Unveiled After Centuries: The Mysterious Ancient Maya Tattooing Tools Found Deep Inside a Belize Cave
Though little physical evidence of Maya tattoos exists today, the Spanish conquistadors wrote about the widespread tattoo culture among the Maya. Both men and women had tattoos, which were symbols of beauty for women and symbols of bravery for men. Tattoos often included animal imagery, like bats, eagles, or snakes, and traditional Maya artwork suggests that tattoos frequently had a geometric pattern as well.
Museum of Fine Arts, BostonA vase from the Late Classic period shows a Maya queen, right, and her attendant, left, with facial tattoos.
Tattoos could also be used as a form of punishment or shame among the Maya, and were sometimes used to mark the faces of thieves.
But researchers also believe that the two tattoo tools found in Belize may have served an additional ritual purpose for the Maya.
“Since caves are underground spaces closely associated with important Maya ideological landscapes, particularly the concepts of life and death, fertility, rain, sacrifice, and gateways to the underworld where ancestors and deities reside,” the researchers wrote, “it seems likely that the tools were used to tattoo important individuals or to mark auspicious events.”
Houston Museum of Natural ScienceA depiction of the Maya fire god with tattoos and scarification. Circa 900-1200 C.E.
What’s more, these tattooing tools were broken. This suggests that they may have served a ritualistic purpose before they were perhaps purposefully broken and then left in Actun Uayazba Kab cave as an offering.
Post Comment