Guatemala Mayan city may have ended in pyramid battle

[Adsos Letter]

Source: Reuters
By Sarah Grainger
EL MIRADOR, Guatemala



Photo Credit: REUTERS/Daniel LeClair

One of Guatemala's greatest ancient Mayan cities may have died out in a bloody battle atop a huge pyramid between a royal family and invaders from hundreds of miles away, archaeologists say.

Researchers are carrying out DNA tests on blood samples from hundreds of spear tips and arrowheads dug up with bone fragments and smashed pottery at the summit of the El Tigre pyramid in the Mayan city of El Mirador, buried beneath jungle vegetation 8 km from Guatemala's border with Mexico.

Many of the excavated blades are made of obsidian which the archaeologists have traced to a source hundreds of miles away in the Mexican highlands. They believe the spears belonged to warriors from Teotihuacan, an ancient civilization near Mexico City and an ally of Tikal, which was an enemy city of El Mirador.

"We've found over 200 of the obsidian tips alone, as well as flint ones, indicating there was a tremendous battle," said excavation leader Richard Hansen, a senior scientist in Idaho State University's anthropology department who is pushing the pyramid battle theory.

[Adsos Letter]

1. Always helpful to include the link...

http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-42207620090903

[On the Road]

2. Thank You

I have never been satisfied with existing explanations of Central American cities being abandoned. Fascinating that they can get such hard evidence (DNA from both warring groups), but also that some of it (the graffiti) was staring archaelogists in the face since the city's rediscovery.

[Adsos Letter]

4. you are welcome; I find ancient culture very grounding...

helps me remember Shakespeare's(?) admonition that "All the world's a stage, and all the people players."

It's an old, old, old, stage, and the players have been entering and exiting for millennia.

Puts some things in better perspective for me, somehow.

[scheming daemons]

3. It wasn't a battle, it was a scheme.... a pyramid scheme... and the leader of the winning tribe was

called "Madoff".

[TlalocW]

5. I was thinking, why not the Aztecs

Then I consulted a timeline of Aztec and Mayans civilizations. Aztecs didn't really start flourishing until 1100, and El Mirador was abandoned in the 800s. The Aztecs loved them some obsidian blades too though. That's one more thing they picked up from Teotihuacan which was abandoned by the time they found it when they were still relatively nomadic.

Whenever I think Aztec, I think of this: The seal on the Mexican flag of an eagle eating a serpent while standing on a cactus is said to have been the sign from the gods that the Aztecs were supposed to look for to tell them where to build their city, Tenochitlan. A Spanish professor of mine had the theory that the priests and the nobles were tired of being nomadic, saw the eagle, got in a huddle and said, "Hey, why don't we claim that's a sign from the gods, and we can get the rabble to start building us temples and stuff?"

TlalocW