快猫短视频

ANCIENT Mayan people did not routinely indulge in human sacrifice and ritual
decapitation as is commonly believed. And the evidence comes from an unlikely
source鈥攖he burial practices of the medieval monarchs of Europe.

The Mayans built a stunning dynasty that dominated Meso-America from AD 250
to 1200. They were ruled by nobles and kings under a hierarchical system of
government. When scores of incomplete skeletons were uncovered from the graves
of wealthy Mayans, archaeologists interpreted the missing bones as proof of
dismemberment during ritual sacrifices.

But now Estella Weiss-Krejci of the University of Vienna says the most likely
explanation is that the bones simply went missing when the corpses were moved
and reburied鈥攁 common practice in medieval Europe.

Royal European dynasties routinely kept accounts of their mortuary practices
and Weiss-Krejci thought they might shed light on the Mayans. She analysed
events after death of members of two dynasties: the Babenbergs who ruled over
parts of Germany and Austria from AD 976 to 1278, and the Hapsburgs who
succeeded them. Eventually she gathered the burial records of 868 people who
died during a period of 1000 years鈥攁long with details of 351 of their
corpses.

After AD 1000, burial practices in Europe changed. Before that time,
Christians were buried where they died, no matter how high their status. For
example, Charlemagne lies in a grave in Aachen, rather than beside his royal
parents at St Denis, Paris. But the custom changed shortly after, and royal
bodies often travelled long distances to their tombs.

Embalming a corpse wasn鈥檛 enough to prevent it decaying when this happened.
So the undertakers used a gruesome practice known as mos teutonicus.
This involved disembowelling the corpse, cutting it into pieces, and then
boiling it in wine, water or vinegar. The clean bones were then wrapped up and
carried to the tomb. For example, when the Babenberg ruler Leopold VI died, his
soft tissue was buried at the monastery of Montecassino and his bones taken home
to Austria for burial four months later.

But this practice, which continued until the 15th century, disarticulated the
bones, destroying the post-mortem appearance of the skeleton. Weiss-Krejci
estimates that of the 351 corpses in her sample, over 40 per cent had been
tampered with in some way. For instance, 32 were stored and then buried, and 117
had been eviscerated. Ninety-five of the bodies were relocated after the
funeral.

Weiss-Krejci says that it is likely that the Mayans also reburied their dead,
particularly nobility. The disarticulated bones and incomplete skeletons may
simply have been damaged or lost in transit rather than part of a sacrifice.
None of them show signs of violent death, she points out.

鈥淗er work is a timely antidote to the fashionable obsession that there is a
ritual explanation for every phenomenon of human burial,鈥� says anthropolgist
Nicholas Saunders of University College London.