Farmer Helped A Looter Who Fell In A Cave And Discovered Something Horrifying
#1 In Belize, there’s a cave located to the south of Belmopan near the Mennonite
Community of Springfield in the Cayo District dubbed as Midnight Terror Cave for its hair-raising story.
#2 In 2006, a local farmer heard a scream from a looter who fell 18 meters into a cave that led to a shocking discovery.
#3 The farmer helped the looter only to discover something more frightening – thousands of human bones lying beneath the cave!
#4 The California State University then completed a three-year survey of the cave, which ended in 2010.
Student Samantha Lorenz is part of a team of experts studying the chemical composition of these remains, including the teeth, in an attempt to learn more about who they belonged to.
#5 She told Ben Marks at Collector’s Weekly:
'No one's from Belize, so that means we have this population of children that was brought in from somewhere else for the purpose of sacrifice.
#6 And because there are so many of them all coming from the same region, then you have to look at whether there was a trade network,
essentially a human-trafficking network, in children.
In 2007, an episode of the Bone Detective introduced the idea of the cave being used for human sacrifice following research by Dr Jaime Awe and the Institute of Archaeology, Belize.
The first professional presentation of the were made at the 2009 Annual Meeting Society for American Archaeology in Atlanta, Georgia.
Researcher Crystal L.Kieffer discussed the findings further in her 2010 paper Determining Status of Ancient Maya from Looted and Sacrificial Contexts.
#7 Ms Kieffer is now a PhD Student in archaeology at the Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico.
By studying dental pathology and modification she concluded that there was evidence to suggest 'the presence of both elite and commoners at Midnight Terror Cave.'
She added that these it is not clear whether elites were local or were outsiders captured in battle.
'Midnight Terror Cave is similar to other sacrificial contexts within the Maya area that have adults and children as well as males and females.'
#8 Ms Kieffer then co-authored a paper in 2012 with Dr James Brady, a professor of anthropology at California State University.
In their paper, ‘Preliminary observations on the investigation of Midnight Terror Cave, Belize,' they reference the fact that evidence of human traffic has been noted by other cave archaeologists ‘in the form of trails of concave compacted soil that are still clearly visible a millennium after the abandonment of the site.'
#9 Dr Brady and Ms Kieffer also points to previous research which found sacrificial sites and public rituals require ‘large, open and level space’
in order to accommodate the number of people implied by the term public ritual.
Both of these features were found in the cave.
‘It is clear the Midnight Terror Cave was a feature of first importance in the ancient sacred landscape, ‘ said the researchers.
In the case of the Midnight Terror Cave, he found three areas that showed evidence of ‘substantial modification designed to create public space' and that these are connected by a formal system of pathways.
#11 But what is the purpose of human sacrifice for the Mayans?
The Mayan people believed underworld of caves were home to gods that controlled rainfall and crops. Thus they would often give gifts of corn, maize, animals, typically in ceramic bowls, and even human sacrifices to please the gods and return them the favor like improving the health of a certain member of the group, or improve the overall fortune of the community.
#12 They thought they were ‘feeding’ the gods by killing the humans as they believed humans were made from corn or maize and the like.
Young children and women were often sacrificed as they were seen as the purest members of society. In many instances the hearts of the sacrificed people were extracted and presented to the gods separately, and so as blood.
#10 Sacrificial humans were often painted blue to symbolize that they were being killed for the gods and not killed for another purpose.
Ms Lorenz said the research will now try to establish if these children were taken, sold or were orphans.