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More than 15 year after its discovery , Belize ’s Midnight Terror Cave is still leaving clues about more than 100 multitude who were sacrifice to the Maya rainfall god there more than a millenary ago .
Used for interment duringthe Maya Classic period(A.D. 250 to 925 ) , the cave was named by locals who were promise to rescue an injured looter in 2006 . A three - year excavation project by California State University , Los Angeles ( Cal State LA ) prof and students reason out that the more than 10,000 bones unveil in the cave act at least 118 people , many of whom had evidence of trauma impose on them around the sentence of destruction .
The entrance to the Midnight Terror Cave in Belize.
To dive deeply into the dupe ' final moments , the tardy inquiry did n’t look at bones but instead at their mouths , investigating the calcified plaque from their teeth , known as dental calculus . The discipline , publish Sept. 20 in theInternational Journal of Osteoarchaeology , draw singular blue fibers hang to the teeth of at least two of the victim .
Study leading author Amy Chan , who ’s now an archaeologist crop in cultural resource management , started her analytic thinking of the Midnight Terror Cave teeth as a graduate bookman at Cal State LA , where she was concerned in learn more about the dental wellness of the dupe , she severalise Live Science by email .
" After finding minimal illustration of dental pathology , I became concerned in determining what foodstuff the victims were consuming , " she say .
The blue fiber, likely made of cotton, from Midnight Terror Cave in Belize.
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Dental calculus can carry on microscopic pieces of intellectual nourishment that someone ate — such as pollen grains , starch and phytoliths , which are mineralized parts of plants — so Chan skin the sludge off six teeth and send it to study co - authorLinda Scott Cummings , president and CEO of the PaleoResearch Institute in Golden , Colorado . Scott Cummings found that the samples hold primarily cotton wool fiber and that several of those were dye bright aristocratical .
" The uncovering of blue cotton fiber fibers in both samples was a surprisal , " Chan said , because " blue is important in Maya ritual . "
The interior of the Midnight Terror Cave in Belize, with a person in blue for scale.
A unique " Maya bluish " pigment has been found at other web site in Mesoamerica , where it seems to have been used in ceremony — particularly to paint the bodies of sacrificial victim , Chan and workfellow wrote in their research paper . These blue fibre were also ground in an agave - based alcoholic drinkable at burials at Teotihuacan , an archeologic site in what is now Mexico .
But Chan and her squad proffer another account for the fiber found on the teeth : Perhaps the victim had cotton plant fabric in their backtalk , mayhap from the use of muzzle leading up to their forfeit . If victims were in hands for extensive menstruation of time , their dental tartar could have contain the risque fibre .
" It is interesting that they find colored fibre in dental calculus,“Gabriel Wrobel , a bioarchaeologist at Michigan State University who was not involved in the sketch , told Live Science by email . " Many researchers mean that calculus only reflects dieting , but this subject area is a great representative of how much more information can be hear . "
Claire Ebert , an environmental archaeologist at the University of Pittsburgh who was not involved in the report , told Live Science by e-mail that she is " sceptical " that the blue fibers came from gags . However , she noted that dental calculus studies are important because they " can be used to look at other view of Maya life , lay out from ritual to domesticated . "
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An expand subject field include both elect and non - elite people would be worthwhile " to see if the rule can also be detected " or if " other explanation for the presence of fibers may be more coherent , " Ebert say .
Chan and her team agree that their study , while providing the first evidence of depressed fibers in dental calculus of Maya individuals , has some limitations . First , the charge per unit at which plaque forms and hardens diverge based on the type of intellectual nourishment eaten and a person ’s physiology , so the investigator can not know for certain when the fibers were trap . to boot , very few teeth of Midnight Terror Cave victim had dental concretion to begin with , limiting the team ’s analysis .
" next studies will provide a more ample context for interpreting this data , " the researchers compose in their study .
