2,500-year-old mutliple burial with interlocked skeletons found in Mexico
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Nearly a dozen human skeletons arranged in a circular formation have been discovered in an ancient Mexican pit in Tlalpan village. The surprising discovery was made by a group of archaeologists, who found the ancient burial site hiding four feet under a building that housed classrooms and dorms for priests.
Credit: Mauricio Marat, INAH
This site, located to the south of present-day Mexico City, had 10 human skeletons interlocked with each other in an extremely strange manner.
Credit: Mauricio Marat, INAH
Discovering centuries-old skeletons in a hidden burial site is not something new but these bodies, more than 2500 years old, were found lying on their sides and their arm bones were arranged in a spiral formation.
Credit: Mauricio Marat, INAH
The discovery is not only the first of its kind but also points to some kind of ritualistic burial where people could have been intertwined in death, according to a statement from the National Institute of Anthropology and History.
Credit: Mauricio Marat, INAH
"There was one individual over the other, for example: The head of the individual on the chest of the other, the hands of one individual under the other's back, the baby on the body of another," Jimena Rivera Jimena, who found the skeletons, told Mexican website Noticieros Televisa.
Credit: Mauricio Marat, INAH
So far, the group analysing the remains has found that two of them were females while one was a male. While they are still working on the discovery, it has been confirmed that most of them were adolescents, with two young ones, a three- to five-year-old child and a one-month-old baby.
Credit: Mauricio Marat, INAH
The exact cause of their death remains unclear but the archaeologists have noticed some deformities on their skull and teeth, which appeared intentional.
Credit: Mauricio Marat, INAH
Cranial deformities have previously been spotted in the remains of Mesoamericans in the past. It was done for a range of reasons such as for representing group affiliation or social status. Archaeologists also found ancient clay pots, ceramic spheres, stones and bowls inside the grave.
Tlalpan, the village linked to this burial, dates back to Mexico's pre-classical period (between 700BC to 200BC) and is believed to have thrived for about 500 years.
