Buried in two places: Lineages from elite Maya tombs also found in distant caves

Abstract

Classic Period Maya societies 250-900 CE carved out urban centers from the rainforest reaching population heights and political complexity previously unknown in the Mesoamerican tropics. Kinship was a central feature of the social fabric, and rulership was legitimized through claims of direct descent from mythical ancestors. Mortuary practices kept the dead close to the living, and ancestor veneration sometimes produced complex deposits of disarticulated remains that are difficult to identify and whose relationship to each other cannot be understood without genetic data. We screened 487 samples and successfully generated genome-wide data for 430 samples from at least 145 distinct individuals from an Early Classic Period kingdom 250-750 CE in the rugged Maya Mountains of Belize. Of these, 24 individuals have body parts in both an elite tomb, and in a ritual tooth cache in a distant cave on the other side of the Maya mountains. These results show elite lineages created ancestors from their deceased relatives in geographically expansive ways and highlights the importance of caves in the belief system of Classic Maya elites.