed new light on the wider collapse that was to come, once they have been excavated.
A fairly solid consensus exists that prolonged drought, population pressure and an intensification of conflict were all contributing factors, but the sequence of these remains a mystery.
Already, he says, obviously modified monuments and unusual finds in the newly discovered cities suggest they might one day be the centre of new ideas about what happened to the Maya in those key centuries.
He named one of this year’s sites Tamchén, which means “deep well” in Yucatec Maya, because it is filled with deep bottle-shaped underground chambers, known as chultúns, used for storage and rain water collection. While elsewhere in the Maya world chultúns rarely go beyond six metres, in Tamchén they are as deep as 13.
Lagunita, the second site, has an impressive monster mouth facade on one of the buildings, representing an earth god related with fertility. The site had already been located in the 1970s by American archaeologist Eric Von Euw, but all that was left from that expedition were his drawings, which Šprajc immediately recognised when he rediscovered the city this year.
What stands out here, he says, is that such doorways were previously associated with the late-terminal classic period in Río Bec.
In Chactún, Šprajc’s team uncovered glyphs in stucco, rather than stone, that have never been found anywhere in the Mayan world before.
“If we are finding things that seem unique to us now, it means there are still a lot of things we don’t know about the Maya,” he says.

One of the archaeological finds.

Šprajc began looking for lost Mayan cities in 1996, a speciality he developed after staying longer in Mexico than he had planned, because of the outbreak of war in Yugoslavia in 1991. Now back in Ljubljana, attached to the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Šprajc returns whenever he can secure funding.
Over the years Šprajc has got used to dealing with the dangers of being in the jungle during the hectic four-month window for exploration offered by the dry season between March and June. Twice, he says, he has stumbled across jaguars. Once a puma was within a few metres. Poisonous snakes are more ubiquitous and more dangerous, he says, as well as the insects that transmit Chagas disease or leishmaniosis.
Šprajc’s first expeditions focused on an area close to the Belize border where the existence of small settlements meant local people could guide him to ruins they knew were on their land.
When he moved his explorations west into the Calakmul reserve things got more complicated. Although a few informants could still be found among the area’s ageing loggers , Šprajc has had to rely mainly on remote sensing to decide where to explore.
Initial efforts to use satellite images proved fruitless, with even known sites with clear coordinates indistinguishable beneath the forest.
Stereoscopic examination of aerial photographs has been more helpful, revealing huge structures and regular shapes, as well as old overgrown paths the team can reopen.
Even so it takes practice to train the eye to distinguish between what might be a lost city and what might be a big disappointment.
“In the first season that we used the photographs, we went twice or three times, quite a distance to something that looked like a really big pyramid,” he recalled. “It turned out to be just a natural hill.”
The Guardian

Jesus Statue Found to Have Real Human Teeth

      by Tia Ghose

A Jesus statue that has lived an unassuming life in a small town in Mexico for the last 300 years has been hiding a strange secret: real human teeth.
Exactly how the statue of Jesus awaiting punishment prior to his crucifixion got its set of choppers is a mystery.
But the statue may be an example of a tradition in which human body parts were donated to churches for religious purposes, said Fanny Unikel Santoncini, a restorer at the Escuela Nacional de Restauración, Conservación y Museografía at the Instituto Nacional de Antropología E Historia (INAH) in Mexico, who first discovered the statue's teeth.

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"We have to remember that these people were very, very religious. They believed absolutely that there was a life after death and this was important for them," Unikel told Live Science. [See Images of the Jesus Statue with Human Teeth]
Unassuming appearance
At first glance, the Christ of Patience — which depicts a seated, bloody Jesus gazing sadly off into the distance — doesn't look that different from statues found throughout the country. The painted wooden figure, which dates to the 17th or 18th century, wears human clothes and a wig, and was sculpted with a blend of European techniques and local materials, Unikel said.
"In Mexico, there are many statues like this — not only Christ, but Saints, the Virgin Mary," Unikel said.
Using human and animal body parts for statues isn't unusual either. People routinely donated hair to serve as wigs for statues, and artists often used nails fashioned from the shaved horns of bulls, she said.
Statues in Mexico are known to include false teeth made from animal bone — either with all the teeth carved from one solid piece of bone, or with individual, square-shaped teeth. A statue of the devil may be given a set of dog's teeth, and the team has even restored a baby Jesus statue with two baby rabbit teeth sprouting from its gums, Unikel said. But though there were rumors about a few statues containing human teeth, Unikel had never seen one.
God's teeth
The discovery happened by accident, when the Christ of Patience was taken, along with several other statues, to be restored by the INAH researchers.
As part of their restoration work, Unikel and her colleagues took X-rays of the statues. The anthropologist on the team noticed something unusual: real human teeth.
"We said 'Ah, it's not possible!'" Unikel told Live Science. "She said, 'I am absolutely sure about this.'"
The pearly whites seemed to be in good condition, with even the roots present. The finding is even stranger in that someone would donate such healthy teeth for the statue given that the statue's mouth is barely open, and the teeth aren't even visible unless someone peers inside, Unikel said.
Finding the owner
The teeth could have come from living or dead people, but with no available documents describing the statue, scientists and restorers will have a tough time tracking down the original owner. One possibility is that a particularly devout parishioner, or even many different people, donated the teeth. Another possibility is that someone extracted the teeth from an unwilling victim, but if so, the sculptor would never have revealed that fact, Unikel said. [Religious Mysteries: 8 Alleged Relics of Jesus]
Donating body parts to a church or religious cause was common practice during the late 17th and 18th centuries. For instance, the Bishop of Guadalajara, Obispo Manuel Fernández de Santa Cruz, donated his heart to the nuns of Convento de Santa Mónica de Puebla after he died in 1699. The heart was visible in a monstrance that only the nuns could see, Unikel said. And a Spanish government minister, Viceroy Baltazar de Zúñiga, Marquez de Valero also donated his heart to a convent of nuns, she said.
"For us, it seems mad," Unikel said, referring to people in modern times. But "the way they thought about the body was different from ours."
Now the researchers would like to find out more about the mysterious person or people who donated these teeth. Though they can't remove the teeth from the religious statue, the researchers hope to study them more carefully to figure out the age and sex of the teeth's owners, she said.
http://news.discovery.com/history/art-history/jesus-statue-found-to-have-real-human-teeth-140818.htm